History of the Diversity Committee

In the summer of 2001, I was asked by Prescott College President Dan Garvey to found and chair a committee to address diversity at Prescott College. The Committee to Define, Foster, and Sustain Diversity at Prescott College met throughout the 2001/02 academic year to do exactly that. The founding committee included faculty members from each of the three academic programs: Reuben Ellis and Grace Burford, from the Resident Degree Program; Vicky Young, from the Adult Degree Program; and I represented the Master of Arts Program. The committee also included staff members Kay Lauster from the library and Amanda Hanson from the undergraduate admissions office, as well as students Ethan Ohs of the Resident Degree Program and Denise Cox of the Master of Arts Program.

This committee met together and with others in the community and set out on a journey of discovery about diversity in our community. In our work to define diversity and establish a mission or precept for the college, we came up with a statement of intention. In April of 2002 this statement was presented to and endorsed by the Prescott College Advisory Council:

Society in the United States has been and continues to become increasingly diverse and complex in its cultural* practices and ethnic make up. Globally, communication changes and economic exchange continue to bring very different cultures into closer, but not necessarily less complex, contact.

Prescott College recognizes the dynamic interaction of communities and cultures that comprise the contemporary United States and the world and, reflecting that recognition in its mission statement, endeavors to educate students of diverse individual and cultural backgrounds** to understand, thrive in, and enhance world communities and environments. Prescott College strives to provide an education that will enable students to live productive lives while achieving a balance between self-fulfillment and service to others by fostering and maintaining a college community diverse in the following areas of its institutional life:

• college environment
• curriculum
• community make up

Prescott College is committed on a long-term basis to developing and implementing specific strategies by which diversity can be realized as an institutional value reflected in the experience and contribution of all members of its community.

*The word culture has dozens of definitions. For example, the second edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (1982) defines culture as “The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought characteristic of a community or population” (348). In admission and hiring decisions, curriculum development, and college environment planning, community members are encouraged to look within specific contexts and disciplines to see how culture is and can be defined.

**The expression “diverse individual and cultural backgrounds” should suggest a full range of identity differences, some of which are more clearly a matter of individual uniqueness and some of which are better understood as individual association with group identities. Diversity, for example, includes difference on the basis of race-ethnicity, gender and gender identity, economic and/or social class, sexual orientation, age, ability, appearance, education, nation, religion, politics, language, and lifestyle.

The committee also took time during the year to interview the faculty of each of the academic programs about their understanding of diversity at Prescott College and how it is reflected or supported through each program’s curriculum planning and hiring processes. Committee members met with the college’s directors of human resources and admissions to address their understanding of diversity at Prescott College and how it is reflected or supported through our college’s hiring and admissions policies and procedures. And principally the committee spent time brainstorming on the ways we could individually and as a community foster and sustain diversity at Prescott College.

At the end of the first year it was decided that the College as a whole would be well served by the individual faculty within each of the three academic programs working directly within their programs to address diversity as it relates to curriculum, hiring, and admissions. During the 2002/03 and 2003/04 academic years this was done under the guidance of the following individual faculty members who took on the responsibility: Vicky Young worked with the faculty of our Adult Degree Program to ensure that diversity was addressed as it relates to the program’s cultural and environmental requirement; Reuben Ellis, Mary Poole, and Nicanor Dominguez served on a task force to discuss diversity as it relates to the curriculum of the Resident Degree Program; and I coordinated the graduate faculty in sustained reflection on diversity as it relates to our social and ecological literacies component as well as our admissions and advisor hiring practices.

Now it is time for the full Prescott College community to take ownership of our commitment to diversity and to work together to foster and sustain diversity here in our academic and larger community. The Diversity Coalition meets monthly to network and plan projects, and to Celebrate Diversity through film. Join us!