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Diversity and Inclusion (continued)

Student Demographics
Underrepresented Students and Faculty at Reed and Peer Institutions

As dean for institutional diversity, I am asked to support, empower, inform, and challenge my colleagues to ensure that we recruit and retain intellectually talented members from a multiplicity of communities, and that once here, all members of the Reed community can thrive. In addition to providing strategic vision and leadership, we seek to develop guidelines, procedures, and recommendations to tackle aspects of the status quo which do not serve the college’s goal of becoming a more diverse and inclusive institution. Diversity includes not only people from historically underrepresented groups and/or protected classes, but also people from majority groups who add to and benefit from an inclusive campus climate. Diversity, in the modern sense, suggests that our identities are not static, nor are they singular. If you are a white female philosophy student from Port Harbor, an Asian faculty member from Chicago, a first-generation-to-college student, a Muslim, a Nepali theatre student, a person with an invisible disability or multiple disabilities, a gender-identity minority staff member, or a heterosexual, wealthy white male student from California, my office is charged with supporting your success and wellbeing at Reed. Simply put: we are responsible for helping create and perpetuate a healthy, inclusive, and vibrant campus climate—for every single Reed community member.

Like many elite liberal arts colleges, achieving racial/ethnic diversity continues to be one of our greatest challenges and therefore requires our consistent and careful attention. In this regard, we’ve been more successful in recruiting students than faculty and staff. While data show that all students who apply to Reed identify as intellectual and independent-minded, students from historically underrepresented racial/ethnic groups who meet our holistic and rigorous admission guidelines are also greatly sought out by other elite colleges and universities that offer many of them merit aid regardless of need—a practice Reed has historically rejected. This fact, coupled with our geographic region, small student body, liberal arts status, and reputation for being socially liberal, further complicates the undertaking, though ours is not a wholly insurmountable task. 

Indeed, the very challenge we experience because we are a small school may be what ultimately allows us to achieve success, which might be what one faculty member described as developing a critical mass of people such that a member of any group in the minority—people from underrepresented ethnic groups or women in certain fields, for example—is not the only person in the room with that identity. In support of that desire is social science research that suggests when critical mass is achieved, the members of the underrepresented group are more engaged, perform better, and are better able to voice their opinions as individuals as opposed to being cast as representatives of their group. Research finds that a critical mass of underrepresented populations stimulates and enhances critical thinking for all students. 

That said, we have been more successful at achieving certain kinds of diversity than others. For example, Reed admits a higher percentage of students from low-income backgrounds than many of our wealthier comparator schools. Approximately 50 percent of our students are on financial aid. And our average aid package exceeds $36,000 a year. Further, in any year, an average of 10% of our students are first in their family to attend a 4-year college. In this realm, we have made significant progress. 

Yet however successful we have been at recruiting students from low-income backgrounds, we’ve still a good deal of work to do to ensure that students feel entirely included and valued as equal members of the community once they arrive. This is something we failed to do early on with Anna, who stepped onto our campus and felt immediately—via the multitude of social cues she received—that not only was Reed not for her, but its campus culture was actively shunning her. Everyone, she surmised, looking at how readily people bought books, food, items for their dorm rooms, and essentials, must be wealthy. But given our admission data, there are many Annas. What we do to support them can make a tremendous difference to their academic success and the confidence with which they enter the world beyond Reed. So we are helping to develop programs to assist them, increasing faculty and staff awareness of the challenges that face working Reedies, and are working to develop additional financial support for high-need students who struggle with things as simple as printing fees or bus passes. The same is true for supporting sexual orientation and gender-identity minorities, students from underrepresented ethnic/racial groups, and students who are first in their family to attend college. Here, our collaborative work with individual faculty and staff is critically important. Equally important is the work we have undertaken to create programming to spark the adoption of more inclusive pedagogies, and to support faculty members from underrepresented groups who often move to Portland and find it intellectually and/or culturally isolating.

The way a person feels while at Reed—the exact “thing” my poetry student couldn’t name—is related to many factors, principal among them campus climate. In the spring we began developing a campus climate survey, which will seek to measure how students, staff, and faculty experience the social, academic, and working climate at Reed. Its results will provide us a baseline understanding of what we’re doing well and what can be improved upon. These data, along with other campus-wide assessments, will provide us with a great deal of evidence that will guide our work in diversity and inclusivity in the coming years.

In all, there is much work ahead. In many ways, Reed’s strong community ethos, that charge that fuels so many of us to work so intensively, is our greatest strength. I count myself very fortunate to be in a community where so many believe in and work towards ensuring that we have fewer and fewer Annas.  

Anna graduated from Reed speaking several languages and having spent time abroad; she is a young woman driven by her intellectual passions and moral compass. She is currently teaching low-income students in Teach for America and is applying to graduate school. Just before she left Portland, we met over coffee. During that going-away chat, she described her drive to be of service to others and give back to her community. It did not escape me that Anna’s definition of “her” community is based on her commonalities with people, not her differences, which tells me that we did something right in relation to how Anna thinks about community. Although we may not have anticipated all of the ways in which she needed our support, ultimately we supported, stretched, and challenged her enough that she is thriving today. 

But to my way of thinking, hers was too bumpy a start. I don’t want other Reed students, faculty, or staff members to feel that Reed isn’t the place for them or that their ability to participate in the academic endeavor is hampered by their social identity. As we increase the numbers of gender, class, ethnic, racial, religious, sexual orientation, gender-identity, and national minorities among us, we must make sure that we have fewer and fewer people who feel isolated, alienated, and as if they—with their beautiful, complicated, multifaceted identities—aren’t imperative to the excellence of this institution. They are.

Go FURTHER

Steele, Claude. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. (esp. Chapter 8: “The Strength of Stereotype Threat: The Role of Cues”)

“Does Diversity at Undergraduate Institutions Influence Student Outcomes?” Nisha C. Gottfredson, A.T. Panter, Charles E. Daye, Linda F. Wightman, Walter A. Allen, and Meera E. Deo. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Vol. 1., No. 2, 80-94 (2008)

“Student Experiences with Diversity at Liberal Arts Colleges: Another Claim for Distinctiveness.” Paul D. Umback and George D. Kuh. The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 77, No. 1, (Jan/Feb 2006), pp 169-192

“The Educational Benefits of Sustaining Cross-Racial Interaction among Undergraduates.” Mitchell J. Chang, Nida Denson, Victor Sáenz and Kimberly Misa, The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 77, No. 3 (May - Jun., 2006), pp. 430-455. Published by: Ohio State University Press

“Diversity and Higher Education: Theory and Impact on Educational Outcomes.” Patricia Gurin, Eric L. Dey, Sylvia Hurtado, and Gerald Gurin. Harvard Educational Review. Vol. 72, No.  3 (Sept., 2002) pp. 330-367

Hurtado, Sylvia. (2001). “Linking Diversity and Educational Purpose: How Diversity Affects the Classroom Environment and Student Development.” In G. Orfield & M. Kurlaender (Eds.), Diversity Challenged: Evidence on the Impact of Affirmative Action (pp.187–203). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Civil Rights Project.

“Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Classroom: Does It Promote Student Learning?” Patrick T. Terenzini, Alberto F. Cabrera, Carol L. Colbeck, Stefani A. Bjorklund and John M. Parente. The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 72, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 2001), pp. 509-531. Published by: Ohio State University Press

鈥擜uthor info: Crystal Ann Williams is dean for institutional diversity and professor of creative writing at Reed.