Diversity directors outline challenges, suggest action

The challenge of promoting diversity at colleges and universities around the country was the focus of National Meeting on Diversity Collaborations sessions June 15-17 at East Hall. The event was attended by 66 officers from 33 institutions around the country and hosted by U-M's year-old National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID).

"Many on campus see us as a bunch of 60s holdovers on the fluffy side of the fence," lamented Martha Balghem of Portland State University, summing up her colleagues' concern that diversity goals at many higher education institutions are not deemed vital, and are therefore assigned a low priority. Her comment came during a small-group session on challenges diversity directors face around the country. Small-group sessions were scheduled throughout the national meeting, to brainstorm ideas and solutions.

"We learned a lot of things as we defended our record before the Supreme Court," said Lester Monts, senior vice provost for Academic Affairs, in opening remarks to the group on June 15. "The amicus briefs were flowing in, and we found that the kind of support we got from Fortune 500 companies, from higher education institutions and from organizations, from the military to many others, was in a way very startling to us—and even to our lawyers, who told us that the amicus briefs in our admissions case were among the highest number ever filed in a Supreme Court case.

"So that indicates to us there is a lot of support for the kinds of things we are doing at the University of Michigan and things that are happening around the country," Monts continued. "We have made a lot of progress but the progress to some extent is uneven."

"The national meeting provided an important opportunity for directors of diversity centers and administrators/faculty with responsibility for diversity initiatives on their campuses to talk in a sustained way about their visions, the intellectual grounding of diversity, challenges universities face in realizing their visions, and most importantly about specific strategies for addressing those challenges," said Pat Gurin, acting NCID director.

Some diversity directors said that at their respective institutions top administrators seem unwilling to upgrade diversity efforts from initiative status to coordinated efforts promoted through an established office. Phillip Bowman, University of Illinois, said more attention should be placed on intra-group diversity; the consideration that many ethnic groups have diverse elements within (for example, Latino includes Puerto Rican, Mexican and Central American communities).

Others said they had to overcome the notion that diversity was not a valuable investment, and that programs are not publicized enough. Some expressed concern that campus groups promoting various aspects of diversity tend to compete for resources, rather than work cooperatively.

Addressing the full groups, Alec Gallimore, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Aerospace Engineering and associate dean in Rackham Graduate School, said, "We need to make science and engineering more like jazz." Gallimore said society needs to encourage a more diversified group of science and engineering graduates to best compete with a surging number of science/engineering graduates in foreign countries. He said that of 5,060 doctorate candidates graduated nationwide in 2002, only 1.5 percent were African American and 1.6 percent Hispanic.

U-M organizers said the purpose of the national meeting was to move toward increasing the collective impact of diversity work at universities across the nation.

"There are many national diversity meetings but only rarely is there any follow-up after the meetings," Gurin said. "NCID is committed to working with other universities to implement on-going inter-university collaborative work."

In another small group session June 16, suggestions to promote diversity amidst the current conservative political climate included, "Shift social justice arguments to include economic/capitalist themes"; and "Define target audience well/Have reasoned arguments and pithy sound bites."

Some said including age into diversity considerations could also encourage the general public to understand that attention to diversity is of vital interest to all.

Monts stressed that this National Meeting on Diversity Collaborations was a key event toward establishing the NCID on a national stage—not to promote U-M but to promote diversity. "We look at this as the start of our national consortium," he said.

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