Diversity at College

Book excerpt: The demography of America is changing and it is showing up on college campuses as an increasingly diverse student body. Universities typically handle changes within the academic tradition of courses or programs, but to prepare students to live and work in an increasingly diverse world something else is needed. This little book was created to serve this need. Five stories told by recent college graduates from public universities to highlight the learning about diversity in college from the students themselves. The stories are curated to key social science phenomena in diversity, such as implicit bias or stereotype threat. They are set in a context of experiential learning from the students themselves and are informed by advances the social neuroscience of unconscious decision-making. The goal is to highlight the ways these factors can complement the ongoing diversity course work and other university programming. While the project was led by a professor with serious university administrative history, the storytellers and other organizers are all authors, making this little a book a unique contribution that is written about students by those students themselves. The first chapter sets the stage by introducing at the lay level with social neuroscience principles that drive diversity issues in society and in the college-age population. The first story chapter is written by a Latino former student who explores the experience of being taught by a largely non-diverse faculty. The second chapter represents the struggle of a female student to overcome self-handicapping and enter the sciences in the field of medicine. The third chapter explores growing up Dominican in a large metropolitan area, going to a small-city university, and finding necessary group support in an established diversity program. The fourth chapter discusses in-group/out-group issues from a student who move from a small-town Jewish population to achieve student leadership in a large diverse university. The final story chapter looks at being an immigrant and non-native speaker, but making it in college overcoming stereotype threat. The final chapter is our collective recommendations of what a university or college can do with this student-rich perspective to more deeply educate about the fundamental issues of living in a diverse world.