During the past year -- dating back
to the early stages of our recruitment for the diversity position
-- I have had a series of productive discussions with a wide range
of faculty, staff, and students. From these conversations an interesting
spectrum of concerns about our diversity efforts have come to
my attention. I would like to address some of those concerns and
my ideas about them in this email. I ground my thoughts in twelve
years of work here at Mudd and almost twenty years of working
to help low income and underrepresented students advance to complete
their BA's and BS's.
Despite these years of experience,
I do not believe I have anything close to a definitive response
to the challenges of diversity formulated in either practice or
my mind. I do, however, believe I can contribute constructively
in this email to the ongoing dialogue that must accompany our
diversity efforts.
When I speak with members of the Mudd
community about how we can ensure that more underrepresented students
enroll in and graduate from Harvey Mudd, two major themes emerge
again and again. The first revolves around a set of concerns that
I will summarize (for lack of a better word) as "separatism."
These anxieties -- frequently voiced to me by members of the community
who enthusiastically support our diversity efforts -- focus on
the concern that Mudd will bring in a small group of underrepresented
students and support them in ways that will mark them as separate
from or "other" than the rest of the Mudd community.
These advocates for diversity seem to reason as follows: If our
support efforts for underrepresented students result in them studying,
eating, and playing apart from the rest of the community, then
they have little chance of succeeding in the small, closely connected
community that attracts many students and faculty to Harvey Mudd.
Another group of diversity advocates
on campus has a different set of concerns that (for lack of a
better word) I will describe as worries about the impact "assimilation"
pressures have on underrepresented students. In their view, a
support model that fails to challenge the prevailing attitudes,
values, and pedagogies of the Mudd community unjustly and unwisely
places all the burden for change and adaptation on underrepresented
students themselves. Students, in effect, have to choose between
being Latinos, or African Americans, or women, or gay, or any
other self-identification, and being a Mudder. Such a choice not
only alienates the student from either the Mudd community or their
self-identification (and frequently both) but also creates a sense
of confusion and subordination contrary to the individual and
social empowerment a college education should cultivate.
Both of these sets of concerns -- those
over "separatism" and those over "assimilation"
-- raise legitimate questions about how we structure our support
services for underrepresented students (and how we should approach
diversity in our community more generally). A successful model
must balance and, to the degree possible, address both sets of
concerns. In my view, such a model must have three components:
1) evaluation, 2) empowerment, and 3) connection.
Evaluation
I believe we must have on-going discussions
(formal and informal -- in classrooms, dorms, town hall meetings,
over lunch in the cafeteria, over stair-masters in the gym, etc.)
about these two questions:
1) Are we selecting and teaching
students in a way that ensures they will leave the college prepared
to lead our society in science and engineering?
2) Do our students and faculty participate
in and perpetuate a culture of study and learning that may not
best serve the needs of underrepresented students?
While generalizations are undeniably
dangerous, I offer a few here because I believe they enable a
discussion of important issues in our efforts to enhance diversity
on our campus.
In my view the academic culture of
Harvey Mudd College has characteristics that will make it a particularly
difficult environment for underrepresented students. Some of these
characteristics reflect national practice in math and science
pedagogy; others reflect the unique dynamics of a very small,
exclusive college with only seven academic departments.
On the broadest level Harvey Mudd embraces
the view of excellence almost universally held among national
math and science programs. This view believes that the best and
brightest future engineers and scientists will have the highest
standardized test scores in the country. Such a view excludes
some of the most amazing young people in America: men and women
who have cultivated a desire to become scientists and engineers
despite social conditions -- underachieving peer groups, poorly
funded and managed schools, parents with little education, unmotivated
and under-prepared teachers, and diluted curricula -- in the face
of which many of the privileged young people who constitute the
majority of students attending the great colleges and universities
of the United States would have crumbled (I consider myself, by
the way, among this group of privileged students who probably
could not have gone on to college if I had faced half the challenges
I see Upward Bound students overcome every day).
If we define excellence in such a way
that it does not allow room for some of the perhaps academically
under-prepared but extraordinarily talented and motivated young
scholars growing up in rural and urban poverty and social disenfranchisement,
then we define excellence in a way that further diminishes our
own excellence with each passing year. Instead, we must begin
asking ourselves what makes a great scientist and engineer? What
kind of people will best lead this diverse nation's initiatives
in science and engineering in the new millennium? If we discuss
these questions openly and without defensiveness, I believe we
can develop a consensus about why we must broaden our definition
of excellence and our criteria for measuring excellence in admissions
and in our classrooms.
To some degree because of the traditional
views of excellence discussed above, Mudd has developed an academic
culture that poses formidable obstacles for the success of underrepresented
students. As many faculty members have noted to me, our students
complain bitterly about their workload at Mudd but then study
in frenetic, disorganized, and unproductive ways. The binge of
cramming and other academic maneuvering characteristic of much
of the Mudd student body reflects the high quality of their academic
skills when they arrive at Mudd. Many Mudders can afford to procrastinate,
skim materials they should study exhaustively, and cram for exams
and still survive with passing grades. In such a culture, however,
a student who needs to study more in order to learn material not
covered in her or his high school or develop skills not cultivated
in his community embraces the study ethos of the broader community
at her or his own peril. On the other hand, a student who puts
in many extra hours, attends supplemental tutorials, and does
the many other things necessary to succeed given their pre-Mudd
personal and social academic context will feel alienated from
the broader community.
