The Academic Bookshelf

One of the greatest challenges I faced as co-coordinator of the Bush Faculty Development Program for Excellence and Diversity in Teaching at the University of Minnesota was helping science, mathematics, and engineering colleagues recognize the importance of the discrepancy between the rapidly growing diversity of the population and the lack of diversity among the student body. My most memorable exposure to these issues was the September 1997 conference held at Penn State “Best Practices in Diversity: Exploring Practical Applications for the 21 Century.” It was a real eye-opener for me to see and hear so many people deeply engaged in “making the great diversity of our nation work for the future” (from Graham Spanier’s welcome letter). The conference was particularly memorable because it came at the beginning of my sabbatical leave at Michigan State University and since they had so many students, faculty, staff, and administrators participating in the conference, they chartered a bus and we rode with one another from Lansing to State College and back. In doing this column I asked Toni McNaron, Professor of English and Women’s Studies, and founding coordinator of the Bush Faculty Development Program for Excellence and Diversity in Teaching, to work with me. We decided to open with our thoughts on the question, “Why bother?” First, there is little attention paid and little willingness to recognize that not all students are the same. University of Minnesota Astronomy professor Larry Rudnick once said “I used to think all students learn exactly the same way I do; perhaps a little slower.” It seems that many faculty feel this way not only about learning styles but about many other things as well—outlook, cultural or ethnic background, experience, motivation, expectations, and sexual orientation. Not only is this “sameness” approach simpler and easier, it’s also safer. If faculty only have to design one instructional system, a “one size fits all,” and probably the one they experienced as a student, then it’s familiar and manageable. If faculty acknowledge that learners are different then they must face lots of unknowns, and more work. The consequences of ignoring differences are enormous. For example, students from some cultures (some Native Americans and Asians) are reluctant to correct others or to make them look bad in front of their peers. Students face this in situations like the individual test followed by a group test format where individual students get a higher score but don’t contradict the group during the group exam portion. When asked a typical response is “In my culture it’s unacceptable to correct someone else.” One group dealt with this by always having the Asian-American student go first during the group exam portion. Furthermore, ignoring differences makes many people feel unwelcome, which we address in the next section. Second, the demographics of the United States are changing very rapidly and undergraduate engineering enrollments don’t reflect the broader diversity. Often people don’t choose to be in situations where they don’t see some of themselves mirrored. This point was stressed by Wm. A. Wulf, President of the National Academy of Engineering. He wrote “Diversity in Engineering” for The Bridge (vol. 28, No 4, Winter 1998) and opened the article with the following: