Memorandum

To: Nathan Church
From: Geoffrey Maruyama
Date: 10/17/2003
Re: St. Cloud State Diversity Programs

Attached to this memo is a report summarizing my thoughts about a number of St. Cloud State University (SCSU) diversity programs reporting to you that I reviewed. Many of the reflections and recommendations would be relevant for almost any institution of higher education; they do not imply that SCSU is more needy than other places or that its programs are worse. The goal of the recommendations is to assist your efforts at program improvement. These are times of rapid change and transition, and all of higher education is struggling to meet the challenges. One of the major challenges for higher education is to meet the needs of the information age by effectively educating an increased proportion of the population. In meeting this challenge, diversity programs are critically important, for they provide support for economically disadvantaged students, students of color, and students otherwise under-represented (including women in the sciences and engineering). These students represent the parts of the college aged populations where the greatest improvement in attendance and graduation rates is possible, which makes them central to overall efforts at improvement.

In building my report, I have tried to be sensitive to historical traditions and strengths of SCSU, but I clearly don’t know about many of them. The things that I describe here as historical come from what I was told by others or read in the reports. One point worth noting is that St. Cloud’s reputation as a place with overt conflicts may be an opportunity. In part, that reputation comes because there are constituencies on campus that hold strong values and behave consistently with those values (in contrast to other places where conflicts about issues and values are buried.). The divergent views provide the kinds of opportunities that carried the day in the recent University of Michigan U. S. Supreme Court decisions. The Court found that opportunities for interactions with others having dissimilar experiences and holding diverse views about issues was one of the real benefits of post-secondary education, for it provided opportunities for open, frank exchange of ideas that don’t occur often in homogeneous groups and that occur infrequently in the broader society. If people need citations for this perspective, they date back as far as Newcomb’s studies of Bennington College students. Exchanges sharing diverse perspectives challenge beliefs and force people toward more complex views about issues and about the world. One challenge in making the conflicts educational is to assure that the exchanges address a range of topics and issues so students can see how the alignments of views and people shift from issue to issue and learn how to disagree constructively. For example, staff at the American Indian Center has skills in mediation and dispute resolution. I think you might explore ways of engaging your people in thinking about how to make the disagreements and conflicts that occur constructive rather than destructive (not win-lose). I am not Pollyannaish enough to think that all conflicts are resolvable or that protagonists of different views will become friends, but there are opportunities to make what may currently be seen as a liability a strength and to highlight positive outcomes that can come from diversity.

As a preface to specific comments about centers and programs, I begin with a couple of general points. First is that in general the work that was described to me is important work, and all of it at least is loosely based upon “best practices” in diversity work and/or is responsive to local needs. Said differently, I didn’t see any programs where my reaction was that they should be dismantled as quickly as possible because they use outdated and/or ineffective approaches. Nevertheless, having programs that are not ineffective does not mean that they all work or should be kept. One part of this is the issue of what works. Based upon the information provided to us, it is not possible to conclude that particular programs work or don’t work. I saw very little in the way of program effectiveness data, and in fact I was told that St Cloud institution-wide has not been very good at preparing reports and conducting program evaluations. Improving records and developing regular reports is a topic I will return to in the recommendations. A second part is the issue of programs to keep. As has been made all too apparent from recent budget situations, the most difficult choices are those where one is selecting from among different programs that are valuable while also trying to move forward. In such instances, decisions need to be guided by area and institutional priorities in concert with more practical issues like their scope of impact. In the descriptions of programs that I read, there was very little focus on guiding principles or a general strategic plan (incidentally, if you are looking for materials on strategic planning, I recommend work by my colleague John Bryson, who is nationally recognized for his books on strategic planning in non-profit organizations). That is, a shortcoming of the programs is that they don’t seem to be following a strategic plan that would set priorities as well as goals while providing direction for the future. To the best of my memory, even though it was clear that staff had identified things that they thought were important, no one talked about work of primary importance or contrasted some of their work with other, lower priority work that they did as long as the most important work was getting done. Similarly, I didn’t hear much about primary goals and what work was being done to attain those goals. Perhaps it was because staff felt that they only had time to focus on the most important work and topics; that really is not discernible in a day. If anything, however, some staff seemed to feel that they were forced by workload to be reactive, with the result that prioritizing of work was not apparent. What I took away from the latter point is that work needs to be done in the area of strategic planning, if for no other reason than to help centers to prioritize the work that they do and integrate it with what others are doing.

