Creating Campus Cultures: Fostering Success among Racially Diverse Student Populations

Creating Campus Culturesis the first book to explicitly focus on how campus cultures shape the experiences of racially diverse student populations. These students suffer vast disparities in persistence and degree attainment, and given that they also comprise a growing proportion of entering college classes, these disparities constitute an urgent problem that requires the attention of higher education policymakers and practitioners. This timely edited collection provides insights on how campus cultures can and do shape the experiences and outcomes of their increasingly diverse college student populations, paying particular attention to how cultures can be consciously shaped to foster success among racial minority students. Moving beyond an exploration of campus racial climates, Creating Campus Culturesaddresses the considerable obstacles practitioners face as they attempt to transform entrenched institutional cultures to meet the needs of increasingly diverse student bodies. A failure to understand the role of culture can translate into a failure to recognize important aspects of the undergraduate experience for diverse student populations, including the deeply embedded assumptions and norms that shape cultural conflict and the ways in which specific values, beliefs, and assumptions can be cultivated to validate cultural identities and increase success. This book helps student affairs administrators navigate this increasingly difficult terrain by providing practical advice on how to enact long-term, holistic change at any institution.