Culture Centers in Higher Education: Perspectives on Identity, Theory, and Practice is a powerful and enlightening book by Lori D. Patton. Patton is a higher education scholar who focuses on issues of race theories, African American experiences on college campuses, student development theories, campus environments, inclusion, and multicultural resources centers at higher education institutions. She has a variety of publications and was one of the first doctoral students to complete a dissertation that focused exclusively on Black culture centers entitled, “From Protest to Progress: An Examination of the Relevance, Relationships and Roles of Black Culture Centers.” In Campus Culture Centers in Higher Education Patton collaborates with many higher education scholars and faculty members to discuss various types of racial and ethnic culture centers in higher education, their overall effectiveness, relevance, and implications for improvement in relation to student retention and success. Diversity, inclusion and social justice have become prevalent issues on all college campuses, and this piece of literature gives a basic introduction for individuals unfamiliar with cultural resource centers. This book successfully highlights contributions of culture centers and suggestions for how centers can be reevaluated and structured more efficiently. For many faculty, administrators, and student affairs professionals unfamiliar with the missions and goals of culture centers, Patton’s text provides a concrete introduction and outline for the functionality of these resources and also offers recommendations and improvements for administrators managing multicultural centers. Higher education institution are becoming increasingly diverse in regard... ... middle of paper ... ...ice to understand student outcomes linked to cultural centers. Some of the methodology and standards used for diversity and inclusion in the book are unclear and it seems more qualitative and quantitative research is needed to fully comprehend the role of cultural resource centers at higher education institutions. Multicultural resource centers must possess extensive assessment and empirical support to improve the services and resources they provide for students of color. The author’s beliefs seemed primarily based on their own interactions and professional experiences with cultural centers, which should be more explicitly stated within the chapters to avoid labeling all culture centers. Overall, Patton and the contributing authors are successful in conveying the importance, role, and purpose of multicultural and race-specific culture centers on college campuses.
“College campuses are not dominated by widespread racial/ethnic segregation and the racial/ethnic clustering that does occur isn’t impeding intergroup contact.” (578, Hoeffner and Hoeffner). Throughout the essay, the writer continues to provide facts and sources on the information that diversity is not a problem on college campuses. She quotes evidence that states that college students are getting a “variety of positive educational outcomes that result from being educated in a diverse environment.” (578, Hoeffner and Hoeffner).
In order to fully understand the importance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities as well as the importance of their preservation and need for continuation, one...
Clearly, HBCUs provide several benefits to African-American students. Not only have they helped to combat the cycle of discrimination that minority students experienced before the civil rights initiatives of the 1960s, but they strive to provide a warm, supportive and inclusive academic environment that addresses African-American college students as a whole person. Additionally, HBCUs are increasing their efforts to ensure that higher education is accessible, affordable and achievable for individuals with unique socioeconomic challenges. Despite obstacles, historically Black institutions will continue to play a vital and significant role in the fabric of higher education.
Over the years there has been a significant decrease in the percentage of African American male success in higher education. Not only does this effect society as a whole, but more importantly this effects the African- American community as well. The high percentage of uneducated African- American males will result in increased crime rate, shortened life span and overall hard life. However this epidemic can be stopped by looking at the contributing factors of why there is a decrease in African-American male success in higher education and how to change it. Throughout the paper I will be addressing the issues as to why there are not more black men in higher education, by looking at the contributing factors such as environmental stressors, student’s perceptions, racial identity issues, academic and social integration, family upbringing and the media. The attrition rate of African- American male students could be changed and decreased drastically. Increasing our understanding of these differences would enable us to better meet the needs of young black men.
Annotated Bibliography Journals: The Journal of the American Denson, N., & Chang, M. (2009). Racial Diversity Matters: The Impact of Diversity-Related Student Engagement and Institutional Context. American Educational Research Journal, 46, 322-353. This article discusses the different forms of racial diversity contribution to students’ educational and learning experiences and the positive effects on students who adopt these diversity opportunities. The author demonstrates how the quality of higher education is substantially heightened by diversity-connected efforts.
