Presidential Commission on Diverse Community Issues Report

The ad hoc Presidential Commission on Diverse Community has issued a report examining the role of diversity on campus and recommending actions to make diversity more educationally productive for all students and to improve conditions that inhibit or prevent some students from achieving their full academic potential.

The commission, composed of faculty, students, and staff, was established by President Joanne V. Creighton in December 2003. President Creighton charged the group with assessing and enhancing the role diversity plays in all aspects of College life, consistent with the College’s mission to educate “a diverse community of women at the highest level of academic excellence.” In spring 2004, while the commission’s work was underway, an incident on campus raised tensions and concerns about the racial climate at the College. In response to this incident, President Creighton called a community forum in which she issued four imperatives: rooting out stereotyping and insensitivity; creating a climate of achievement for all students; celebrating cultural diversity; and demonstrating institutional commitment to these goals.

President Creighton is pleased with the commission’s work. “The commission faced a daunting task in trying to assess both how we are doing as a community across the many facets of diversity, and where we should direct our energies and resources to get to where we want to be,” she said. “The depth and thoughtfulness of the report has convinced me that it was time well spent. Now I look forward to hearing about the multiple ways that members of the community will engage with this important agenda."

The report details progress made on the imperatives. Among other steps taken, the President has created the positions of coordinator of multicultural affairs, director of academic development, and director of diversity and inclusion. The President also supports the appointment of a new Five College minority recruitment officer.

The commission’s recommendations cover all areas of academic life and fall into three categories: mentoring, advising, teaching; creating multiple opportunities for all to learn; and implementing the goals of the report through institutional leadership, focused resources, and multiple sites of engagement across the community. Specific actions include strengthening student connections with faculty through advising and mentoring relationships, creating learning opportunities for faculty in areas of ethnicity and race and bias, creating opportunity for intergroup dialogue and dialogue across difference, and building and maintaining diverse faculty and staff.

Commission cochair Lucas B. Wilson, director of academic development and associate professor of African American studies and economics, said that in his view, the main achievement of the report is its call for an “organic agenda.” “The members of the commission, including President Creighton, agreed that diversity has enormous educational value for the liberal arts,” he said. “Diversity also has long-range, postbaccalaureate benefits that ought to be honored and cultivated here and now. For the educational and long-range value of diversity to bear fruit, individuals and offices throughout the College have to accept the challenges of expanding scholarly opportunities for all our students.” To that end, Wilson urged individuals and offices to “adopt the recommendations of the report in ways and contexts of their own making. Our recommendations were no more than suggestions on what might be done, observations of what is already being done. My hope is that others will respond creatively to the report by adopting the recommendations in different contexts, or by organizing new initiatives that enhance the achievements of all our students in the enterprise of liberal arts education.”

Commission cochair Lee Bowie, dean of the College and professor of philosophy, said he was “heartened by the progress that the College has made on the report’s recommendations even as they were being formulated.” However, he added that “the success of this effort will depend ultimately on the extent to which its objectives become embedded in broad institutional structures. That in turn will require continuing commitment and resources, and a widely shared desire by departments, organizations, and individual students, faculty, and staff to take up the agenda that the report puts forward."

Devi Yalamanchili ’06, who also served on the commission, said, “I was very fortunate to be able to work on this report with faculty, staff, and fellow students and to see the commitment that everyone had to finding solutions to the problems on this campus so that everyone could feel at home here.” Like other commission members, she expressed hope that the entire College community would apply the report’s recommendations in all aspects of campus life.

On the Web:

Report of the Presidential Commission on Diverse Community

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