Maurini Strub

Maurini Strub talked to us about moving away from capital "E" equity toward a more embedded little "e" equity-driven approach. For example,  she talked about representation in committee membership, feedback channels, and seeing support for equity in leadership and budgets as one of the ways of democratizing power. One key component to Maurini’s equity centered assessment is advocacy and shifting the role of assessment professionals from being consultants into a strategic/systems thinking mindset, impacting the lines of inquiry and revising lines of questioning. 

One approach that Maurini has taken is with advisory boards within her library and is working to change the legacy practices around appointments to these boards. Historically, many advisory board appointments include staff and students with connections to other campus leadership or those who are deeply invested in libraries. While this is great, it ignores the voices of those who don’t have access to organizational and institutional leadership or for some reason never established the type of relationship that builds that deep commitment.  Maurini has been working to revise this to amplify voices that have not previously had access. By elevating underrepresented user groups and engaging in dialogue and the willingness and patience to  engage these groups, we can make the organization more welcoming and helpful to all campus populations. 

Feedback channels also provide an additional expansion of equity in assessment. Including multiple feedback channels such as asynchronous, anonymous, as well as face-to-face, can increase the diversity of responses and trust among participants. One method shared was to have multiple note takers during user feedback sessions. By employing multiple note takers, this acknowledges the inherent bias each note taker holds that enables them to (hyper)focus on specific issues but also  captures gaps that can then be triangulated to create a more accurate record of the feedback collected. Finally, Maurini also stressed the importance of closing the feedback loop by circling back to stakeholders following feedback collection to present what was heard, what will be addressed, and what may or may not be addressed. Developing a mechanism to track progress on changes for stakeholders to see is also important.

Maurini also discussed visibility of equity efforts in a budget as a potentially important aspect for transparency of organizational leadership. Leaders can espouse support for equity-centered practices, but how visible are they? Can you actually see equity efforts outlined in the allocation of dollars to support programming and initiatives? Are your programming efforts affecting the targeted outcomes (i.e. are they expanding the user group of unit services)?

When asking Maurini about roles of assessment professionals in relationship to equity work, she shared that she thinks it can happen when an assessment professional moves from a consultant role to a strategic/systems thinking role. She also suggests that individuals who hold equity as a personal core value are more likely to amplify this work and pay more attention to efforts around a university campus. Maurini suggests that the equity-centered professional not only revises assessment questions to be more focused on the inherent dignity and rights of all individuals, but advocates for formulating the right questions and the needs of the broader stakeholder audience.

Resources

Berger, Warren. A More Beautiful Question. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016

Magnus, E., Belanger, J., and Faber, M. “Towards a Critical Assessment Practice” Posted on In the Library with a Lead Pipe, October 31, 2018