Leveraging BIPOC Faculty Counterspaces: Lessons for Organizational Change from Aspire’s IThrive Collective

Abstract

This exploratory study examines the relationship between Aspire’s IThrive Collective counterspace community of support and the organizational transformation efforts of members of the IChange Network.  Our study examines how a counterspace community of support could inform institutional transformation.  We collected focus group data from participants in a IThrive counterspace conversation series, consisting of five gatherings from 2021-2022. Using Griffin’s (2020) institutional model for faculty diversity, we developed a codebook to capture areas of activity desired by faculty and university action plans. Preliminary results show an emerging framework to disaggregate impressions of faculty from dominant and underrepresented groups to inform transformation.