Second is that given current admissions policies, the low numbers of students of color is not primarily a problem of turning away students of color, but of increasing the pool of applicants. Although not all students will pick St. Cloud, the only way to increase numbers of students of color is to increase applications, admissions, and student yield. That needs to be viewed as a major challenge. Complementing that is retention. It seems that the core parts of retention strategies are in place (identifying low performing students and intervening), but they need to be made more efficient and effective, and students who are applying need to know about them.

One other point worth noting in passing is that because the centers tend to be small, staff perform a range of duties. In some instances, the office managers seemed to perform a wide range of tasks and basically fill any and all unmet needs. With small programs, one advantage of co-locating them would be so that the staff could more efficiently cover the range of things that need to be done. Also with respect to staffing patterns, I believe that current practices of hiring a large number of graduate and undergraduate students are good for the programs. As well as supporting students on campus, graduate students provide informal mentoring as well as role models for undergraduate students.

Finally, a point that came up was “why focus on the multicultural programs?” I think this is an important question, and one that deserves an answer. Mine in part is that, to use a term from a book by Guinier and Torres, students of color and other disadvantaged and under-represented students are “the miner’s canary,” for they potentially are most vulnerable and most likely to fail when confronted with obstacles, for they may lack the cultural knowledge and resources that they might be able to use to overcome the obstacles. Other students are adversely affected by the same obstacles, so I believe that institutions learn a lot about themselves when they look at their vulnerable populations. So this review process is a comment on the institution as well as the programs. The other part of my answer, however, is that accountability cannot begin and end with these populations and programs. That would send a message that programs for multicultural students are held to a higher level of accountability than are other programs either because people don’t understand what they do or don’t understand why the programs are important (or may not value them), one that few institutions should want to send. An addendum to that point is that although the programs reviewed are responsible for the performance of multicultural students, the campus is as well; these are not the only ones responsible if such students fail to succeed.

Please let me know if you have questions or want clarifications.

Report on Diversity Programs at St. Cloud State University

Geoffrey Maruyama
July 11, 2003

On July 8, 2003, Margaret Healy and I visited campus and met for an hour each with staff from the following programs: the American Indian Center, the Women’s Center, the GLBT Services Office, Multicultural Student Services, and Student Disability Services. My comments are based upon my observations, conversations with the directors and staff, and with Vice President Church, and upon written materials that the program offices had prepared.

Not surprisingly, the programs offices reflect the strengths and personalities of their staff. Without passing value judgment on the approach, it is clear that some previous Central administrators gave directors latitude to shape their programs. The result is that the programs each are unique and provide differing services, a situation certainly not uncommon at colleges and universities. Some have more contact with faculty and academic affairs functions, others focus more on training of faculty and staff, and still others primarily on service provision. For example, the American Indian Center provides substantial support for faculty, for there are faculty who regularly use the center and who send their students there to find resources. The link to academic programs, incidentally, is not one that seems to bring either recognition or resources. The Women’s Center also has a small resource library that students use and Center staff guest lecture in classes, and it also organizes the popular campus Women on Wednesday lecture and discussion series. Disability Services primarily responds to state and federal mandates to provide services to students with disabilities, assuring that those students are offered adequate and appropriate accommodations. Both Disability Services and GLBT Services provide training to faculty and staff. The Multicultural Student Services Center organizes the Advanced Preparation Program (APP), a summer bridge program for under-represented students, and offers tutoring services to students as well as operating a computer lab. It also flags and tracks low performing students so they can be steered to services that should be able to help them. The scope of activities just mentioned illustrates how difficult it is to describe the functions of the offices and why a strategic plan that would impose priorities is so important.

Turning to specifics of the different offices, I first present in the order that we visited centers some of the main points from each discussion. I have not tried to summarize what appears in the written materials, but points from the conversations. In the discussions, there were no attempts made to assure that we covered all issues of each center. Rather, we had free-flowing discussions where they shared information and asked us questions, and where we asked questions about issues from the written materials that they had prepared. We also at the end of each discussion asked them about the things they felt should be kept and changes that they would like to see occur.

