Where Do We Go From Here? Reflections on Building Institutional Diversity for Lasting Change

• In Event: 67.029 - Institutional Change for Racial Equity in Higher Education: Recommendations for Necessary Action

Abstract

This article illustrates how one of the arguably most diverse departments in educational policy and leadership in the history of highly selective predominantly white universities built institutional diversity for lasting change. It relies on statistical data from the university, college, department, and an interview conducted with the former department head a longstanding faculty member who led the charge for the remarkable diversity success developed over the past thirty years. The testimonies and data used offer profound considerations of how higher education can and must diversify itself to truly establish the progressive change needed to remedy the grand challenges impacting the world and to educate the next America upon us.
The leaders highlighted in this case challenged and dismantled concepts or attitudes of exceptionalism, explicit and implicit bias, and deficit thinking; they made diversity a core value and core business at all levels in the university and built institutional diversity for lasting change. The leaders also discuss in detail how they developed a multi-pronged approach to accomplishing their diversity goals, how their actions were intentional, how they overcame external challenges, and how their efforts can be replicated elsewhere. The article concludes with an assessment of where we go from here with regard to ensuring institutional diversity expands beyond its current considerations to develop the lasting and meaningful coalitions needed to remedy the grand challenges facing humanity worldwide.

Authors

• Yoon K. Pak, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Christopher M. Span, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• James D. Anderson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• William T. Trent, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign