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Applicant:
Submitted By: Dr. James E. Waller, Psychology Department
Amount Requested:
Executive Summary:
Rationale: The project has direct ties to the stated mission of the College "to provide its diverse student body an education of the mind and heart, equipping its graduates to honor God, follow Christ, and serve humanity." With that mission in mind, the College was one of the first liberal arts institutions in the nation to include an aim of "Multicultural Understanding" among its basic educational goals. In articulating that particular goal, the college advocates an understanding of diverse cultures throughout the nation and the world. In addition, we prize the richness that comes from cultural diversity within our community. Critical self-evaluation, however, makes it clear that our goal to produce graduates with a "Multicultural Understanding" is falling short of its intent. A recent institutional alumni survey, for example, indicated that, of our eight educational goals, graduates believed we were least effective in broadening their multicultural understanding. A corresponding faculty survey indicated that our faculty shared this same dissatisfaction. The College remains committed to the vital importance of this goal in achieving our mission. This project outlines the concrete steps by which we intend to graduate students with the ability to relate well within and across cultures. Finally, as described below, this project fits well with the Hewlett Foundation’s program for Pluralism and Unity and its objectives. The spirit of the project – to graduate students prepared to thrive in a multicultural and interdependent world – is clearly consistent with the objectives of the program. The project shares the same twin values upon which the Pluralism and Unity program is built – diversity and community. As indicated in the Foundation’s response to our letter of intent, the proposed project is clear in its purpose and likely to make good use of the limited investment that a grant would represent.
Background: Each of these three examples demonstrate an institution-wide commitment to diversity and community and, furthermore, connect this proposed project clearly and directly to larger institutional plans.
Proposal: The College's Education Principles (October, 1999) recognize that our students need "the ability to relate well within and across cultures." While we have made strides, we still have progress to make. There are three basic reasons why we need to make further progress. First, on the eastern side of Washington State, we are hindered by our local geography and demographics. Distanced from an urban center such as Seattle, our local demographics reveal a small percentage of citizens of color. According to 1998 statistics, 94.5% of Spokane county is white; 1.6% is African American; 1.6% is Native American; 2.3% is Asian American; and 2.6% is Hispanic. The non-white ethnic representation of students at the college is just a little better. Our latest enrollment figures show that 89% or our student body is white; 8.9% of the total student population is non-white, but mostly Asian American/Pacific Islander from Hawaii (4.9%). African American students comprise 1.7%; Hispanics 2.1%; and Native Americans 1%. The College's strategic plan has identified the second concern, the historical patterns of recruiting students. As a liberal-arts college affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, the College has sought to recruit in largely white, suburban churches (and church-related high schools) on the West Coast. Clearly, with the shifting national demographics, this practice needs to change. The third concern is the College's inability to recruit and to retain staff and faculty of color, an issue that stems largely from the College's identity as well as the local demographics. The statistics for faculty and staff are similar, but even less representative than the local demographics. 96% of the faculty are white; 2% are Asian/Pacific Islander; 1% are Hispanic; .3% are Native American; .3% are Middle Eastern; and 1% are African or African American. Clearly such statistics are incongruous with our creating a multicultural atmosphere for all, let alone preparing students for an urban, multicultural setting which the students will face upon graduation. A goal for this project is to enable students to understand that cultural difference is not an exotic ideal, but rather a dynamic of human relationships on campus and in any local, community setting. This goal has important implications for what the individual brings to the larger community, the workplace, and American public culture. One of our goals is to make the campus environment more akin to that of an American urban center with all its diversity. The students’ and faculty’s renewed appreciation for multiculturalism could breathe new life into the campus community and may create new and long-lasting ties with our local community. II. Analysis of Need As already noted, our geographical location and our local demographics pose the College's most obvious challenge. It is difficult to attract students, staff, and faculty of color to an area that does not already possess an urban, multicultural setting. Spokane, being geographically insular, also has provincial attitudes about multiculturalism in America. Part of the problem is the greater Spokane area itself because it has only recently awakened to the effects of being close to northern Idaho's radical groups and this community's naivete about racism. Our region, as opposed to Seattle and Portland, is only beginning to see the possibilities in an integral, yet multicultural city. The College, through its General Education Task Force and its Strategic Plan, recognizes the importance of multicultural understanding and the need for effective ways to integrate this into our students' experience here. In the past thirty years, however, there have been many different committees, task forces, and initiatives to address multicultural understanding, but none of them has had any long-lasting effects. The failures of these efforts can be attributed to: lack of campus or administrative support, failure to understand the multicultural dynamics, and the failure to discern global cultural issues from American multicultural ones. There are still some on campus who believe that there is no substantial difference between global and American multicultural issues. It is for these reasons that we believe that local community links, a service orientation, and continued faculty and staff training in multiculturalism may be keys to this grant's success. This project plans to introduce new cultural approaches to the curriculum, to faculty development, and to extracurricular activities on our campus. Our deepest hope is to influence how students, staff, and faculty perceive communities around them so that they will wish to foster their growth. Research by Steven Garber and Sharon Parks indicates that there are common elements in the lives of adults who, having made conscious choices about the meaning of their lives, have then sustained those beliefs in a more complex adult world. The three common elements are: 1) the formation of a worldview that accounts for truth amidst the challenge of an increasingly secular world; 2) a mentor whose life "pictures" the possibility of living with and in that worldview; and 3) a community of peers whose common life offers a context for those convictions to be embodied (Parks, 1996, Garber 1996). This projects builds upon that research to develop and to apply a new and local definition of cross-cultural understanding and community. This present Hewlett project has a greater chance of succeeding because it provides local, community resources to train faculty, staff, and students. Since one of the goals is to establish lasting community ties to the College, we believe that such relationships will result in a change of attitudes on campus as well as an enduring community awareness and presence on the campus. III. Four Project Objectives To promote the campus's understanding of cultural differences and to increase its ability to participate in a culturally diverse society through institutional planning, curricular infusion, faculty development and community collaboration. (1) Programmatic Objective: To train the campus's attention onto diverse American cultures by focusing upon our own diverse, local communities.
