Last night as I was helping my daughter pack her suitcase for a high school band trip, I noticed one of my favorite books lying on her bed: Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston. I remember reading it as a college student and having part of the early 20th century African-American experience opened to me.
It made me think what a gift we give our students when the curriculum exposes them to different ways of knowing, being, and experiencing the world.
In our colleges and universities, we have a great opportunity to integrate diversity into the academic domain through research, teaching, and student life. Here are a few approaches that can help:
- Supporting research that includes diverse voices and frameworks
- Ensuring that the curriculum in every discipline reflects a broad range of viewpoints, such as:
- including cross-cultural focuses in a social work course
- reflecting on minority interpretations of events in a history course
- assessing the cultural implications of laws in political science
- Encouraging cultural student programming and diverse student groups on campus
When you think about your role as a leader, how can you use your influence to ensure that equity and diversity are addressed in the academic domain to benefit student learning and student life?
Anita Rios
