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Graduates should possess the attitudes, beliefs, values, and self-awareness necessary to serve students who are culturally different from themselves. Specifically, students should be able to demonstrate:
- that they have carefully examined and, when necessary, challenged their own values, world view, assumptions, and biases
- that they possess specific knowledge about how gender, class, race and ethnicity, language, nationality, sexual orientation, age, religion or spirituality, disability, ability, and institutional power affect individuals and their experiences
- that they have the ability to effectively challenge and support individuals and systems around diversity issues.
Chavez, Guido-DiBrito, and Mallory (2003) emphasize the importance of healthy individual diversity development that involves cognitive, affective, and behavioral growth among campus community members in order to value differences in ourselves and others. Some activities that promote this growth include exploring new information about the other and reflecting on the other's differences. For a class assignment, I was challenged to do this by looking at an ethnic group different from my own and examining my assumptions and biases I had toward this group. I exposed myself to student affairs literature on Chinese American students and learned more about the Chinese culture by exploring Chinese food, traditions, and interacting with Chinese students. Through this project, I also became aware of many of the challenges Chinese American students face in the UCR community and within their families My findings indicated that maintaining traditional Chinese culture was important to students and providing students opportunities to celebrate their Chinese culture helps to support their identity.
Diversity Training
Diversity frameworks indicate that individuals benefit from activities that facilitate reflection on differences (Chavez, Guido-DiBrito, & Mallory, 2003). During the fall student staff training, I had the opportunity to create a diversity seminar with a co-worker for our student staff members. We asked the students to complete an identity wheel and encouraged them to share the most salient parts of their identity. The exercise challenged them to think about their differences and the ways in which they are privileged. It was a very thoughtful experience for many of the students. Click here to view the diversity training agenda which outlines goals for the training.
