Closing the Opportunity Gap: Identity-Conscious Strategies for Retention and Student Success ed. by Vijay Pendakur (review)

The release of the edited book Closing the Opportunity Gap: Identity-Conscious Strategies for Retention and Student Success is timely and particularly significant in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the University of Texas race-conscious admission policy (Fisher v the University of Texas at Austin et al., 2016). The Supreme Court's ruling reinforces that diversity is a compelling state interest and renders a race-conscious admission framework for many public higher education institutions that are committed to access of historically underrepresented racial/ethnic students. However, race-conscious admission is just a very beginning of this commitment - a seed of the plant yet to grow and blossom. When a higher education door gets opened to a historically under-represented racial/ethnic student, the institution takes on the larger responsibility for developing the holistic focus from student access to student success and degree attainment. The significance of Vijay Pendakur's edited book is that it provides us with examples of institutional practices that regard racial/ethnic student success as an area requiring a nuanced approach to institutional programming. The organization of the book is designed to guide the reader from the philosophical foundation and critical context behind the student success thesis to examples of specific programs followed by discussions of professional development areas for higher education practitioners.

The introductory chapter outlines the conceptual framework of the book, highlighting the need to shift culturally from the conventional, identity-neutral institutional practices to more nuanced student "ground up" approaches. Referring to the compelling statistics and reports, the editor demonstrates the stubborn reality of the widening college opportunity gap (i.e., combined access and success rates) between underrepresented racial/ethnic and low-income students and their White and middle- and upper-income counterparts. The chapter further asserts that addressing this opportunity gap is an institutional responsibility and calls for new institutional approaches such as the identity-conscious program design framework, where identity-centered student development programs (i.e., cultural centers, diversity programs) intersect with student success programs (e.g., freshmen orientation, retention programs). Pendakur observes key distinctions between identity development programs and academic success programs, suggesting that retention programs are identity-neutral, and diversity programs and cultural spaces are identity-centered programs. Further, the author clarifies that,

In an identity-centered program or curriculum, the identity itself is the focus of the intervention… [where] the outcomes of the program are all tied to a deeper and more complex understanding of one's [for example] Latino-ness or masculinity. Alternatively, this same program can be an identity-conscious student success program if it is designed from the ground up with the students' racial and gender identities in mind, but the intended outcomes are tied to student success, such as term-to-term credit completion, yearly persistence, engagement in high-impact practices, or timely graduation.

(p.7)

The author's assertion that identities shape students' academic experiences enjoys research and scholarly support. In unison with Pendakur, other scholars suggest that when student identities are absent in the equation of the student success formula, the academic experiences of underrepresented students become misunderstood and poorly facilitated (e.g., Quaye & Harper, 2015).

The editor further stresses that current institutional structures, that tend to separate student affairs and academic affairs, make their investments into student development and student success interventions ineffective as they "lie in silos at most institutions" (p. 3). Student academic success and diversity engagement should not be parallel-unrelated institutional foci and, instead, could be seen as two sides of the same coin, resulting in an intentional intersectionality by bridging student social identities with retention and academic success initiatives. The author contends that partnerships between student affairs, enrollment management, and academic affairs are necessary and possible in an identity-conscious student success approach, requiring that institutions need to know whom they serve. While such proposition makes absolute sense, the current reality indicates that not many higher education institutions dig deeper into their institutional data to uncover the impact of racial/ethnic, first-generation, and low-income characteristics on student success on their campuses. Specifically, among 325 surveyed member institutions of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&amp...