During the last several decades, the diversity idea has evolved into higher education. However, implementing goals, concepts, and strategy has not been easy. Creating goals to increase multiculturalism, access, equity, and inclusion needs is complex. For nearly 50 years, higher education has actively addressed campus diversity issues (Smith & Wolf-Wendel, 2005). In the past, effective diversity changes that were made were ignored. Attention to diversity is only given in the face of necessary legal forces. Institutions create changes that are more symbolic but missing in human, financial, and technical resources; or influence new plans only when academic leaders are faced with powerful incidents. This paper will provide the foundation for …show more content…
Another strategy that can be used as internal is alumnus and faculty who can speak about own experience and struggle with diversity and how it changed overtime on campus. Another goal is facilitating learning outside of the classroom by creating a book club and movie night hosted by faculty that deal with diversity issues, change, and challenges the campus faces. Also, programing designed to engage students by bring laughter and fun such as bringing a comedian and open-mic for students to display their talents. By each student displaying their own talent that shows the diversity of different talents on campus.
Since Muskegon Community College has no housing for students that makes all of it’s students commuters. Engaging commuter is a very important goal. Many institutions struggle to find ways to connect commuter students with the involvement opportunities. Because commuters are on campuses for such little time, the connections to make with them must be immediate and high impact. The primary approach will be to make a simple change in how to orient students and how to interact with them during the first month of classes. By creating a culture of involvement and information sharing at the beginning of their college career. The approach will be meeting with admissions counselor who will present students a list of available clubs and organizations and encourage them to get involved with
Minority serving institutions have been an integral part of the education system in the United States since before the Civil War (LeMelle, 2002). Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have, for much of their existence, been criticized for the level of academic rigor, political context, and their social agenda have created controversy for generations. With that being said, HBCUs hold a valuable place in the landscape of US higher education institutions. The culture, history, and perspective that is taught and shared are unparalleled and cannot be replicated at a predominately white institution (PWI).
Dr. Cephas Archie is the Diversity & Inclusion Program Coordinator for Houston Community College (HCC), where he assists in the implementation of the colleges 7 + campus Diversity & Inclusion Plan. Collaboratively working with all institutional stakeholders – both internal and external, Dr. Archie spearheads the institution’s diversity and inclusion efforts for the near 81,000 students, faculty and staff. As an employee of the Office of Institutional Equity at HCC, his efforts are accompanied by the college’s Diversity & Inclusion Council.
Having served in higher education the past three years, I have grown in my appreciation for the complexities of colleges and universities. Specifically, I am fascinated by how institutions value diversity within their student population and among their employees. Over the past two years colleges and universities have had to confront their racist past to understand their student population. Christian higher education has not been immune to this soul searching. Christian institutions must recognize diversity as a biblical and institutional imperative to embrace institutional inclusive excellence. Diversity needs to be embraced for institutions to survive in a pluralistic and changing society. As higher education faces a tumultuous future, there is a heightened need for diverse administrators who can navigate and effectively lead institutions towards inclusive excellence.
For over a century the University of Texas (UT) has served as a leading institution educating America’s leaders, however; the lingering effects of prior discrimination haunt the campus. Due to perceptions that UT’s environment is not supportive of underrepresented minority students, the University lacks diversity within its student body. Regardless, UT continues to receive an overwhelmingly selective applicant pool. However, without student diversity UT deems it difficult to perform its mission of providing superior educational opportunities while aiding the advancement of our society.