American Indian Center:

St Cloud sits on a boundary between the Dakota and Anishenabe people and was a place where a treaty between the tribes was signed, which gives the Center a socio-historical role. Sovereignty issues also add a dimension of complexity to addressing issues. The center views its roles as serving American Indian (A-I) students, helping them organize cultural events, working with the St. Cloud Indian Center, taking A-I cultural approaches (e.g., talking circles, dispute resolution) across campus, and supporting students as they move into professions. The A-I Center works with Multicultural Student Services (MSS) to serve students who are not doing well academically. This past year their community finally exceeded 100 students (112). Staff report having 20-25 regular center attendees as well as drawing about 35 students in over the course of the year on a fairly regular basis. They report sponsoring about 60-65 speeches during a year. They report improving retention dramatically, from a 16% one year retention rate in 1995 to retention of entering 1998 students of over 90%. They estimate that about 2/3 of their A-I students have tribal scholarships, but many come from tribes with little money for scholarships. Staff sees a major challenge in finding the optimal balance between integrating efforts with other programs while also maintaining independent programming. They would like for the students that they serve to have a better relationship with the MSS, and to have an A-I person working as a staff member in the MSS. They also would like to find ways of making their educational programming more visible.

Specific comments about American Indian Center: Their interest in establishing American Indian Science and Engineering Society and Indians Into Medicine Program links should be encouraged, for it fits nicely with the focus of the St. Cloud pipeline programs. Talking circles and dispute resolution also could have broader impact across campus.

Women’s Center

The sense I got was that the staff were very comfortable with multiculturalism and serving the multiple identities of female students. The center has been in existence for over a decade and is well-established, and the director is coming back from a leave which gave her the opportunity to reflect on the Center and where it might go in the future. In response to what they see as changing self-identifications of women, staff expressed an interest in exploring issues that move beyond the “traditional” areas of gender equity/Title 9 and sexual violence to new models for service delivery. Although they are not dissatisfied with current programs, they would like to be able to look more carefully at the outcomes they are getting and expand in some areas, for example, mentoring and leadership development programs. They currently serve all students during orientation through their Respect and Responsibility program, yet in student surveys many students report not knowing anything about their programs and services. We suggested that in part if might reflect students being overwhelmed during the orientation; if so, more effective ways of linking their center and name to the R&R program might be helpful (businesses might call this a “brand recognition” issue). In part, the staff believes that they have tried to do too much, and would benefit from focusing more. They acknowledged that the data that they have about their effectiveness primarily are anecdotal, but they don’t feel that they have the capacity to do evaluation work, and they have not had much success in working with either institutional research or with faculty who share their interests.

Specific comments on Women’s Center: I see among the challenges facing the center are to determine how best to provide services for female students in areas where they are under-represented (e.g., sciences) or for particular sub-populations of women (e.g., rural women; urban women). Such services would have more in common with the services of the MSS and AIC, namely, supporting individuals who may be at risk of dropping out or of leaving fields where women are under-represented. A second issue is to reflect on the current office structure, for currently it combines academic services with criminal justice services. As I noted earlier, there are no single optimal structures, but St. Cloud might at least consider whether or not it makes sense to separate services tied to gender and sexual victimization from other services (e.g., our Aurora Center is free-standing within Student Affairs) and what the effects of separation might be on existing programs as well as programs that would meet important needs. Third, they would like to do more in evaluating their programs, but need collaborators.

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Services

The newest of the centers likely faces the most overt prejudice. Even though their students report generally feeling safe on campus, their posters get torn down and residence halls are places where anti-gay messages appear on message boards. Such reactions have led to a focus on community training (Homophobia 1001, Safe Space), and Ally buttons are used as well as Safe Space signs to signify settings and individuals who are supportive. Although training is offered to departments and is provided campus-wide for interested individuals, much of the campus and most of the students have not had it. GLBT partners with MSS and with others including Residential Life and the U Program Board. Some GLBT students also receive services from MSS or Disability Services, but there still is a tendency for students to have to pick their primary identity. The center works with the GLBT Alliance and OutLoud, two students groups. The center has been collecting information on the programs that are offered and the attendance, but don’t have more extensive program evaluation information. In part, information on GLBT populations is difficult to collect, for many students are concerned about risks they may expose themselves to (e.g., human rights) by identifying themselves and others are not ready to be publicly recognized as part of a GLBT community.