“An array of knowledges, skills, abilities and contacts possessed and used by Communities of Color to survive and resist racism and other forms of oppression” encompasses the main idea of Community Cultural Wealth. It is vital to understand that students will step foot into the classroom with a variety of cultures zipped up in their backpacks, and it is our job as educators to make sure that equality is instilled/taught in our classrooms. The second a student feels a sense of discrimination, whether from ourselves or their fellow classmate(s), is when the safe and comforting environment of the classroom begins to diminish. Here I will discuss just how important it is to see the differences amongst students as an advantage
The hair company Herbal Essences perceives beauty to be sexually striking to the eyes. Their advertisement that was found in InTouch Magazine is selling Moroccan My Shine shampoo and conditioner product that will enhance more shine and silkiness in a women’s hair. The enhancement of the shine will provide women to have this sensual seductiveness about them self. To convince these consumers that this product is true to its claim, they use the beautiful pop singer Nicole Scherzinger as the model to illustrate her hair and how the product achieves to create this sexual shine. The overall advertisement creates this theme that if women were to use their product they will empower on this desirable affect to other people. Herbal Essences definition of beauty as being sexually attractive use design, use of celebrity, word choice, and audience to show that women need to have silky shine hair.
Nine years after college, students exposed to diversity at their university reported more diversity in their neighborhood, work and friendship settings (Fischer, 2008). Research found that adults who interacted in diverse settings as children were more likely to have close diverse friendships as adults. Universities and colleges have a compelling concern for recruiting and retaining a diverse student population in order to prepare their attendees for citizenship in a diverse democracy (Park, 2012). Students do not arrive on campus with blank slates; many come with year...
Jane Eyre is the story of a journey to be loved. Jane seeks not just for romantic love but for being valued. Throughout the course of the book, Jane must learn how to gain love without sacrificing herself in the process. Only after proving her self-sufficiency to herself can she marry Rochester and not be asymmetrically dependent upon him as her “master.” The marriage can be one between equals. As Jane says: “I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. . . . To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.
The information we gathered in our research, could prove to be quite useful to our community partner Jackie and the Asian-American Student Union (AASU). It seems that we have received mixed views on Asian American leadership and inclusivity on campus. There are many diverse things we can do with this research to help Asian Americans on campus feel more included and welcomed. Through our research, we determined that many students on campus were not even aware of the fact that we have an Asian American Student Union. We can take the information we learned through this process and use it to improve awareness around campus. Raising awareness has proved to be helpful in many other circumstances, where the general public is either misinformed or just unaware that a problem truly exists. When asked about inclusive leadership, many of the individuals interviewed, said that inclusive leadership should mean that everyone has a voice and that we all deserved to be heard. Therefore, we feel that raising awareness can help give others the voice,
The last piece of information of importance in They Say, I Say is the use of templates for revision. “Asking yourself these large-scale revision questions will help you see how well you’ve managed the “they say / I say” framework and this in turn should help you see where further revisions are needed” (140). The templates help the writer create a strong structure for essay guides the reader to understand clearly the overall conclusion of the writing. The templates not only assist in giving direction of what type of essay you are wanting to write, but can give ideas on how to connect parts of paragraphs in the essay. This makes clear all communicative parts of the essay: the emotions expressed in the topic, the opposing arguments to initiate
Race relations are the ways in which individuals of different races living together in the same community behave toward one another. This topic directly relates to college campuses that possess students of different cultural and racial backgrounds. Diversity can be a huge benefit to students, as it not only exposes them to new ideas and ways of thinking, but also prepares them for the diverse world. After reviewing various academic articles on race relations in colleges, a study was conducted in which current White and Black/minority male and female students were interviewed about their opinions on Cleveland State’s race relations and diversity on campus.
Creating an inclusive, diverse climate to support ethnic minority students is very important for their academic success in higher education. Especially for first year student, an engaging environment will create a sense of belonging greatly enhance the institutional commitment. Colleges and universities have launched a serious of programs to create a safe climate, for example, the Aggies to Aggies workshop in Texas A&M, the Asian American Awareness month in Georgia Tech, and the Diversity Appreciation week in University of California. However, the effectiveness of these programs remains unclear. One of the approaches to assess the effectiveness is to investigate the overall satisfaction level of the diversity climate. There are many factors influencing the satisfaction level, one of them being race. Numerous researchers indicate that students from different racial groups will have difference experience on diversity. This paper is going to conduct a study among first year students, with the purpose to determine the relationship between diversity satisfaction and race.
Diversity and Inclusion are important to the University of Toledo’s campus because they don’t just serve to one ethnicity, they serve to many. Many different kinds of cultures come to UT to give themselves an education and to better themselves. Here at the University, they want everyone to get along with each other, since it’ll make coming to school more exciting
Garcia, E. (2002). Student cultural diversity: Understanding and meeting the challenge (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.