Description
What does it mean when data doesn’t just describe an institution—but challenges it? This presentation explores how data visualization can be a critical and artistic tool for exposing inequities in higher education. As a Faculty Senate Fellow at Texas State University, I visualized institutional and national datasets to highlight salary compression, inversion, and disparities disproportionately affecting senior lecturers, faculty of color, and full professors. These visualizations became advocacy tools, contributing to salary increases for faculty earning below 90% of national medians. The project also visualized faculty narratives to reveal the emotional toll of economic inequity, prompting campus-wide dialogue. This talk demonstrates how data, when mobilized through design, can move beyond metrics to cultivate empathy, critique systems, and drive institutional change. It asks how designers might use aesthetics to confront injustice—and reimagine what is possible from within.
