Kendra Dority came to UC Santa Cruz as a Ph.D. student in literature attracted by the boundary-crossing program and vibrant community. Her research combined two time periods separated by centuries, comparing ancient Greek literature and twentieth-century U.S. Latinx literature. Along with studies, Dority worked as a teaching assistant (TA) and a graduate student instructor (GSI). The time she spent with students changed her research trajectory and led her toward a career dedicated to strengthening teaching and learning at UC Santa Cruz.
“Much of the thinking that excited me most happened in the classroom alongside students,” Dority said. “I also saw how students brought in personal experience, knowledge, and skills, including ways of reading and analyzing texts, that strengthened our collective inquiry and allowed us to ask new questions. Through teaching as a graduate student, I came to understand how my field of study is deeply pedagogical.”
By the time she was completing her Ph.D., she knew she wanted to be engaged in efforts to make public education more equitable and accessible.
Dority is the director of graduate student and postdoc professional development at the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC). The center uses research and equity-minded practices to strengthen the teaching culture, promote student success and equitable outcomes, and support teacher-leaders among faculty and graduate student educators.
"I am proud to be part of a team that is so dedicated to supporting the teaching community at UC Santa Cruz,” Dority said. “In addition to having a positive impact on student success, it’s my hope that our work also increases a sense of belonging for campus educators.”
Dority has been awarded the 2024 Outstanding Staff Award by the Staff Advisory Board (SAB), UCSC Alumni Association, and the Chancellor’s Office. The award recognizes staff members who provide distinguished service each day to the students, staff, and faculty of UC Santa Cruz.
After graduate school, Dority continued teaching at Porter College for a year, and then joined the Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning (CITL) as the center’s first assistant director to help launch new professional development programs and communities for faculty and graduate students. In 2023, CITL merged with Online Education and became the Teaching and Learning Center. She has been a member of the teaching center for more than seven years.
“Having been a graduate student here, it's incredibly meaningful to be able to create more robust and community-driven opportunities for graduate students, to uplift them as leaders on our campus,” shared Dority. “I think some of the most creative teaching is done by some of our graduate students and I am honored to get to see them acknowledged for that, and to be seen by their departments as leaders as well when they get to mentor other graduate students or support them in developing equitable teaching practices. It's an important part of their own development, and also for the university.”
“Kendra is an exceptional leader whose contributions have had a profound impact on our campus, the UC system, and the broader field of educational development,” Samara Foster, managing director of the Teaching & Learning Center said. “As the director for graduate student and postdoc professional development, she provides thoughtful, equity-focused mentorship and leads one of the TLC's most robust areas of programming. Her leadership extends to campus-wide collaborations and system-wide initiatives, where she has created meaningful change, improved engagement, and nurtured new leaders. Kendra’s dedication to equity, inclusion, and professional growth makes her truly deserving of the Outstanding Staff Member Award. I'm thrilled she is being recognized in this way!”
Supporting equity through professional development
Providing professional development focused on teaching is vital to graduate student success. Preparing them to teach with equity and justice in mind is essential to moving toward the university’s equity goals, such as closing racial equity gaps in graduation rates and improving equitable learning outcomes in gateway courses. Faculty of record also benefit from the perspectives and skills the TAs and GSIs bring to the courses. As the group with the most recent undergraduate experience, they are vital in supporting student success as teachers and serve as mentors helping them navigate the university.
At the heart of this transformation is student-centered teaching, which involves active learning: students actively engaging and applying what they learn in the classroom. It is also asset-based, incorporating students' lived experiences, culture, values, goals, and dreams.
"Graduate student teaching development is an important component within larger institutional transformation for the campus. Our campus has a complex status as a historically white institution that is currently learning how to fully embrace its identity as a minority-serving research institution, as both a Hispanic-Serving Institution and an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution," explained Dority. "I love working with and learning from campus educators to apply research-based teaching practices that are known to support students the university wasn't originally designed to support."
Collaborative effort across campus
Dority works closely with Education Specialist for Graduate & Postdoc Professional Development Roxanna Villalobos, who was herself a participant in several TLC teaching programs while she completed her Ph.D. in Sociology and Latin American and Latino Studies.
Dority and Villalobos lead a variety of programs, workshops, and courses that support educators in all academic disciplines, including:
- Course Design & Delivery Certificate Program - working with graduate students who are teaching as GSIs in the summer session. Approximately a third of the courses are taught and often designed by GSIs.
- TAs with course experience become peer leaders in the Graduate Pedagogy Fellows Program designed by Dority. They create a course or workshop focused on equity-minded teaching that they share with their peers the following year. About 25 departments take part in this program each year.
- The Equity-minded Mentoring Certificate Program is for graduate students and postdocs in a STEM or Social Sciences field who are interested in refining their mentorship skills to build inclusive, supportive research environments such as labs.
- The Teaching Statements & Portfolios mini course is a new online, self-paced Canvas resource providing step-by-step guidance in creating or refining a teaching statement and portfolio helping them develop their teaching identity. In the first week of its October launch, more than 100 people signed up.
- Dority helped bring the Community College Internship Program to UC Santa Cruz. First launched at UC Irvine, select UCSC graduate students receive mentorship from faculty at Hartnell College. While interns are introduced to the culture of teaching at a local community college, Hartnell builds a more diverse pool of applicants for their faculty positions.
The TLC partners with other campus units engaged in student equity work to encourage a more holistic and collaborative approach to addressing inequity and ensuring student success. Some of the collaborators who are essential to the success of TLC’s graduate student and postdoc programs include graduate coordinators and advisors across departments, the Graduate Division, the Academic Senate, Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Initiatives, Global Engagement, the Center for Reimagining Leadership, the Humanities Institute, the Academic Excellence (ACE) Program, and Summer Session.
Impact across the University of California
Dority’s work is bringing change beyond the UC Santa Cruz campus. Over the past two years, she served as the co-chair of the University of California Centers for Teaching and Learning (UC-CTL) Consortium, collaborating with other UC leaders to design and host two annual convenings bringing together faculty and staff who work at teaching centers across the nine campuses. Groups of cross-campus teams explored critical research on what it means to support the teaching community at current and emerging Hispanic Serving Institutions and how they can support each other to embrace more holistic and antiracist methods for assessing the impact of teaching centers toward reaching more equitable student outcomes. She also collaborated on a report on how to collectively advance accessible teaching.
Outstanding Staff Award
For more than two and a half decades, the Staff Advisory Board (SAB), UCSC Alumni Association, and the Chancellor’s Office have worked together to honor a member of the staff through the annual Outstanding Staff Award. Nominations are solicited across campus.
“Choosing the Outstanding Staff Award winner is such a fun part of our SAB work,” Jessica Bulleri, SAB president said. “We received over 150 nominations, and hearing the stories of so many dedicated, passionate staff members really makes me proud to be a part of the UCSC staff community. There were so many standouts that it was really tough to choose just one winner this year. We appreciate everyone who took the time to nominate their colleagues, and we are so thankful for the amazing work all the nominees are doing.”
The nomination criteria includes, going "above and beyond" to provide distinguished service to students, staff, or faculty colleagues; champions the work of their department/division and adapts to changing needs; fosters the Principles of Community; embraces and values diversity, strives for an inclusive community, and promotes mutual respect, trust and support that strengthens the UCSC community; and engages or volunteers in UCSC activities and promotes campus initiatives.
