Diversity Action Task Force Report

Mission Statement

The College of Education is preparing educators in a challenging era. Among those challenges is the critical need to prepare educators to serve an increasingly diverse school-age student population. Specifically, today's educators must work effectively with students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, races, cultures, linguistics, and exceptionalities. To effectively work with diverse student populations, educators must be prepared to work with students' families and related agencies serving these families. Additionally, the college seeks to continue increasing the number of students and faculty from underrepresented groups (e.g. minority races/ethnicities, exceptionalities, gender).

Goals and Initiatives (responsible person or group in parentheses)

1. Continue to promote the recruitment, admission, and retention of underrepresented students (i.e. racial/ethnic minority students, students with second language skills, etc.). (Department Admission Committees)
2. Continue to promote the recruitment, hiring, and retention of underrepresented faculty (i.e. racial/ethnic minority faculty and female faculty). (Departments/Department Chairs, Dean)
3. Increase professional development opportunities for College faculty to enhance their understanding of and teaching emphasis on issues of diversity. Further, individual departments are encouraged to communicate and share departmental professional development activities with other departments or faculty within the college, where relevant or appropriate. (College Executive Committee, Departments / Department Chairs, Associate Dean for Professional Ed)
4. Increase programmatic and curricular emphasis on preparing educators to work effectively with diverse student populations by requiring "stand-alone" diversity courses and infusing a diversity emphasis in the majority of program courses. The Education, Culture, and Society unit may be interested in and able to provide many of the stand-alone diversity courses. (College Curriculum Committee, Departments, Associate Dean for Professional Ed)
5. Make the programmatic and curricular emphasis on diversity explicit by articulating this emphasis in written course syllabi and other program documents. (College Curriculum Committee, Departments / Department Faculty)
6. Encourage and advise education students to earn licensure/endorsements in areas of need particularly serving diverse student populations --- e.g. English as a second language (ESL), special education, multicultural studies, reading. (Departments/Department Faculty, Student Advisors)
7. Design educator preparation programs in ways that create incentives for students to earn "cross-over endorsements", minors, or allied emphases in areas serving diverse student populations --- e.g. English as a second language (ESL), special education, multicultural studies, reading. The Education, Culture, and Society unit may be interested in initiating a minor and/or allied emphasis in multicultural education. (Departments/Department Chairs, College Curriculum Committee, Associate Dean for Professional Ed)
8. Provide student teaching, practica, or internship field placements for all College students that include schools serving lower socio-economic students and diverse student populations (racial, cultural linguistic, exceptionalities). (Departments, Student Advisors & Field Supervisors)
9. Increase curricular and programmatic emphasis on working effectively with families and related agencies serving students and families. (Departments, College Curriculum Committee, Associate Dean for Professional Education)
10. If on-going leadership is required to promote diversity initiatives within the college, it is recommended that each department form a departmental diversity committee, with a provision for one departmental representative to serve on a college-level committee.