Committee on Institutional Diversity and Equity Report - 6/01
We are aware that integrating diversity further into the curriculum is intensive work that will require the allocation of time, financial support and other resources. Based on our conversations with faculty from across the institution, we believe that individual faculty members will eagerly engage this work if the College makes available resources to enable the incorporation and synthesis of diversity within their respective academic disciplines. Experience at other institutions suggests that this is one of the most effective ways to make diversity a serious topic on campus. When faculty actively engage these issues in their scholarship and teaching, important matters are examined in the classroom and then spill over into the out-of-classroom environment.
We found that students are very eager to see more courses that encourage discussion, analysis and debate around the issue of diversity. Indeed, many students spoke with joyful enthusiasm about courses that had been intellectually and emotionally challenging and "pushed them to the limits of their thinking." These comments are consistent with Light's (2001) findings at Harvard and data from 1996 survey at Dartmouth that showed strong student support for courses that address topics related to diversity. The committee heard from a wide variety of people, including a diverse cadre of students and faculty, that the present distributive system is perceived to be inadequate to achieve the educational goals for which it was intended. We urge the faculty to examine the efficacy of the current distributive structure, which was intended to introduce students to a wider sense of the world, especially through the non-western requirement.
We heard from many students that Dartmouth's interdisciplinary Academic Programs deserve renewed attention and increased support. These Academic Programs provide important venues for discussions about diversity and identity. They were consistently described as places, intellectually and physically, where female students and faculty, and students and faculty of color often felt most at home. They serve as critical resources for the larger campus. And they provide a steady source of innovation and interdisciplinary connection for other departments. We were concerned, however, by the widely shared sense that most of the Programs seem to be perennially short of resources, and that this shortfall constrains the work they do. We believe that these Programs provide the academic foundation needed to support innovative new curricular initiatives. At present, some compare favorably with similar programs at our peer institutions; others can, but will require careful development if they are to reach their potential. Thus, we urge that the Programs receive greater support and consideration for additional financial resources. The committee noted that many of our most competitive peer institutions have increased and formalized their commitments to these areas of study through senior faculty appointments and the creation of new departments and programs (i.e. The African American Studies Center at Harvard, the Radcliffe Center for Women's Studies at Harvard, Columbia's African American, Asian American and Latino Studies programs, Asian American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and Asian American Studies at NYU, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Los Angeles). In this context, Dartmouth needs to support its current programs to remain competitive.
A more diverse student body and an increasing number of students interested in matters of diversity will require careful consideration of curricular matters and pedagogy. We believe that the proposed Center for Teaching and Learning could play a critical role in providing support for faculty interested in incorporating diversity into their course materials and developing pedagogical strategies and techniques. We heard from students and faculty alike about the valuable insights that are generated when faculty members are prepared to seize moments of tension or opportunity in the classroom to focus on matters related to diversity. We therefore recommend that financial support and other assistance be provided to support faculty initiatives in this area. Such support might include funding for undergraduate and graduate research assistantships, and the possible use of trained graduate or undergraduate teaching assistants to lead discussion sections in larger courses focused on topics related to diversity. Efforts such as these have the potential to simultaneously improve the quality of undergraduate education and better integrate graduate students into the campus community by providing them with valuable exposure to the rigors of teaching and scholarship.
Summary of Recommendations in this Section
- 1. Examine the efficacy of the current distributive system with respect to matters of diversity.
- 2. Improve support for the College's interdisciplinary academic programs.
- 3. Establish diversity as a particular focus of the proposed Center for Teaching and Learning:
- a. create incentives for faculty to create new courses and/or integrate a focus on diversity into existing courses (i.e. release time; research or teaching assistantships, etc.)
- b. provide support to faculty exploring pedagogical strategies for dealing with issues of diversity in the curriculum and among their students.
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