UVa Student / Starr Hill Pathways Partnership

The Starr Hill Pathways Program is an initiative from The UVA Center for the Redress of Inequity through Community Engaged Scholarship (The Equity Center). Furthermore, its mission is to “tangibly redress racial and economic inequity in university communities by advancing a transformative approach to the fundamental research mission, which will, in turn, reform institutional values, pedagogy, and operations” (Appendix 1). Starr Hill Pathways is being developed to support college-readiness for 6th-12th grade students in low-income communities in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. The program’s overarching goal is to create a system that supports and guides students of the local community to gain college admission into UVA or any college of their choice.

This report is based on work produced in partnership with Dr. Ben Allen (community partner), Executive Director of the Equity Center, and UVA students (student consultants) in the Fall 2021 “Community-Engaged Methods” class instructed by Professor Barbara Wilson, Faculty Director of the Equity Center. From the Memorandum of Understanding between the community partner and student consultants, the goals of this project are to:

Research and document existing pipeline programs offered throughout the different schools and student organizations within UVA for K-12 students in the Charlottesville-Albemarle region specifically with a focus on grades 6-12.
Contact UVA and student program leaders across school departments to further identify, connect, and document UVA pipeline programs to ensure sustained communication between the Equity Center, UVA, and the community.
Prepare a focus group with the leaders of UVA schools/centers to collectively think about the offerings, accessibility, and gaps of pipeline programs in Charlottesville and Albemarle.

The student consultants and community partner prepared and conducted a focus group with leaders of existing pipeline programs. From the interview content, the student consultants completed qualitative analysis and created a codebook to understand the themes discussed. The student consultants propose the focus group structure and codebook will be useful tools to utilize as the Equity Center continues to build Starr Hill Pathways.