Whether the University’s consideration of race is narrowly tailored to a principled, detailed diversification goal. A university’s approach, actions, and goals must be
According to Wood (2004), diversity is America's newest cultural ideal. Furthermore, the author argued that diversity sprawls across politics, law, education, business, entertainment, personal aspiration, religion, and the arts, as an encompassing claim about human identity. Under these conditions, 21st Century organizations are shifting their recruitment and hiring policy to create a diverse workforce. Likewise, universities are instituting new admissions rules to establish a diverse student body. The importance of diversity has many roles and effects. For example, diversity can improve productivity, create innovation, enhance robustness, produce collective knowledge, and perhaps most important, sustain further diversity (Page, 2011,
The word diversity is indispensible in college pamphlets. Pictures of multicultural friendships permeate across each page in hopes of providing a mirrored image for prospective students. These pictures suggest a promised safe place for young adults of all backgrounds. However, in the instance of San Jose State University, one could argue their actions differ from the pictured proposal. Their main focus became avoiding liability rather than facilitating a safe environment for ethnic difference. This mentality typically reflects a view that claims acts of active racism and blatant bigotry should take the forefront of discussion while their comprising acts of passive racism are left behind. Campus conversations about race are being silenced
Where are we today? Today as a district we are focused on encouraging our students to be well-rounded citizens and to be beneficial to society. Creating a Strategic Diversity Plan will allow our students to be exposed to others of different cultures and backgrounds in order to be beneficial to a society that
Discussion of 2015 UNCF Diversity & Inclusion STEM (STEAM) Forum (Hosted at Hyatt New York)—closed a 3-year contract
This new concept was defined as the, “set of ideas, beliefs, narratives, and practices that constitute official, commonly recognized - but not necessarily hegemonic - understandings of race” (Berrey 2011). It is the belief that people, especially the leaders, of organizational groups will be the one to discuss this orthodoxy, thus increasing the rate at which it is socially accepted as a new norm. A main argument that Berrey makes that some programs in certain contexts are concerned with race, but others seem to not be concerned with race at all, as with what happened at the Michigan university. The article discussed what Berrey found to be the three major reasons for why diversity became orthodoxy at Michigan. The first and most dominant was the legal influence and precedent. The second was for the economic and demographic context of a higher education institution. The third was of the everyday uses for diversity that play into social
Over the years, colleges and universities have been making efforts to amend discrimination by targeted admissions, financial aid programs, and other efforts assisting minority students (Gardner, 2006). But the debate over diversity characteristics (including race and ethnicity) in the admission process will never come to an end. The affirmative action in several states has raised discussions about minority access to higher education focusing on the
March 6th, 1961 Affirmative Action policies in higher education were implemented (Infoplease). Affirmative Action was designed to provide equal access to universities for historically underrepresented minorities. The argument of whether Affirmative Action should be decimated is a simple one. Students who have the academic credentials and earn their way into college deserve to be accepted. For no reason should previously excluded minorities gain unfair leverage in an attempt to “right past wrongs”. But with Affirmative Action banned in only eight states, we are left with two questions; how exactly Affirmative Action affects the culture within universities to have it seen as an unjust policy, and can diversity continue to survive without this program.
"In principle, everybody is in favor of diversity and against discrimination" (Drehle A11). Everyone agrees that diversity is a good goal, but not everyone agrees on how this diversity should be achieved, especially since diversity encompasses so many different aspects. In 1996, judges in the 5th Circuit case Hopwood v. Texas ruled against the University of Texas law school's affirmative action program, saying that diversity should encompass more characteristics than just race (Robison 37). Bakke's decision had applied only to matters of race, but if the goal of affirmative action is to increase diversity, why should other characteristics be ignored? Is a black student with no talent or skill more diverse than a prodigy who plays cello, a whiz kid who understands chaos theory, or a starved child who forms his own hunger organization? Affirmative action may lead to racial diversity in universities, but racially diverse students are not necessarily students of diverse experiences.
The first action step to be taken is to examine how the institution is falling short of creating a welcoming environment for minority students. Pope, Reynolds, & Mueller (2014) caution that in order to implement effective campus diversity efforts, considering why they may fail or stop should be a starting point. A component of this conversation should include what groups are considered minorities on the campus and how each of the group 's needs is being supported, and not supported. The groups discussed may include racial minorities and females as Rudgers and Peterson noted, but may be expanded to include additional underrepresented populations. Critically analyzing each group and the strengths and weaknesses in how the institution is
One of the major problems of working in an ethnocentric environment is that when diversity knocks on our door we are not always prepared to meet it. Although I do believe that according to construct 2 (13.2) our administrators are competent enough to address diversity issues I feel that the lack of such sometimes causes us to not be adequately prepared. As Holme et al (2014) suggest, we must be culturally responsive to our students’ needs from the top down (p. 61). This is to say that our administrators should be well prepared to deal with issues of diversity and then be able to hand this down to their staff and ultimately express this sentiment to the student population.