A personal note from the director of the National Campus Diversity Project--Dean Whitla

Several years ago, I left my bureaucratic responsibilities in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as well as my teaching in assessment and evaluation. I decided to change the direction of my research in the Harvard Graduate School of Education from psychological assessment to diversity and prejudice.

At Derek Bok's (Harvard's President emeritus) suggestion, I initiated a study of law school students at Michigan and Harvard regarding the importance they placed on the racial and ethnic diversity of their peers. In fact, a large majority of law students recognized that the diversity of their peers was very important to the quality of their legal education.

Students recognized that teaching civil rights, criminal justice or even torts couldn't be as effective with only white faces in the classroom as it could with a diverse class of students. In addition to the classroom experiences, all students, even minority students, studied and socialized with others from different racial and ethnic groups more than they ever had before.

Clearly, such interaction changed their understanding of law, their educational process and of society in general. Sandra Day O'Connor cited two pieces of research in her Affirmative Action decision. One was the monumental Bowen-Bok book, The Shape of the River; and the second was our work (which I published with my colleague Gary Orfield).

After the law school study, I conducted a similar study on diversity at the Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Francisco Medical School. Again the findings were impressive in terms of student support for diversity. The majority of all students surveyed clearly recognized that conducting a medical practice or research for a multicultural community requires experience with a diverse body of peers. The Association of American Medical Colleges cited this research in their Supreme Court case brief supporting Affirmative Action in higher education.

Our current efforts began a couple of years ago when we conducted some undergraduate focus groups around multicultural issues at several colleges. We discovered that students felt many of these programs were not as effective as they should have been; in fact, some were terrible. Students at some of these schools stated that a few of the programs uncovered much animosity and prejudice without giving them the proper tools to work through conflict and move toward understanding, if not, validation, of others.

The directors of unsatisfactory programs had good intentions, but less than satisfactory skill sets in the area of race relations. Thus, with support from Atlantic Philanthropies (and later from the Mellon and Hewlett Foundations) we began our search for model diversity programs in colleges and universities.

First, we established criteria with which to review colleges and universities drawing on the work of Daryl Smith, Sylvia Hurtado, Jeff Milem and Mitchell Chang. We gained insight and advice from of our National Board of Advisors, and arrived at a list of 32 items. Using National Center for Education Statistics IPED and NCAA data sources, which are surprisingly rich, some 300 colleges passed our first screening.

Our second level of screening was based on telephone interviews conducted with official members of the institutions. This information helped us reduce our numbers to 50 colleges and universities most likely to have model programs. We were able to procure agreements to visit and interview students, faculty and administrators at 32 schools. We then began our visits, conducting both individual and focus group interviews with students, multicultural program directors, deans, faculty members and presidents.

The interviews were conducted according to the Merton, et. al. protocol: essentially starting with a set of questions but following any lead that is useful. The interviews were recorded and transcribed (in all student groups), or notes were taken during the interview if those interviewed felt uncomfortable being recorded on tape. All transcriptions were coded using the Atlas system.

We have now adopted structural equation modeling (SEM) to continue our analysis. Having long been a fan of factor analysis, path analysis, regression analysis and cluster analysis, I believe that SEM pulls all of these approaches together, increasing the power of the separate analyses and making them more than the sum of the parts. Using our coded interviews and focus group materials along with our statistical indices we have findings which are more robust than qualitative analysis alone.

Many of our statistically oriented colleagues share the view that our results provide a better basis for generalization and are therefore more valid and thus applicable in the real world of higher education across the nation.

While we must admit that we found no "model" colleges, we did find a number of what we considered "model programs" and we identified the structural qualities that made these so. We have made great progress in turning tons of data into recommendations that we want to share with you. We have addressed some 14 national conferences, and our sessions have typically been among the most well-attended.

We are now developing practical applications for our work. As Ellen Lagemann's (who is now the Dean at HGSE) Spencer memorandum effectively states, this is "use-inspired" research and we feel we have usable knowledge. This web site is an example. From our visits and our presentations we have had many friends asking for ways to strengthen their multicultural programs and we hope that this site will be one effective method for making our information and recommendations available.

We have included a toolkit based on our research that will enable colleges and universities to assess the degree to which they have been effective in creating positive cultural climates and/or have been effective in enhancing the achievement of URM students. Using these data, colleges can contrast their progress with that of other similar institutions. The toolkit will help to create a diagnostic profile and provide examples drawn from our data suggesting methods of improvement when problems are identified.

From the receptions we have received at our presentations, we believe that our findings do speak to the problems that many schools have encountered and have the potential to create a marked improvement in the diversity climate in many schools. We also hope that our findings will encourage better programming to reduce the dropout rate of underrepresented minority students.

We welcome your comments on the hot button questions and the answers we suggest. We would like to learn of experiences you have had, both successes and failures. Sharing such information leads to some of our best improvements -- something that is especially true in this most difficult area of human endeavor.

Please drop us a note.

Staff Profiles

Telephone: 617-496-6080
Email: whitla@fas.harvard.edu

Dr. Whitla is a psychologist and psychometrist with a particular interest in assessment and evaluation. He spent much of his professional life evaluating progress, development, and change in people and in institutions. His current major research effort is directing the National Campus Diversity Project searching for models of multicultural activities. For the past few years he has taught a seminar connected to the project entitled, "Analyzing Issues of Diversity and Prejudice in Higher Education." With Gary Orfield and others, he conducted research on the effects of diversity in law schools and in medical schools. The findings of the law school study were used by Michigan in their Supreme Court affirmative action case and were cited by Justice O’Connor in the court’s decision.

