Nov

21

NCORE - National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education

November 21, 2008 | posted by Ryan |

As you may note from an earlier post, a group of students and I (Ryan Rominger) presented at the 2008 National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE). We were fortunate enough to travel to Orlando, FL and enjoy the sun while engaging in ever-so-needed dialogue around race and ethnicity in education. Admittedly, conversations also included race and ethnicity in politics, cultural interactions, and other social institutions.

Our presentation focused on the research our group conducted over a year within our own psychology graduate school, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Our cooperative inquiry research focused on six facets of assessing diversity - curricular review (through syllabus analysis), student course evaluations, a brief student survey, faculty interviews, re-analysis of a recent “cultural assessment” which included a section on diversity, and our own reflections both as researchers and as community participants.

We found a number of trends, a couple of which as a faculty I find particularly interesting. One is that syllabi do not tell the entire story - often faculty include additional, sometimes spontaneous, exercises or discussions which may include diversity but were not previously included in the syllabus, while at other times diversity discussions were planned but not carried out in the classroom. From a research perspective, syllabi are useful as a start but cannot be relied upon to demonstrate what is really happening in a classroom. Other data sources must be collected to provide a more complete picture.

A second interesting point was that we found two means by which faculty included diversity within the classroom. One way was for the faculty/instructor to intentionally make space for diversity issues or plan discussions/exercises focused on diversity. Another way faculty/instructors introduced diversity was to invite students with diverse perspectives to share their perspectives. Generally the students were of visibly diverse populations, usually of a a different race/ethnicity than the dominant makeup of the student population within the class. This second way of introducing diversity intersected with another finding that some students felt tired of holding the diversity flag, as it were. Thus, while inviting student sharing may help create an atmosphere of student participation, I now feel it is vital for faculty/instructors to intentionally create space for diversity issues through readings, assignments, and focused discussions rather than rely on spontaneous discussions or relying on students to teach diversity perspectives to fellow students. This seems like it should be intuitive and common sense, however it likely needs to be repeated.

A third finding was that the top 3 diversity areas mentioned in faculty syllabi were culture, race/ethnicity, and religion/spirituality. All other categories were mentioned much less. This is particularly interesting as the sex/gender topic, while 4th on the list, was not even close to the religion/spirituality topic and yet we have a large LGBT community.

There were other findings as well, but I’ll keep this post from getting too long by stopping here. Maybe it will whet your appetite for a future article on the topic. :)

However, I will note that we presented our findings to our community after completion of the research, and then we conducted interviews one year later with 6 top administrators in the school including the president, academic VP, and Chairpersons of the programs to learn how our research influenced change at the school and the feedback was quite positive. So, stay tuned!

If you are interested in the next NCORE, which will be held in San Diego, CA please visit the NCORE website. Proposals for presenting must be in by Dec. 15th, 2008 and the conference will be held May 26 - 30th. Hope to see you there!

[Posted in Publications & Research]



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