In January of 1998, Rainbow Connection Experience embarked on its fourth year with more than 400 students and educators having participated in the program. Programs for 1998 will be held at South Mountain, Glendale, GateWay and Chandler-Gilbert colleges. The GCC student activities director and one of the college's counselors will present the program in partnership with the designers of the program. The college plans to institutionalize the program as part of that college's diversity initiative. Parts of the program were also presented to student leaders and part-time faculty in 1997.
Complete evaluation reports for all sessions are available upon request.
Requests for information about the program have come from throughout the United States. The program was spawned out of the desires expressed by the student government of South Mountain Community College. Officers of Associated Students of South Mountain Community College, the college's student government, had just returned from a weekend leadership retreat on the topic of cultural diversity in September of 1993 with student leaders from other Maricopa Community Colleges. The session began with 55 participants, out of 72 who pre-registered, and ended the last session with 22 participants. Despite losing more than half of the participants, evaluations from those remaining gave some clues about how to restructure the program, if it would be repeated.