Mission-Aligned Admission
By aligning admissions with the institution’s mission, our member schools aim to foster a sense of purpose and engagement among faculty and students, ensuring that the educational environment is not only academically rich but also socially and culturally diverse. ASPPH, committed to social justice and equity, will continue to address admission barriers for underrepresented students and encourages all our members to use mission-aligned admissions to reaffirm our commitment to a diverse public health workforce.
Application Review
Application Review trainings provide attendees with skills, tools, and action items that can be immediately implemented. The goal of these trainings is to help members develop an inclusive and equitable application review process.
Scotus decision on race and admissions: implications for academic public health and what’s next
ASPPH Presents Webinar, SCOTUS Decision on Race and Admissions: Implications for Academic Public Health and What’s Next, delved into the June 2023 Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decision on race in admissions and its implications for the Academic Public Health sector.
It also expanded on resources provided by the Departments of Education and Justice and discussed future directions for ASPPH members in this new era of admissions, including SOPHAS, the centralized application service for public health.
Implicit bias in application review training
An important component of any mission-aligned application review process is ensuring that each applicant receives an equitable review. Application reviewers are often influenced by their own experiences and perceptions when reviewing applications. These influences often appear as implicit biases and can create an inequitable application review process.
Learn how to prevent implicit bias from influencing the application review process and admissions decisions.
Building and admissions rubric training
Twelve Action Items for Implementing an Admissions Rubric:
- Create a two-year cycle for faculty review committees to reduce implicit bias.
- Provide training (strongly encouraged for all applicant reviewers) and make it available in as many places as possible to ensure accessibility.
- Borrow best practices from other graduate schools at your institution.
- Crowd-source ideas and share the benefits of the rubric to create buy-in.
- Have your general counsel meet with you to ensure your admissions rubric(s) align with your institution’s goals.
- Using Slate (or another CRM) to go back and review predictors of success.
- Evaluating the evaluators (review committees) at least once a year.
- Do not create opportunities for bias, i.e., do not Google applicants.
- Review your rubrics annually and continue to allow for faculty feedback.
- Having a rubric with clear guidelines (and having a simplified version of larger categories).
- Your rubric(s) clearly delineates specific reasons for admittance, denial, and acceptance.
- Being able to understand what students need resource-wise (allowing reviewers to identify a potential area of support).
