ABSTRACT
Higher education is undergoing reform to an extent that has never before been considered, examined, or addressed. These reforms stem from internal and external pressures. Internal pressures are most often related to financial costs around maintaining a quality institution and delivering a quality education, increasing expectations from faculty and staff, rising enrollments, and raised student learning expectations. External pressures are most often related to changes and expectations around external funding, demographics, community needs, accrediting and political bodies, and business-related items (Lieberman & Guskin, 2003). Diversity and multicultural issues are dimensions that thread through most of these internal and external pressures. As institutions wrestle with these pressures and translate them into campuswide reform initiatives, it is critical to address the multiple facets of diversity that affect and are affected by the reform processes. Specifically, this chapter addresses ways to integrate issues of diversity into the institutional reform process in ways that answer the following six questions:
Why is “diversity” an area of concern in higher education?
How does higher education today address issues of diversity?
What diversity initiatives, especially those related to faculty and instructional development, have the greatest impact and why?
What are examples of diversity initiatives and curricular issues on various campuses?
How do we and how can we assess diversity initiatives?
What are lessons learned about institutional readiness, institutional change, and diversity initiatives?