Activities: To provide new initiatives regarding the campus-wide multicultural requirement in collaboration with the General Education Task Force. As new courses are developed, the project directors and participating professors can offer recommendations for ongoing General Education revisions. To develop in coordination with the College’s character education initiative (which is seeking funding from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust). With the anticipated Murdock funding, we will develop a four-year student cohort group (one of two different interest groups) which will study "Diversity and Community" as its emphasis. The goal of this cohort model is to prepare graduating students to become more effective and more open-minded citizens in a diverse America and world. In this cohort, 20 students will begin as sophomores each year. Over the two years of the Hewlett Funding, there will be 40 students in this cohort; over the three-year period of the Murdock grant (extending one year longer than the Hewlett grant), we will have at least 60 students in the "Diversity and Community" cohort. During their frosh year, students can self-select and apply for the two available cohort programs, of which ours will be one. Initially, Prof. Waller and Prof. Sugano will be the only faculty involved with the first cohort introductory course to multicultural American studies. As we develop our community ties, new courses, and our multicultural service-learning opportunities, more faculty and community members will supervise our cohort. As we hold summer workshops for faculty and community members, we hope to add new multicultural courses to the cohort offerings. These newly developed courses will be the foundation that will (in part) meet the new General Education requirements relating to cross-cultural understanding. At the end of the two-year period, we plan to have 20 faculty members (about 1/5 of the total faculty) engaged with the community board members and developing 10 new multicultural courses for the campus. Through this program we plan:
(2) Faculty Development Objective: To provide training and resources for faculty to re-tool and to develop new, permanent multicultural courses.
Activities: To establish electronic ties with Washington State University (Pullman), the University of Washington (Seattle), Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA) and with Heritage College (Toppenish, WA) to gain from the faculty’s and students’ experiences with their respective Hewlett projects. While we plan to learn from all of the above schools' experiences, we plan a deeper relationship with Whitman and Heritage, as they are colleges that have more in common with our campus. Even though our primary goal is to avoid repeating others' errors, we also plan to consult with the faculty and students of the latter two colleges on a more regular basis, especially in ways that could enrich our students' curricular and co-curricular experiences. Not only could we share course materials and have regular discussion groups with students and faculty at other colleges, but we could also gather data and multicultural materials together through these links. We might consider audio taping interviews with our speakers and community leaders and posting those on our website. To provide funding for faculty and staff to order books, audiovisual materials, and computer software to develop new multicultural courses and programs. Money will also be made available for faculty and staff to attend regional conferences on diversity and community. While we understand that Hewlett will not provide more than $3750, the college will match or exceed that amount to these ends. (3) Institutional and Community Objective: To establish permanent links between the local, diverse communities and the College.
Activities: One of the key objectives in our strategic plan is to "increase direct collaboration with key Spokane businesses, government agencies, and social service agencies." Through the students' service-learning experiences, observations in the community, and through greater formal contact with the community, we hope to achieve this goal. During the grant period we plan to sponsor a yearly two-day spring symposium at which 10-12 senior graduates and promising upper-division students can share the results of their multicultural course of study. This symposium would be open to the college, community leaders, and the Spokane community and would consist of an invited address from a nationally known expert in diversity and community involvement, one who could also serve as a workshop leader for the summer workshops. Ideally, this person would serve as both symposium keynote speaker and summer workshop leader for the term of the Hewlett grant. If it could be coordinated, it would also be ideal if this person could lead the faculty in a Spring Faculty Development Day during the grant period. We would want to foster an ongoing relationship with this expert so that during the grant period he or she could get to know the campus, the project leaders, and the other community and campus participants. Should this relationship be particularly amiable and fruitful, the campus should consider retaining these expert and community leaders for a longer-term consulting basis. Through such a relationship, both the campus and the community would benefit from more objective viewpoints as well as ongoing expert counsel. (4) Assessment Objective: To determine to what degree and in what form each part of these grant activities ought to be continued beyond the funding period.
