Victor Valley College (VVC) is compiling section-level data to better understand how teaching and support services impact Black/African American and People of Color (BIPOC) and whether a disproportionate impact (DI) exists across courses and key service areas. Making these data visible is vital to our being able to identify our areas of greatest need, and to develop strategies aimed at reducing these DI gaps--whether in terms of access, utilization, or intended effects.

Our goal was to develop awareness and productive development of strategies to reduce BIPOC student learning gaps in courses. Long term, we endeavor to improve institutional performance on student success, retention, and completion among BIPOC students.

- Effective use of data starts with a solid foundation in data literacy/competence across the organization. When assumptions of data integrity are violated, no amount of data governance (no matter how systematic or standards-based) will increase trust in the data without first setting an expectation for basic data literacy for all stakeholders.

- In building trust in the data with faculty, administrators must be willing to hold space to discuss the compromises in data integrity, specify how those failings are being mitigated, and communicate transparently the progress being made. Moreover, faculty and staff must be invited to consider the data at the same time and learning pace to establish a sense of community, shared development, and practice. Permission to learn means it is OK to fail and experiment--innovation is given primacy over correctness.

- As the old saying goes, 'Culture eats strategy for lunch.' VVC is shoring up its data-related practices with an invitation to all stakeholders to learn together for the benefit of individual, institutional, and--most importantly--student learning and long-term success.