2022 – Information

Expanding the Ecosystem, Mapping Strategic Progress, Integrating Campus Conversations

The 2022 Summer Institute on Equity in the Academic Experience is made possible through the generous support of the American Talent Initiative (ATI), Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Gray Foundation, and the Aronson Foundation. 

This year’s institute brought together 70 teams from 44 colleges and universities across the United States, with 425 total attendees representing a diverse range of both two and four-year institutions. For the first time, the institute format was hybrid, offering participants opportunities to engage with colleagues both in person across 10 leadership sites and virtually through roundtables, workshops, and coaching sessions throughout the three-day institute.

Each day of the Summer Institute, attendees participated in three types of sessions:

  • Provocations (national gathering of participants to provoke conversations),
  • Roundtables (space for discussion and practice sharing on important equity-specific issues), and
  • Workshops (opportunity for hands-on work on equity projects, strategies, and methods). Along with independent work time and coaching sessions, teams also shared their equity plans with peers, coaches, and participants for feedback at the end of the Institute. 

Watch the 2022 Session recordings

The 2022 Summer Institute was hybrid:

  • A virtual national gathering drew on the e diverse strengths of institutions and experts. The virtual programming featured presentations, workshops, and opportunities for coaching and consultation.
  • Local gatherings of individual campuses and regional clusters of institutions forged greater connectivity among local efforts. Local programming provided teams with structured time to work on projects in the company of colleagues and “critical friends.

In the three days of the Summer Institute, campus teams connected their projects:

  • to a specific equity issue that will serve as a high-leverage opportunity for progress.
  • to the strategic equity goals of their institution.
  • to similar work happening in other parts of their institution.
  • to the broader higher education equity ecosystem, including institutions with common geographic and/or project interests.

In addition to workshops, roundtables, provocations, and work time, our goal for the last day of the Institute was “lightning round feedback sessions” for teams to share out plans, questions, concerns in order to receive feedback from other teams, coaches, and critical friends.


The thematic priorities of the 2022 Summer Institute are:

Expanding the Ecosystem 

The Challenge: Institutional isolation. Institutions often prioritize their institutional identity or look to peer institutions for solutions to access, equity gaps, retention, student success, inclusive action plans, curriculum transformation, faculty engagement,  etc. This isolation limits availability of perspectives and hinders access to effective solutions.

Mapping strategic progress

The Challenge: Disconnection. While many campuses have set goals for equity work (e.g., increasing the number of Pell-eligible students), strategic planning to meet these goals is few and far between. Specific equity initiatives on campuses remain disconnected.

Integrating campus conversations

The Challenge: Silos. Educational equity work is appropriately highly distributed across campuses, but institutional silos prevent knowledge sharing and collaboration creating redundancies and gaps that limit progress.


This Year’s Hosts and Participants

The 2022 Summer Institute on Equity in the Academic Experience was hosted by a national coalition of colleges and universities and the American Talent Initiative who have shared responsibility for the planning and programming:

  • Claremont-McKenna College
  • George Mason University
  • Georgetown University
  • Ohio State University
  • Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg
  • Princeton University
  • Rutgers University, New Brunswick
  • University of Iowa
  • University of the Pacific
  • University of Pittsburgh 
  • Xavier University of Louisiana

FINAL Schedules

For any questions on the 2022 Summer Institute, please contact us at equityinstitute@georgetown.edu . As always, thank you for the work that you do! 


Read more about past institutes