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10-Campus Diversity Study
The social sciences research that lay at the heart of the University of Michigan's defense of affirmative action has already spawned offspring in the form of a 10-campus study launched a year ago to explore how campus diversity is linked with learning and to share practices that promise to help prepare students for engagement in a diverse society.
Sylvia Hurtado, part of the Michigan team that produced the research testified to by Psychology Department Chair Patricia Gurin, is now principal investigator in the new study, "Preparing College Students for a Diverse Democracy," started at Arizona State University. In addition to Michigan, other participating campuses are the University of California, Los Angeles; University of Maryland; University of Massachusetts-Amherst; University of Minnesota; University of New Mexico; Texas Southern University; University of Vermont, and University of Washington.
The colleges have developed a range of curricular and extra-curricular initiatives aimed at getting students to experience cultural diversity firsthand, Hurtado says, but "we have yet to understand how students develop cognitive, social and democratic skills through campus initiatives and informal interactions with diverse peers during their college experience."
The researchers will conduct a longitudinal survey to track students' college experiences, several focused classroom-based studies and student focus groups. "We expect each campus will be able to utilize student data in future planning activities and share promising practices that may serve as a model for other institutions across the country," Hurtado says, describing the project as a significant attempt to use empirical evidence to inform the practice of educating a diverse student body.
"It intends to move beyond the current affirmative action controversy to provide action and discussion about the types of education that will be necessary for citizenship in a diverse society with a common destiny."
The project is funded with a three-year grant of $872,000 from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement.
