1. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College The Harvard National Campus Diversity Project Bok Center for Teaching and Learning Winter Teaching Conference Tuesday, February 3, 2004 Cambridge, MA The National Campus Diversity Project Harvard Graduate School of Education campusdiversityproject@gse.harvard.edu Dean Whitla, Ph.D. Director whitla@fas.harvard.edu Researchers: Carolyn Howard, Ed.M. howardca@gse.harvard.edu Presented by Frank Tuitt, Ed.D. ftuitt@fas.harvard.edu Richard Reddick, Ed.M. reddicri@gse.harvard.edu

2. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Outline of Today’s Presentation Overview of the Project Academic Enhancement Programs Aspects of Curricular Transformation Student Experiences: Negative and Positive Implications for Practice

3. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Support for our Research Atlantic Philanthropies Ford Foundation Mellon Foundation

4. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Goals of the National Campus Diversity Project  Identify best practices and characteristics found in successful diversity initiatives  Locate programs that have improved academic achievement of underrepresented minority (URM) students and examine the components of these

5. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Research Question  How do students, faculty, and staff describe success in providing diversity in curricula, and teaching and learning?

6. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Our School Selection Process  A minimum rate of structural diversity among student population  Higher than average retention rates of minority students  Special initiatives or Centers noted in the academic press/journals (e.g., UMD’s Diversity Web, UMichigan’s Center for Race and Ethnicity)  Recommendations from Advisory Board

7. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Categorization of Schools Based on:  Size  Selectivity  Funding Sources – Public vs. Private  Geographic Region

8. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Research Sample  Started with 101 schools that met our criteria  Narrowed down to 50  NCDP has visited 28 campuses to date  From the 28 campuses that we have visited, we have interviewed: –9 college presidents –12 vice presidents or provosts –120 faculty members –250 administrators –Over 400 students

9. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Data Collection  Phone Interviews  Web-based research  Campus interviews  Focus group interviews with students  Existing literature and institutional research

10. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Attributes of Successful Programs  Programs targeted specifically for promoting the achievement of URM students  Faculty and staff training and support on diversity issues  Majority student engagement in events and in the classroom

11. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Academic Enhancement Programs for URM Students  Model programs create a “culture of achievement” for URM students who might otherwise associate academic achievement with social isolation  Instructors explicitly state that high standards are the criteria for success, challenging “stereotype threat”(Steele, 1999)  Virtually all model programs were in the SMET disciplines

12. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Academic Enhancement Programs: University of Texas  University of Texas’ “Emerging Scholars” (Derived from the University of California- Berkeley)

13. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Academic Enhancement Programs: Yale University & Rice University  Yale’s STARS Program  Rice’s Spend a Summer With a Scientist Program

14. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Academic Enhancement Programs: Other Institutions  Carnegie Mellon, Mt. Holyoke, Occidental, Northwestern, Stanford, the University of Florida, the University of Miami, Wellesley, and Williams College all have specific, very successful SMET programs for URM and female students

15. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Aspects of Curriculum Transformation  There are a few full ethnic/specialty departments (e.g., African American, Latino, and Women’s Studies) that a have range of courses  Transformation is typically spurred by diverse faculty  A very few schools have mandatory enrollment in one or more courses that focuses on social justice issues; or history, status, achievement of diverse groups

16. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Curriculum Transformation continued  Course Development funds –Exist at some schools but are often too few at most –At a few schools (e.g., UC Berkeley, U Maryland, Stanford, U Michigan), course core requirements have spurred sincere interest in course development  Teaching and Learning Centers for faculty do exist –Workshops offered for faculty and staff encouraging interdisciplinary methods or diversity issues content –However, many are underused by the very professors who need the training

17. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Teaching and Learning Challenges (for students)  Negative Classroom Experiences –Native Informants –Perceptions of/by Faculty (varying by race) –Microaggressions

18. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Negative Classroom Experiences Students become Native Informants “Well, oftentimes, when you come into a classroom, you sort of become the token person (laughter). I mean, whenever a question comes up, whether it’s in political science or in history or whatever, everyone will sort of like turn to you — you would be amazed by the whipping action, and everyone looks at you and they’re like, “So how do you feel about this?” and sometimes even if you want to agree with the majority of the class, you’ll disagree just so that you can give the other side and I mean, its really obvious sometimes that your professors are mostly White, the TAs are often White. Um, even in the African Studies department, a lot of the teachers are White.” -African-American female at an Ivy school

19. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Negative Classroom Experiences Perceptions of/by Faculty “I had a really interesting experience with a Black woman professor who hated Black students. And [she] really felt like Black students felt she should give them an ‘A’ because we were Black, so we had to work really hard. This is my first Black woman professor, like I was really excited, you know. And then you just get in there and my first meeting with her was like, ‘Well, you wrote this paper because obviously you think you can write, but this paper shows you can’t.’ And I was like, ‘Wow. Okay.’ I had a really interesting experience with that.” -African-American female at a small private school

20. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Negative Classroom Experiences Microaggressions “I'm taking an ‘America in the 1960s’ class... There was the one time I felt a student was totally racially targeted. I was extremely uncomfortable with the whole situation, and there were maybe, three students of color in that class, including me. And everyone else is White, and it’s kind of like, the whole atmosphere at [a neighboring school] is different. Well, there’s this one African-American male in the class, and we were talking about the Civil Rights movement, and the teacher, who was White, kept saying, ‘Tim, where are you in this picture? Tim, where are you? You aren’t even represented at all.’ And the class was laughing, and the teacher was laughing too. And, I was like, that would never happen at [my school]. People would have said something immediately. And I was so uncomfortable, and it was like the second day of class, I was the only Asian student in that class. And so, I didn’t say anything, and I’m just kicking myself for not saying anything. And the guy that was being called on, he answered, and he chuckled with his answer. But I was like, ‘does this happen all the time?’ -Asian female at a small private school

21. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Positive Teaching and Learning Experiences  Faculty-Student Engagement  Creates the space for Diverse Perspectives  White students have the chance to explore assumptions  Student-to-Student Engagement  Attentiveness to how students are experiencing the learning environment

22. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Recommendations  Assessment is key –Schools in our research sample have institutional research departments –Course evaluations –Self-assessment of one’s own racial and cultural biases  Faculty Development opportunities –Teaching centers  Funding for curricular transformation and pedagogical innovation  Diversifying the faculty

23. © 2004 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Thanks for attending! Dr. Dean Whitla, Principal Investigator whitla@fas.harvard.edu Carolyn Howard, Research Assistant howardca@gse.harvard.edu Richard Reddick, Research Assistant reddicri@gse.harvard.edu Frank Tuitt, Research Assistant ftuitt@fas.harvard.edu This presentation is available online at: http://icommons.harvard.edu/~gse-h352/Presentations/