Leveraging Performance Improvement Practices to Advance Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Higher Education: The Case of Student Success and Mental Wellness

Abstract: There has been an increased concern with how to improve performance by closing performance gaps through effective problem identification. Efforts in this area focus mostly on traditional sources of evidence on performance gaps that center mainly on hard metrics describing outcomes of performance such as performance evaluations and manager feedback (see Min & Oh, 2020). However, as proponents of performance improvement call for its use to address societal issues (see Osam & Nold, 2020), there is a need to establish additional ways of addressing performance gaps that do not rely solely on hard metrics and that are nuanced towards the needs of underserved populations. This need is particularly relevant in higher education where standards of performance are linked to student success. As was demonstrated over the past few years in the United States, mental wellness played a vital role in student success, as students had to navigate both COVID-19 and an intense racial climate. Furthermore, research suggests that Black students were overwhelmingly impacted by these experiences (Landertinger et al, 2021). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to provide recommendations for utilizing diversity and inclusion performance practices to foster effective and equitable mental wellness initiatives across higher education institutions. Specifically, this paper focuses on mental health and wellbeing access for black college students and uses a case study to demonstrate the power of performance improvement to advance DEI, while contributing to student and organizational success.