Broadening the Definition of Diversity

Diverse Issues in Higher Education
by Angela P. Dodson
Mar 27, 2009, 08:46

A new book examines the strategies of faculty to serve as “change agents,” encouraging diversity on campus.

Teaching a sociology class at Bowdoin College as a graduate student taught Dr. Winnifred R. Brown-Glaude a thing or two about diversity.

There, she introduced her students to “multiple perspectives” on the subject through readings. The student body of Bowdoin, a historic, small, liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine, is more than 70 percent White, according to the school’s Web site.

In the end, she says that 90 percent of the students “actually loved the class” and found the experience enriching. A small but vocal minority did not.

“I also had a small percentage of students who pushed back,” says Brown-Glaude, now an assistant professor in the African-American studies department at the College of New Jersey. “They thought, ‘Oh, we shouldn’t be learning about women of color in this class. This kind of teaching … doesn’t belong here.’”

Later, Brown-Glaude says, when she compared notes with colleagues at other schools, she found, “This kind of push back wasn’t unique to me, so when the opportunity came at Rutgers to direct a national study — to really dig into these issues much more deeply — I certainly … jumped on it.”

The professor had done extensive research on race and gender before becoming project director for the Rutgers Institute for Women’s Leadership’s Ford Foundation grant. In that position, she directed a four-year study, “Reaffirming Action: Designs for Diversity in Higher Education.”

The findings of the project are summarized in a new book, Doing Diversity in Higher Education: Faculty Leaders Share Challenges and Strategies, $26.95, by Winnifred R. Brown-Glaude (Editor), Rutgers University Press, (January 2009), ISBN: 978-0, 8135-4447-2, ISBN: 978-0-8135-4446-5.

Full Story: http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_12429.shtml