The diversity class students still wait for

The push for a diversity general education class requirement started six years ago.

By Zachary Murdock

Published Oct. 8, 2010

This is the first installment in a series about the diversity general education requirement. The next two parts will be published consecutively.

It's been at least four semesters since ChaToyya Sewell began advocating for a diversity general education class requirement. This December, Sewell will graduate and, like many of her predecessors and peers, will never see it become reality.

In her time at MU, the former Four Front co-chairwoman worked side-by-side with the Chancellor's Diversity Initiative, the Office of the Provost and Chancellor Brady Deaton to discuss the proposition of a requirement.

"It's always been that it's going to happen soon," Sewell said. "But it hasn't happened yet."

Ten years ago, with 3,391 minority students enrolled and 1,500 minority faculty on staff, MU administration decided diversity on campus was important enough to study. The university implemented the Campus Climate Study, which was designed to gauge campus perceptions about acceptance for underrepresented groups on campus. The study resulted in more than 100 recommendations, one of which was for a general education class requirement focused on diversity issues.

It was endorsed by several minority student organizations and recommended by a task force chaired by Roger Worthington, a former faculty fellow and current chief diversity officer.

After much research, debate and a racially charged incident on campus, the proposed requirement still sits in a Faculty Council committee, waiting for committee approval. That approval would send it to Faculty Council, who would discuss it and disseminate the proposal to all campus faculty. Finally, a faculty forum would be necessary to make it official.

"There are complications to get it done quickly," Sewell said. "But it shouldn't have taken this long."

MU looks at diversity

Over the past decade, MU has taken steps forward to address diversity issues on campus, including student enrollment, minority retention rates and the amount of minority faculty and administrators. Since 1999, students, faculty and administrators have worked together to identify the most important areas surrounding MU diversity and to create a framework for action.

In 1981, a federal mandate required MU to increase African-American enrollment to equal the proportion of black Missouri residents, according to a report from the Campus Climate and Training Task Force. At that time, that would mean an increase from 3.3 percent to 10.9 percent. MU has never met that goal.

In 1994, the report said, nearly 100 students from the Legion of Black Collegians, the Hispanic-American Leadership Organization, From the Four Directions, the Asian Students in America, the Women's Center and the Triangle Coalition held a protest designed to highlight diversity issues on campus and present university administrators with demands.

But it wasn't until the fall of 2001 that MU began the Campus Climate Study, a five-phase, multi-faceted attempt to identify attitudes about diversity on campus from non-academic student services, students and faculty. The first four phases of the study were conducted from 2001 to 2002 and gathered data surrounding perceptions of and quality of services for underrepresented groups on campus, as well as types of harassment experienced by members of the MU community.

In March 2004, an MU Campus Climate Research Team composed of faculty and administrators presented the findings of phases two through four at a meeting between the chancellor and Provost's offices.

A model that went nowhere

Separate from the study, former Four Front co-chairwoman Jackie Cook-Eberle, now Jackie Gold, approached Worthington, the head of the Multicultural Center, and other faculty about researching potential options for a diversity course requirement.

Multicultural Center Assistant Director Pablo Mendoza helped Cook-Eberle and a team of students research diversity course requirements around the nation, he said. They studied the American Studies course requirement at University of California-Berkeley and the Intergroup Relations (IGR) program at the University of Michigan, among others.

By showing a DVD from the University of Michigan, Cook-Eberle spurred faculty and the Multicultural Research Center at the College of Education to have one of the graduate students develop a program modeled after IGR, Mendoza said.

"Subsequent to that, there have been on-again and off-again efforts to do an IGR-type program here at MU through the College of Education," he said.

But the IGR program has never been adopted at MU. The program would require all students to take a diversity course as part of general education, adding to the number of hours required for a degree.

Worthington said a similar program had been proposed before the College of Education model.

"It was already a model that had been rejected in the past," Worthington said. "It was just clear that it wasn't a viable approach for MU."

A difficult situation

In 2005, the Campus Climate Study completed its fifth and final phase, which involved the study of 13 focus groups and six individual interviews to reach beyond quantifying the phenomena in question and to develop a broader interpretation of the findings of the earlier phases, according to the Campus Climate Study Phase 5 report.

The report lists more than 100 recommendations and represents a variety of concrete proposals as well as strategic ideas. The task force report, though, admits some recommendations might take time.

"In realistic terms, the responses to these recommendations can be swift for some and gradual for others," the report stated.

Immediately, some recommendations did become reality, including the creation of the Chancellor's Diversity Initiative, a mandate requiring every department to write diversity mission statements and Worthington's appointment as chief diversity officer.

Although the diversity general education requirement quickly gained traction with some minority student groups, it spent two years in limbo, caught in debates of where and how to include it, before Faculty Council picked it up as part of a review of the general education architecture.

Deputy Chancellor Mike Middleton explained that though proposals existed, it took a collection of efforts and circumstances to put the issue to a Faculty Council review.

"I think proposals were advanced to do that," Middleton said. "It's sort of the stars aligning and several situations coming together that allowed this proposal to get formally before the faculty committees."

Although timelines have consistently been extended throughout the development of the requirement, Middleton said the Faculty Council decision is an important step forward for the university.

"My inclination would be to say that this needs to be resolved within the next six months or the administration will impose its view on the campus," Middleton said. "But the administration does not impose its view on the campus. That's inconsistent with the way we govern the university. So being unable to say that, and unwilling to say that, if the timeline is not met, I think by definition it has to be extended. It's a difficult situation."