Activities: B) To have all administrators, faculty and staff who have engaged in the symposia, workshops, curricular and co-curricular activities rate the usefulness and success of the events at the end of each event. At the end of the first year, all involved will be asked to recommend changes for the last year of funding. At the end of the grant period, all involved in the process will be asked in what ways the grant has changed attitudes on campus toward diversity. To have the student cohorts (one beginning Spring 2001, another beginning Fall, 2002) keep individual cohort portfolios consisting of: 1) an essay of application to the "Diversity and Community" program which will serve as a pre-test of early attitudes to American multiculturalism; 2) a paper from the introduction to multicultural American studies; 3) a paper based upon the service-learning experience in a local multicultural setting; 4) a paper from any other multicultural course taught by a professor who attended a summer workshop; 5) a paper from a senior capstone course that integrates the student's major subject and American multiculturalism. Each multicultural course will submit to the campus's standard evaluation methods, but will have additional questions added to keep track of the course's role in the program and to the students' growing awareness of American multicultural issues. Beginning the Fall, 2003, the Alumni Office will send out questionnaires to cohort alumni to evaluate the cohort's value (e.g. how the cohort altered their college experience and how the cohort has helped them work in a multicultural environment) to their present professional/graduate school positions. The Alumni Office's survey will be the real post-test for the student cohorts' experiences. To have the program directors write evaluations of each symposium and workshop as well as evaluations of each new or revised multicultural course that is taught during the granting period. The program directors will write a mid-term report in August, 2001 that will consist largely of recommendations for the last funding year. A final report (August, 2002) will evaluate the relative success of the project over the two years and recommend to the General Education Task Force and to the Academic Dean which of the grant's activities should be continued on a permanent basis. III. Anticipated Results and Relation to Future Goals of Institution Our institution means to develop graduates who can live as a community in an increasingly diverse world. The immediacy of this challenge is revealed by a recent Gallup Poll where 55% of respondents said that diversity "mostly threatens" American culture and only 35% opted for "mostly improves" it. Our graduates need the background to understand how diversity can be a cornerstone of strong community. By the end of the funding period, the college hopes to provide students and faculty with a deeper understanding of diversity and community, with the community’s help. We will have: a) encouraged a redefinition of the multicultural requirement as part of the General Education revision; b) conducted 2 summer faculty workshops that will have resulted in 10 new multicultural courses; c) created a Diversity and Community Board that will have reviewed our multicultural educational goals (And, we expect that this board continues in some form.); d) begun a consulting relationship with a nationally recognized expert in this field of diversity and community that should continue. In addition, we will be one-half of the way through our Diversity and Community area of emphasis in the cohort program. The two cohorts that will have started under the Hewlett funding will complete their four-year program under the auspices of the Murdock grant. The project directors trust that the initiatives resulting from the Hewlett and Murdock projects will have long-term consequences for the institution. Our pilot program and the new courses developed will undoubtedly alter the cross-cultural requirements in the new General Education revision and will create community ties with local diverse populations that will continue through our service-learning program. We hope, eventually, to broaden the campus’s understanding of other cultures to include religious diversity, gender difference, class difference, sexual orientation, and the disabled. This Hewlett grant, by its completion, will have addressed at least four key objectives of the College's Strategic Plan: 1) to "Strengthen institutional commitments to honor God, follow Christ and serve humanity through . . . service-learning programs"; 2) to "Affirm the diversity in our student body, faculty and staff as an important institutional value and develop an ethos of hospitality toward each other'; 3) to "Enhance our students' abilities to understand, appreciate, and interact with a culturally diverse world"; and 4) to increase direct collaboration with local agencies. Through this program, we trust that students, faculty, and staff will begin to appreciate the area's local diversity, and then study, plan, and act with the understanding that cultural diversity is an ever present resource for both personal and social change in America.
Governance and Staff: James Waller is a Professor of Psychology who has published three books in the area of race relations – Face to Face: The Changing State of Racism Across America (New York: Insight Books, 1998), Prejudice Across America (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, forthcoming) and The Hidden Costs of Racism To Whites (edited anthology, New York University Press, forthcoming). In addition, every other January Waller leads a cross-country study tour titled ""Prejudice Across America." In 1998, President Clinton’s Initiative on Race named the tour as one of the Promising Practices to Promote Racial Reconciliation. Financial Information: Go To the Hewlett Foundation Website Back to Cultures & Community Project >> |
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