FACULTY KUDOS: Dr. LaDonna Young named Bill and Melinda Gates Mindset Scholar

Southwest’s Dean of Humanities, Social Sciences and Mathematics Dr. LaDonna Young was named a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Mindset Scholar earlier this month.  She is the first Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) community college educator to receive this prestigious national designation.

A Mindset Scholar is an education practitioner or researcher identified as a leading edge innovative thinker around practices that impact underrepresented minority students in K-12 schools or higher education.  “We are exceptionally proud of Dr. Young’s appointment and honored to join the Mindset Scholars Network,” President Tracy D. Hall said.  “Dr. Young is a veteran faculty member and talented dean with innovative ideas. She is truly deserving.” 

The Mindset Scholars Network was established in 2016 to advance scientific understanding of learning mindsets to improve student outcomes and expand educational opportunity.  Network members are senior scholars and up-and-coming researchers from across the social sciences representing universities across the nation.

A Southwest faculty member for 19 years, Young had considered incorporating the mindset philosophy into the classroom for many years. Her opportunity arrived after her appointment to dean in June 2017 when she was charged with leading TBR’s Office of High Impact Practices (HIPs) initiative at Southwest. 

She immediately emerged as a trendsetter. Young went beyond the state’s list of high impact practices to identify and integrate the mindset pedagogical approach as a valuable high impact practice.  She rebranded HIPs as HIPI (Office of High Impact Practices and Innovation), organizing the first office in Tennessee to identify, organize and embed high-quality HIPs at both the course and guided pathways level.

“I fell in love with the mindset philosophy,” Young said.  “I began looking at our mission at Southwest more closely and examining the students we serve as a community college,” she added.

Young says cultivating a connection to a student’s sense of belonging to their classroom, school, peers, faculty and chosen major is at the heart of the growth mindset.  “It’s also getting the student to think about his connection to his community and place in the global arena,” she said.  “Many of the students at Southwest are first generation students with little or no concept of higher education.”

TBR’s response to this population and the needs of students across the state was to establish an intense strategic initiative centered around high impact practices.  One strategy is to look at students with various challenges from a different point of view.  “The students we have at Southwest that are underrepresented and marginalized need to be presented with instructional practices that show a growth mindset, not a deficit mindset,” Young said.

Every year the Mindset network focuses on a new body of research.  This year’s focus is on what constitutes “a sense of belonging.” Young’s Motivate Lab partner Chris Hulleman nominated her for the Mindset Scholar designation given Young’s work in developing the mindset concept at Southwest.  Motivate Lab has partnered with TBR to explore how student, classroom, and institution-wide factors affect the relationship between students' learning mindsets and academic performance.

Young and Hulleman will present their research to educational stakeholders at the Annual Mindset Science Funder Briefing at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Wash., November 27.  Their session is entitled Bridging the Science of Belonging and Practice in Higher Education Contexts.

Funding for the Mindset network is provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Overdeck Family Foundation, and Raikes Foundation.