Specific comments on GLBT Services: One issue is organizational structure, for the GLBT Services offices reports through the Women’s Center. That structure does not make a lot of sense to me, for I would expect the center to exist on an equal footing with the other centers and report directly to the Office of Student Life and Development (OSLD). The fact that the center leader is a coordinator rather than a director affects structural options. A second issue is exposure of students to the center. It was mentioned that GLBT Services is not part of new student orientation. While I don’t know how orientation is organized, it seems that it might be a place to let students know about the full range of centers and services that are available to them.

Multicultural Student Services

In the Multicultural Student Services (MSS) office, St. Cloud has what a lot of places want, a multicultural center that is multicultural rather than bi-cultural. That is, it serves all students of color, not just single groups. That structure seems one worth keeping, and even sharing with other institutions how it was developed. The center also runs a large number of different programs and initiatives. For example, in part reflecting the backgrounds and experiences of staff, the MSS has been attempting to engage students of color in international experiences. International program participation is an area nationally where students of color are under-represented. Although the MSS offers a range of activities and programs, two very important functions of MSS are its tutoring programs and identifying students who are not performing well so they can be targeted for assistance. The identification function is very important, but is being done manually and only for sub-populations of students. Faculty members are contacted on an ad hoc basis to obtain information about students. The tutoring program, housed in the Richard Green Center, serves athletes as well as other students. The focus on athletes was prompted by noting that many athletes of color who used up their eligibility would not finish school. Both the tutoring program and the identifying program are very active in contacting faculty and attempting to work with them. Other programs for current students include mentoring and advising. MSS also organizes the Advanced Preparation Program, a bridge program for incoming freshmen now in its 16th year, and a number of Pipeline Programs that serve students ranging from kindergarten through 12th grade. Although the MSS seems to have gathered quite a bit of information on students, it is important to use that information so that program effectiveness can be assessed and so the findings can drive program changes.

Specific comments on MSS Services: Because it has so many different initiatives, it is difficult for an outsider to see how they are integrated. Once again a strategic plan and goals would be a way to organize the programs so they make sense (which programs promote which goals in which ways). Second, I believe that it makes sense to put pipeline programs and the summer bridge program in MSS, but it would be nice if responsibility for the programs were shared across all OSLD centers (that may be the current situation; I couldn’t tell). As will be noted later, it seems that available technology should allow implementation of a campus-wide system of identifying students who are low performing rather than requiring a labor-intensive manual system. Finally, given the “technology gap” between students of color and others, having old computers in the labs is problematic. Even though they are functional for student needs, students need to be exposed to current equipment. I gather that this is in part a function of the “private” status of the lab (not being open to all students), but it would be nice to find a way to upgrade the equipment.

Student Disability Services

As is true at most other colleges and universities, Student Disability Services (SDS) is a very different center from the others, for its work is driven by federal and state mandates and it can serve only students who meet specific qualification criteria. It does little if any outreach or recruiting of students, but serves those who come to it and qualify. It currently serves 540 students who have qualified for services. That number is large, suggesting that it has developed a reputation for effectively serving the needs of students with disabilities. The center primarily provides required levels of services, but it also has offered training as a way to educate faculty about current rules and regulations for interacting with and addressing needs of students with disabilities.

Specific comments on SDS: Because it is difficult for me to know the particular needs of students and the intensiveness of contacts (at least part of the information is protected by regulations about medical information), it is difficult to judge the appropriateness of staffing, but, on the face of it, it seems that staffing is “bare bones.” I was told that nationally about 9% of incoming freshmen say that they have a disability. To the extent that that is true, demands for services are likely to stay high. A second point is that given the size of the center, it seems that staffing would be more efficient and management better if the director were housed with the rest of the staff in the center.

Pre-collegiate Programs

Even though there is not a separate office for pre-collegiate programming, I focus on the Pipeline and APP Programs separately. I believe that these kinds of programs should be an integral part of SCSU recruiting strategies. Increased numbers of students of color in Minnesota preK-12 schools has not translated into proportionate representation in higher education at SCSU or statewide. More students of color drop out, fewer graduate from high school, fewer of those graduates go on to college, and those that do are more likely to drop out (see, e.g., the Minnesota Minority Education Partnership 2001 report State of Students of color, available at www.mmep.net). Pipeline or pathway programs have the promise of increasing the proportion of students of color and economically disadvantaged students who attend college. Although I would strongly recommend keeping pipeline programs, there are a lot of different strategies that one could take in refining current programs or developing new ones. There are choices to be made in sheer numbers of students served (e.g., how many any particular summer?, should the number of programs increase?, are students encouraged to attend multiple summers or only once?), in what a successful outcome is (students mastering course content vs. graduating from high school and going to college vs. attending SCSU), in the types of students targeted (economically disadvantaged only, vs. any student of color; high achieving students vs. students performing at about grade level; local rural students vs. Twin Cities metro area students vs. out of state students), in the levels of programming (remedial vs. enrichment), and in the level of subsidy for participants (fully covered for all vs. scholarships for some), just to mention a few. Again, such decisions need initially to be driven by broad planning and goal setting, and then improved through the use of information to evaluate what works and why.