A Latina student from, say, El Monte
High School who earned A's in all of her math and science courses
by studying a few hours a night, arrives at Mudd and finds out
that her El Monte education did not prepare her for the trauma
of her first chemistry course here. She sees her friends in the
dorm living the vida loca, cramming at the last minute, pulling
all-nighters, and surviving but soon realizes that if she does
the same she will not make it here. What choices do we leave such
a student? How can we empower her to study more and receive the
support she needs without to some degree at least challenging
ourselves to change or at least question this culture?Empowerment
Although support models critical of
racial and social hierarchies make some members of these hierarchies
nervous, they can provide a vital source of empowerment for students
from underrepresented groups. A student who understands why Harvey
Mudd and other elite college do not admit many students from his
or her own community can better prepare her or himself for the
academic and cultural realities of life here. Turning for support
and encouragement to peers who share a similar cultural or socioeconomic
background can ameliorate the sense of isolation an underrepresented
student can experience so intensely here at Mudd. Even more importantly,
it can help such a student see the need to study extra hours or
solicit additional academic support from professors and peers
as a sign of strength and leadership rather than weakness and
inadequate preparation. If the "spectre" of students
of color, or women, or other subgroups from Mudd gravitating toward
each other for academic and social support alarms us, we need
to think carefully about the benefits of such informal support
systems.
Another reason under-represented students
often gravitate toward each other in and outside of the classroom
is that instructors and fellow students often emphasize their
"otherness." While white male students do not have to
represent "white maleness" in a humanities class discussion
of culture, politics, or literature (or in a late night dorm hall
discussion), underrepresented students frequently feel compelled
to function as spokespersons for their cultural group or race.
When I speak to Latino / Chicano alumni of the colleges, they
frequently site their sense that they had to represent Latinos
or explain what it is to be Latino before the larger community
("I'm the only Latino in class, so I become the Latino perspective")
as one of the most frustrating and alienating aspects of their
experience in Claremont. With this kind of focus, underrepresented
students become identified as the “bringers” of diversity
to a community, not equal participants in a community broadly
committed to diversity.
Thus, as underrepresented students
deal with their own feelings of alienation and the sense that
their community projects cultural responsibilities on to them
that are not projected upon more broadly represented groups, they
can find a support among other students within their underrepresented
subgroup who have similar feelings and experiences. I know many
successful Latino college graduates, for example, who tell me
that they never would have survived at Harvard, Georgetown, Pomona,
Berkeley, and UCLA if they had not found support among fellow
Latino students. The point here is not that students should separate
themselves (or we should separate them) into subgroups but that
they often do and that these groups can be helpful.
When I visit the Mudd cafeteria I often
see the same students from broadly represented groups sitting
together day after day. These students do not seem to generate
much anxiety about separatism, but a similar practice by a group
of Latino, or African American students might elicit a more anxious
response from our community. On the other hand, if we reflect
on the Mudd experience today (and the tendency for students to
divide by dorm grouping or other relatively arbitrary groupings)
we might recognize even in this small campus, we all (including
many faculty) subdivide into subgroups. This seems to me human
nature (even my Upward Bound staff of seven divides into little
subgroups at times). I do not think we should panic if and when
we begin admitting significant numbers of underrepresented students
and they gravitate toward each other in social and academic settings.
Indeed, we should encourage students to find empowerment wherever
they feel most comfortable finding it.Connection
On the other hand, I agree that we
would not achieve the educational goals of our institution if
students graduate without making connections beyond their own
cultural, racial, or gender groupings. I also agree with those
diversity advocates who have voiced concerns about what I have
described above as "separatism.” Their fears about
a backlash from the broader community in response to perceived
“separatism” correctly identifies a real possibility
here at Mudd. If the underrepresented students we invite to Mudd
are not perceived as participating in that broader community,
the consequent backlash will be all the more painful and obvious
because of how small our student body is.
With this concern in mind, we must
work to encourage individuals and groups on campus to connect
with each other if we wish to sustain support for our diversity
initiatives. We cannot place the responsibility for this kind
of reaching out entirely on the underrepresented students we admit
(or on those who are coordinating support services for these students).
All of us, as a community, need to
find ways to invite everyone at Harvey Mudd to broaden their perspectives
and embrace each other's differences as a source of empowerment
and inspiration. When the community works together to open doors
and minds, we make Mudd a healthier place to live and learn, not
only for underrepresented students but for all Mudders.
This broader project will require us
to rethink both our social and academic cultures. We need to identify
and encourage student, faculty, and staff leaders who promote
honest and open communication, study, and play on campus. We need
to create support services that all Mudd students feel comfortable
turning to for academic and personal assistance. We need to explore
pedagogy, activities, and structures (committees, events, discussion
groups, periodicals, etc.) that open people up to each other and
the diversity of cultures, races, sexual orientations, and other
subgroups that we wish to feel a welcomed and vital part of our
campus community.
If I can return to the Latina from
El Monte I used as a fictional example before, I would hope that
such a student could turn to both fellow Latinas and Mudd students
from other social, cultural, and racial groups on campus for partnership
in her academic and social life here at Mudd. I hope that she
will find both Latina and non-Latino faculty members who will
provide academic guidance, mentoring, and friendship. Finally,
and most importantly, I hope she will arrive to a community that
lives out a much broader understanding of excellence and leadership
in math and science education.
By focusing on the issues of evaluation,
empowerment, and connection I have outlined above, our community
can successfully resolve the challenges and questions awaiting
us as we implement our blueprint for diversity. We should not
view the hiring of our new diversity officer as the end of our
work but as the beginning of a community wide effort to implement
the blueprint. In my view, the long term success of our diversity
efforts in general--and our efforts to admit and graduate underrepresented
students in particular--will require the direct and sustained
engagement of a broad coalition of students, faculty, staff, and
alumni. Our work should center on cultivating and representing
that coalition as we strive to further develop and implement Mudd's
diversity agenda.
