For over a year, we—two undergraduate English majors (Emily and Samantha) and a tenured English department faculty member (Michael)—developed an assessment model for a newly redesigned general education writing class at the University of North Georgia (UNG). With the assessment project now at a close, we believe strongly in what we accomplished: hearing about students’ lived experiences, tapping into the high-impact practice of undergraduate research through a student-faculty partnership, and designing a project that is responsive to local contexts, answerable to local constituents, and mutually beneficial for faculty and students.

Participants in a virtual meeting with over three hundred faculty, staff, and students shared their thoughts and feelings about the most recent public killings of Black people and the resulting protests and violence. One Black professor asked white people to think about their current experiences of wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wearing a mask feels uncomfortable and hot and makes it not so easy to breathe. Wearing a mask takes effort. Remembering which mask to wear, in which context, and then constantly adjusting the mask based on the particulars of the situation uses significant cognitive capacity, what I call bandwidth. His point: Black people wear a mask every day in the United States. And these masks are literally “breath-taking.”