The summer bridge program provides incoming students with a chance to adjust to college, and is offered to all incoming freshmen of color. Questions here include: What is an acceptable proportion who choose to attend? Does summer work keep away students who are in greatest need of the program? There are choices to be made in the courses offered (focus on science and math, on prerequisites, on composition, etc.), the other programming that is part of the program, duration of the program, how many college credits students can attain and what it costs them, its scope, who should be eligible to attend (students of color, any first generation college student or any student from a family that is economically disadvantaged, females in fields where they are nationally under-represented), etc. Finally, an important question is which offices should contribute to the programs. Should there be greater shared responsibility for the program?, a question which ought to assure that a more diverse set of issues is addressed.

General comments

One issue that came up is training for new staff. It was suggested that understanding of the OSLD centers would be increased if there were orientation sessions that included information on the centers as well as general information about SCSU and how it works. A second issue is whether or not students are comfortable having multiple identities or if they are forced to choose. There was considerable sentiment that they still felt forced to choose, a situation that might be lessened if centers worked more extensively together. Finally, a number of individuals expressed the view that they would like to be consulted more about decisions. My interpretation of this is that in difficult economic times, people get nervous about their situations and jobs and want more information, and that the nervousness can easily have adverse effects on morale. One way to counter this is to consult more extensively with directors. Although they need to realize that they are not the ones making final decisions, they need to have opportunities to provide input. Most important is that staff members feel respected. Although there may be historical factors that have bred distrust or at least skepticism, seeking input regularly, setting a vision, and then explaining the rationale for decisions that are made in principle should address the issues raised.

Recommendations

1. The prominent issue is the low numbers of students of color attending SCSU. It seems to me that improving the numbers of students of color who enroll at SCSU needs to be a major goal. The complement to that goal is assuring that programs provide the kinds of supports that help these students succeed. This goal needs to be a prominent part of strategic planning efforts—what goals need to be set, and what distribution of effort of staff is likely to help make progress toward those goals?
2. Most units do training for the campus. Bundle together the different professional development offerings and circulate information about them. The bundle could include GLBT issues, DS issues, sexual violence issues, other gender issues, mediation and dispute resolution, new immigrant populations, and talking circles.
3. Unit strategic planning is very important and needs to be put into place quickly. Insofar as we did not identify “bad” programs, the challenge in times of declining budgets is deciding what to give up and what to add. As noted earlier, that depends first upon having a vision and goals, and second upon having available information that can be used to guide program changes.
4. Units need to understand better the importance of collecting information and using it to aid programming decisions. In part, the issue is capacity, but it also in part may reflect lack of professional development about deciding the information that is important to have and how to go about collecting those data.
5. OSLD needs stronger ties to institutional research and better access to institutional data. Information on academic performance of students, attitudinal responses of the students being served, background characteristics of the St. Cloud student population, etc., would be useful to have, as would information about program impact.
6. Each unit needs to prepare an annual report of goals and accomplishments. The reports should highlight students served and programs, and set out goals for the next year as well as the changes that will be happening. A SWOT approach that is common in strategic planning would help, identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
7. OSLD needs to put in place a means to attain more uniform and detailed information from the centers, including things like the numbers of students served, numbers of events hosted and numbers attending, numbers of guest lectures done, numbers of community contacts, external support raised, numbers of prospective students contacted, most important activities, etc.
8. Some of the functions currently done for groups in OSLD should be institutionalized for all students. As examples, mid-semester grade alerts for all low achieving students would be valuable, for they could get all students who are not performing well into academic help in a timely manner (before they have a bad semester). As a bonus, institutionalizing data gathering would free up a substantial amount of the time of the Associate Director of MSS, so he could focus more on helping support students. The FAQs sent to faculty should be made web-based and made as simple as possible so they could provide information in a form that is both electronic and easy to access and use.