Dr. Whitla directed the Harvard University Office of Instructional Research and Evaluation in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for some 40 years. He also founded and directed the Danforth Center for Teaching and Learning (now the Derek Bok Center), served as Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Lowell House, and founded and still directs the Harvard Summer Institute on College Admissions. Another expression of his interest in assessment has been found in his course "Individual Psychological Assessment," which he taught for more than forty years at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. Dr. Whitla conducted many studies on college admissions, served as the associate director of undergraduate admissions, evaluated faculty development in UNCF colleges, studied the effects of aging on cognitive competencies and co-authored a book with Doug Powell published by the Harvard Press entitled Profiles in Cognitive Aging (1994). Dr. Whitla was educated at Nebraska and Harvard.

Carolyn Howard, Project Manager

Email: howardca@gse.harvard.edu

Carolyn Howard is the Project Manager for the National Campus Diversity Project, under Dr. Dean Whitla, and is a teaching assistant for Dr. Whitla’s class: "Analyzing Issues of Diversity and Prejudice in Higher Education." Ms. Howard has worked with Dr. Whitla for the past four years on research projects regarding racial/ethnic diversity at the professional school level (i.e., law and medical schools), as well as at the undergraduate level at a few, small private institutions. She and Dr. Whitla have conducted research on Faculty Development programs at Tribal Colleges, HBCUs and small Midwestern colleges. Ms. Howard received her EdM in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1999. Before coming to the School of Education, Ms. Howard completed research on Middle School Students and their interest in science. That research led to the development and implementation of a Middle School Science Curriculum through the Harvard Medical School Division on Addictions. Ms. Howard received her B.A. from Connecticut College.

Richard Reddick, Research Assistant

Email: reddicri@gse.harvard.edu

Richard Reddick is a third-year doctoral student in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), concentrating in higher education. His research interest focuses on the pedagogical and mentoring practices of professors educated at historically Black colleges teaching at predominantly White institutions. For the past three years, Rich has worked as a research assistant on the National Campus Diversity Project at Harvard with Dr. Dean Whitla. He is the co-author of A New Look At Black Families, Fifth Edition with Dr. Charles Willie (AltaMira Press, 2003, and The Case for Black Colleges in the 21^st Century with Dr. Charles Willie and Ron Brown (AltaMira Press, forthcoming). Rich has also served as a School Director with Teach For America, directing the instructional program at an elementary school for 300 students and 60 new teachers.

Previous to coming to Harvard, Rich worked in student affairs at MIT, Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, and Emory University. He completed an Ed.M. at HGSE in 1998. Before his Ed.M. year, Rich taught elementary and middle school in inner-city Houston, Texas. Rich is a 1995 Distinguished Graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and hails from that city.

Rich is a Spencer Fellow and an editor of the Harvard Educational Review. He is also a member of the American Educational Research Association, the American Association for Higher Education, Phi Delta Kappa International, the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, and Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated.

John R. Whitman, Project Consultant

Telephone: 781-431-8636
Email: john.whitman@utoronto.ca

John Whitman is serving as a Project Consultant in areas pertaining to the use of technology. Mr. Whitman received his EdM degree in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and recently completed courses there in Epistemology, taught by Professor Catherine Elgin, and Analyzing Issues of Prejudice and Diversity in Higher Education, taught by Professor Dean Whitla, Carolyn Howard, Richard Reddick, and Frank Tuitt. Mr. Whitman has worked in the areas of survey research, software development, and international environmental management. He co-authored the book, Delivering Satisfaction and Service Quality: A customer-based approach for libraries, published by the American Library Association and distributed in Japanese by Maruzen Co. and in Korean by Keimyung University. He is a doctoral student in adult education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.

NCDP Alumni:

Elizabeth Flanagan

Elizabeth Flanagan is a former staff member of the National Campus Diversity Project. Ms. Flanagan’s primary interest is the recruitment and admission of underrepresented minority students. She received her B.A. degree in 1997 from Harvard College, and her M.A. from Columbia University in 2000. Ms. Flanagan has worked as an admissions assistant at Harvard College and was a Development Associate at the American Federation for the Arts prior to working at the NCDP.

Frank Tuitt, EdD

Frank Tuitt received his Doctorate in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2003 in Administration, Planning and Social Policy. While at Harvard, Dr. Tuitt also co-chaired the Harvard Educational Review. Dr. Tuitt has been a research assistant for the National Campus Diversity Project with Professor Dean Whitla since the beginning of the project. He was a teaching fellow for both "Education for Social and Political Change" with Professor Eileen de los Reyes at HGSE and "Analyzing Issues of Prejudice and Diversity in Higher Education" with Dr. Whitla.

Dr. Tuitt’s research explores how professors can re-conceptualize college teaching in light of the challenges brought about by an increasing racial diversity of students in the classroom. Specifically, his dissertation, "Black Souls in an Ivory Tower: Understanding what it Means to Teach in a Manner that Respects and Cares for the Souls of African-American Graduate Students," identifies the pedagogical practices and learning conditions that African American Graduate Students identify as most beneficial to their learning. Dr. Tuitt co-edited Race and Higher Education: Rethinking pedagogy in diverse college classrooms with Annie Howell (Harvard Educational Review, 2003)--download the "Afterword." Dr. Tuitt received his B.A. from Connecticut College in 1987.