How Majority Institutions Recruit and Retain Minority Students

CEEHD Leadership InstituteJune 13, 2013

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The Issue

Capacity

Minoritized

Signifies the social construction of underrepresentation and subordination. Persons are not born into minority status nor are they minoritized

in every social milieu(e.g., in their families and places of religious worship). Instead, they are rendered minorities in particular situations and

institutional environments that maintain an overrepresentation of one racial group and its

dominant cultural norms. Dr. Shaun Harper

Mirror, Mirror on the wall…

Sighs Too Deep For Words

Reliance on standardized tests

Deficit thinking

Fear based decision making

Paucity of diversity in leadership

Belief that treating everyone the same is treating everyone fairly!

Admissions Limited spaces Faculty shortage Clinical site shortage Not a lack of “qualified” applicants Need to admit the best qualified Student retention…who will persist and be

successful on NCLEX Students who benefit the profession

Distributive Justice

To each equally

To each according to need

To each according to merit

To each according to the person’s rights

To each according to individual effort

To each as you would be done by

To each according to the greatest good to the greatest number.

“Bottom Line:

Art and Science

Social……………………..Demographics Technology……………....Tools Economic…………………Markets Environment……………...Resources Politics…………………….Issues

STEEP ANALYSIS…

“

If you touch a spider’s web anywhere, you set the whole thing trembling. As we move through and around this world, and as we act with kindness, or indifference, or even hostility toward the people we meet, we too, are setting the great spider web a-tremble. The life I touch will touch another life, and that, in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. You can’t find a better way to quantify or qualify someone’s legacy. Just think of the web you have set a-tremble”.

Frederick Buechner

Recruitment

Student exposure to successful academicians and practitioners from similar backgrounds

Providing demographic data of faculty and students

Student testimony on websites Challenging the use of GRE Involvement of family in orientation MONEY

Recruitment

Graduation rates Graduation on time information Picture of what their graduates are doing Percentage of transfer credits accepted Ease to double major & popular

combinations of majors Financial strength of institution provided

Admissions

Composition…relatively homogeneous, narrowly focused app, lack of appropriate pre-advisement for URMWhat drives admissions ( one group reads essays only, other looks at grades only)Failure to look at humanism in the process (count the # of “I”s in an essay)

Diversity in the Classroom

A bad start Insufficient financial support Language & writing issues Admissions barriers The burden of representation Unwelcoming environments Exclusion from informal networks

Diversity in the Classroom

Paucity of role models Poor faculty/student connections Hazing mentality of faculty Curriculum and classroom interaction

often exclude issues of diversity or treat the subject as knowledge about a sub-culture or deviant non-norm behavior.

Fitting In vs. Belonging

Dynamics of Diversity in Teaching

Teacher SelfAwareness

Pedagogy

CourseContent

StudentDiversity

Diversity and LearningDiversity and Learning

Marchesani, L., & Adams, M. (1992). Dynamics of diversity in the teaching-learning process: A faculty development model for analysis and action. In M. Adams (Ed.), Promoting diversity in the college classroom: Innovative responses for the curriculum, faculty, and institutions (Vol. 52, ). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Retention

Affinity Groups

Rubrics

Multiple forms of assessment

Linguistic Modification

Retention

Individual development plans

Cross racial mentoring

Focusing on science’s relevance to problems within specific communities

MANAGE PERCEPTIONMANAGE PROCESSES & SYSTEMSPARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT CHANGE…GET USE TO IT!

Conclusion

QUESTIONS?