Creating Successful Multicultural Initiatives in Higher Education and Student Affairs New Directions for Student Services, Number 144

Looking for practical tips and useful guidelines for designing and implementing successful multicultural initiatives? This resource will help you to set up a program and/or a set of strategies that promotes skill development to better manage difference on a personal, institutional, community, or societal level.

It also introduces “diversity as a value versus diversity as a good” as a conceptual lens for which to view multicultural initiatives. Using this conceptual lens will assist educators in identifying the philosophical foundation of a given initiative. College educators can ask themselves the fundamental question—Is their multicultural initiative grounded in surface-level outcomes or in far-reaching change?

By sharing concrete examples of multicultural initiatives, the authors in this sourcebook are inviting readers into a conversation that might spark change or a new initiative on the reader’s own campus.

This is the 144^th volume of this Jossey-Bass higher education quarterly series. An indispensable resource for vice presidents of student affairs, deans of students, student counselors, and other student services professionals, New Directions for Student Services offers guidelines and programs for aiding students in their total development: emotional, social, physical, and intellectual.

Sherry K. Watt is an associate professor of higher education and student affairs at the University of Iowa.

EDITORS’ NOTES 1
Sherry K. Watt, Jodi L. Linley

1. Designing and Implementing Multicultural Initiatives: Guiding Principles 5
Sherry K. Watt

This chapter provides guiding principles for designing and implementing successful multicultural initiatives. A rationale for why these elements transcend both higher education and student affairs settings is presented. In addition to providing guiding principles, this chapter includes advice for socially and politically conscious-minded professionals who are leading the implementation of multicultural initiatives on their campus.

2. Making Meaning through Multicultural Initiatives 17
Becki Elkins, Kenneth Morris, Jr., Gwendolyn Schimek

This chapter discusses assessment and evaluation of multicultural initiatives by exploring two efforts implemented at a small, liberal arts college.

3. Building and Sustaining a Campus-Wide Multicultural Initiative 27
Georgina Dodge, Lindsay Jarratt

This chapter summarizes the implementation of a campus-wide multicultural initiative at a large public Midwestern university, exploring strategies, challenges, and lessons learned.

4. Navigating Difference through Multicultural Service Learning 37
Kira Pasquesi

This chapter explores the design and implementation of service learning as a multicultural initiative. The author shares considerations for multicultural service-learning practice using an example from a course project focused on leadership skill development in public service.

5. Who I Am Is the Text. Who I Become Is the Purpose 47
Heidi Arbisi-Kelm, Jasmine P. Clay, Mariko M. Lin, Rodney Horikawa, William H. Clifton, Seema Kapani

Student SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) is a grassroots, social justice course in which participants actively engage in dialogue about diversity and social identity. This chapter examines Student
SEED as a multicultural initiative.

6. Courage in Multicultural Initiatives 57
Sherry K. Watt, Margaret Golden, Lisa A. P. Schumacher, Luis S. Moreno

This chapter briefly overviews the Principles and Practices of the Circle of Trust® approach and shares an example of how those ideals informed how an instructor team facilitated a multiculturalism in higher education and student affairs course.

7. Building Multicultural Residential Communities: A Model for Training Student Staff 69
Taryn Petryk, Monita C. Thompson, Trelawny Boynton

The growing diversity and changing demographics within the United States increases the importance of students developing skills to engage across identity difference. The purpose of this chapter is to describe how a pre-employment course for student staff members is used as a multicultural intervention training to provide students with the knowledge and skills to create and facilitate an inclusive, multicultural community in residential communities.

8. Race Caucuses: An Intensive, High-Impact Strategy to Create Social Change 79
Kathy Obear, becky martinez

This chapter reviews the impact of using race caucuses with members of a student affairs leadership team to deepen their capacity to both recognize common dynamics of racism, internalized dominance, and
internalized oppression, and explore specific strategies to create greater equity in their organization.

9. Spiritual Development as a Social Good 87
Mona Hicks, Uyen Tran-Parsons

The skill development of equanimity and empathy gained through spiritual growth equips students to examine solutions to complex problems in a diverse, global society. This chapter explores intentional multicultural
initiatives designed to foster spiritual development and interfaith engagement as means to navigate difference and social good.

10. Addressing Underrepresentation in STEM Fields through Undergraduate Interventions
97
Jodi L. Linley, Casey E. George-Jackson

This chapter provides an overview of undergraduate STEM initiatives for underrepresented minorities and women, as well as a description and critical analysis of one comprehensive federally funded initiative
at a research-intensive university.

INDEX 103

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