Summer Welcome Leaders work to incorporate diversity training
Minority groups and Summer Welcome staff met to discuss diversity.
Published March 9, 2010
Student groups are interested in making diversity a bigger aspect of the Summer Welcome orientation program.
"We had a meeting about a week ago," Missouri Students Association President Tim Noce said. "I don't know if there are huge concerns. My concern was, 'How do they address diversity?' That has the most lasting effect."
Noce said the meeting was with minority student groups and Summer Welcome coordinators.
"We were asking what their plans were for all Summer Welcome people," Noce said. "They can open up conversation. Diversity is difficult to talk about for a lot of people."
Race and ethnicity diversity in enrollment has increased since 2007, according to the MU Registrar Web site. The largest change in the enrollment breakdown has been the population of students who identify themselves as Hispanic with a 33.7 percent increase. Eighty percent of the 2009 population identified themselves as white, a 9-percent increase since 2007.
"I can only speak for the eight years that I've been here, but every year I've been here the Summer Welcome staff has been more diverse than the student body is," New Student Programs Senior Coordinator David Rielley said.
A problem facing issues of diversity and diversity training is the meaning and definition of the word.
"Diversity is a key focus," Rielley said. "Diversity has many meanings, though. There is racial- and ethnic-based diversity, but we have a lot of other things like year in school and hometown, because students come from big cities and small towns."
Summer Welcome leaders undergo some diversity training during their preparation period.
"I found it diverse," former Summer Welcome Leader Adrienne Hoffman said. "I don't look at diversity as race. I see it as what your major is or where you're from."
Hoffman said listening to speakers and training the staff in preparation provided information about the history of diversity at MU, as well as organizations and resources available to students on campus, such as the Center for Social Justice and the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center. They also go through training to learn about the diversity within the leaders.
Rielley said Multicultural Center Assistant Director Pablo Mendoza comes in for two training sessions, one in the spring for about one hour and one in the summer for four to eight hours.
"We'll spend a lot of time talking about diversity and what it means," Rielley said. "We ask, 'What if this comes up?' We try to talk about it and see what those issues might be."
Hoffman said she was never asked a question she could not answer.
"We've had a few meetings with interested students," Rielley said. "There's a great deal that people just don't know about the amount of training that the leaders go through and the make up of the staff."