Could this be an additional strategy for integrating our society’s organizations and institutions? Give people the red buttons they need to reduce ambiguity about how to cope in the institution. Give them an understanding of the institution and its infrastructure. Give them the social and cultural capital needed to understand the value of the experience. Give them tools and resources. Show them pathways forward. It can seem like an unusual approach to integration or diversity. But remember, it’s ambiguity over how to cope in important settings that virtually forces people facing identity threat to “remember,” to worry that bias is a source of their frustration and discomfort. For them, it’s an unavoidable part of trying to figure out what’s wrong, what’s not working in a setting.

Suppose an entire institution took this approach. What if a university, for example, tried to do for its students what Pat Neal did for me? Would it— by giving students red buttons and reducing toxic ambiguities— improve student outcomes?

In contrast, in Renick’s early years at GSU he knew of several low-income students who were dropped from school for not meeting only one small bureaucratic requirement, never to be heard from again. These kinds of experiences brought Renick to an important insight: Academic ability was rarely the reason low-income students dropped out of college. It was mostly little things, potholes along the road to graduation. As Andrew Grumbel put it in Won't Lose This Dream, his compelling book describing the transformation of GSU: “Contrary to conventional wisdom, academic performance was not the most important predictor of student success or failure.

A ten-member University Innovation Alliance has committed to exploring its data-driven strategies. Also, GSU has its own National Institute for Student Success, headed by Renick, that helps regional public universities use this approach. As the degree of implementation progresses in these schools, graduation rates have increased, sometimes drastically so, especially for low-income and minority students. And there is another sector of American higher education that, in taking a more developmental approach to its students, has long used its own versions of GSU-type supports: historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

There is, of course, another pedagogical mindset in graduate education: Give students the freedom to find what they care about, a true passion that will sustain them as their careers unfold. In this mindset, it’s reasonable to rid programs of as much structure as possible to allow students’ own talents, ingenuity, and interests to guide their development. This approach has produced generations of distinguished scientists and scholars. But it may not work as well for a diverse student body. The ambiguities it allows into the training experience may impose a special burden on students whose identities put their belongingness under suspicion. The open-ended freedom assumed to foster development could leave them in near-constant churn.

It’s important to stress that the UC Berkley College of Chemistry, like GSU, used multiple practices to reduce ambiguity and give support in the setting. Multiple red buttons. Any one practice alone might not be enough. Take procedural justice— the degree to which a community adheres to nondiscriminatory, transparent practices in matter of hiring, promotion, and adjudicating disputes.

Successful efforts at building trust are often achieved through trial-and-error experimentation in the local setting in which they are to be used. Remember how Renick handled the problem of students losing their Hope Scholarships. He started small. He tried things and kept track of their effect, jettisoning or improving what didn’t work, incrementally expanding what did work, until he and his colleagues had essentially transformed a university. That’s what I mean by trial-and-error experimentation— modifying systems to better meet, in that case, student needs. A strategy like seeing, welcoming, and supporting can guide the search for tactics needed to build trust. But the process isn’t complete without further effort of developing tactics to implement the strategy, often through trial and error.