|
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SYMPOSIUM:
Seizing the Chance to Make Small Numbers Grow
At the end of the day, teams from individual universities came back together to share solutions to particular problems. Team members from a small liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest brainstormed about ways to make immediate changes in response to the school's most diverse incoming freshman class ever. The highlights of the discussion are below.
AT ISSUE:
A small private school, this college has about 2,000 undergraduate students and about 150 faculty members. With such small numbers, the college has struggled to recruit both faculty and students from underrepresented minority (URM) groups in general, let alone in the sciences. The freshman class entering in 2006 was the most diverse class to date, with 17.5 percent of students coming from ethnic minority groups. The team attending the symposium (including a biology faculty member, a math faculty member, a dean of students, and a dean of the college) hoped to capitalize on what they had learned to implement some changes on their campus right away to support the incoming students.
HOW TO PRESENT THE ISSUE TO THE FACULTY?
The team agreed that "telling" the faculty that a diversity problem exists would not be as effective as "showing" them. An administrator suggested setting up reading groups for faculty to learn about the national data and then beaming in some national speakers by videoconference. Having their own URM students share their experiences in a way that was comfortable for them was another idea. Or, suggested another team member, have an acting troupe role play what it feels like to be the only student of color in a science classroom.
HOW TO CREATE THAT CRUCIAL SENSE OF COMMUNITY?
The dean of students suggested asking the students of color on campus what community means to them. She also noted that their college was one of the few that does not have a multicultural center—a gathering space for URM students to congregate and share ideas—on campus. The math professor noted that a center would help in one of her dilemmas—as a black female professor, she would like to share her experiences with students of color, but she usually doesn't run into them on campus. The biology professor suggested that other science departments could have informal student and professor lunches once a week as he had begun doing—a less intimidating way for students to interact with professors.
"There's a parallel discussion going on here, where three issues are converging—diversity on campus, scientific literacy on campus, and diversity in the sciences," noted the biology faculty member. "And strengthening diversity in the sciences applies to the whole," added the math professor.
The team decided that it needed broader faculty commitment on the issue, but that it would be unfortunate not to apply some of these ideas as soon as possible to support the most diverse freshman class the college has ever admitted. Team members said they would take their preliminary action plans back to their departments to explore what steps might be taken within each department.
|
