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Diversity Plan:
2003 - 2005
Background
The University Honors program participates (along with more
than 600 other nationally recognized Honors programs and colleges)
in the National Collegiate Honors Council. This participation
includes collaboration with and attendance at national, regional
and statewide honors events. Through these alliances, the
Honors program conveys information to students, staff and
faculty regarding questions of diversity in Honors education.
Our environment may best be described as a small, interdisciplinary,
undergraduate learning community, providing a challenging,
integrated humanities based curriculum to approximately 100
students. Our curriculum satisfies some core curriculum requirements
and offers students an opportunity to complete undergraduate
research in their Honors thesis.
GOAL I: Climate
USM continuously strives to make the campus a welcoming
climate inclusive in its understanding and integration across
multiple dimensions of diversity, including, but not limited
to, diversity based on race and ethnicity, gender, disability,
sexual orientation, age, gender expression and identity, religion
and class.
The USM Honors program draws its student and faculty members
from nearly every discipline at USM, making it an interdisciplinary,
diverse and inclusive learning community. Honors faculty have
also participated in the USM standing committee for campus
climate, civility and diversity. Honors faculty have been
actively involved in University wide initiatives related to
diversity including teach-ins, convocation, lecture and film
series, advising student organizations and editing university
publications. This participation has resulted in increased
awareness of issues regarding diversity here at USM and in
the UMaine system. Other strategies include ongoing work in
course and curriculum development, ongoing work in recruitment
and retention of students, faculty and staff, and ongoing
work in undergraduate research activity.
Opportunities are provided for dialogue about issues regarding
underrepresented populations and diversity in our classes,
in honors faculty board meetings, in the honors student association
meetings and its co-curricular activities. Additional opportunities
occur in course development activity and program planning
with the USM Honors council. The Honors program articulates
its philosophy regarding diversity and inclusion in our recruitment
activity and material, in our catalog copy, in our course
syllabi and in our participation in university wide and statewide
initiatives related to our program's mission. Throughout its
history, the Honors program has held no full time faculty
lines and has had no capacity to recruit its own faculty.
We have however actively searched for faculty who might widen
or broaden the representation of diverse standpoints in the
program among faculty who are already appointed in various
units at USM. We are attempting to broaden this diverse representation
in coming years.
Also throughout its history, the Honors program has been
housed in a small residential facility on Street in Portland
where staff and some faculty offices are located and where
students attend their Honors classes. Reasonable efforts have
been made to renovate this structure for accessibility. But
the environment is not welcoming for those with physical disabilities.
We relocate our classes for students and faculty who require
accommodation. The environment is problematic in this regard.
The Honors program does not have a budget for "programming"
in relation to any topic or subject matter, but we do make
every attempt to implement our philosophy regarding diversity
as discussed above. We articulate our accomplishments every
spring in reports to the USM faculty senate and to the USM
Honors council. Other methods of articulating this progress
include regular assessment and external review by the National
Collegiate Honors Council, which requires us to address matters
of diversity in its criteria for evaluation.
We have not spent adequate time determining objective measures
to assess these accomplishments. For example, we have not
established a data base regarding the racial and ethnic identities
of Honors students at USM. We have not developed objective
criteria for assessing our climate and its inclusivity. And
we have not conducted annual internal assessments to help
us improve the inclusivity of our climate.
Action: During the period 2003-2005, the USM Honors program
will establish measures for assessing the
inclusivity and welcoming climate of our learning community.
GOAL II: Academic Experience
The USM academic experience, which includes both
curricular and co-curricular activities, increasingly reflects
the multiplicity and diversity of communities and cultures
locally, nationally and globally.
The Honors Program employs various strategies to inform and
educate students, faculty, and the local community about diversity
and multiculturalism, and to create opportunities for public
dialogue among diverse communities. Our program has hosted
in the past, and is hosting this year, educational workshops,
conferences and multicultural dialogues with participation
by faculty of various disciplines on campus, our students,
and representatives of local minority groups. On the basis
of these dialogues, two of our seminars-one on the Balkan
Diaspora and the other on post-colonial Africa-- have been
recently added to our curriculum. Additionally the program
is this year sponsoring a university wide initiative, funded
by the Davis Educational Foundation to develop a more coherent
approach to general education at USM. This initiative will
include workshops on multiculturalism and civic engagement.
Prominent scholars with diverse backgrounds (from the Balkans
and South Africa to mention only two) have participated in
Honors led workshops.
Honors students are often in the vanguard in promoting diversity
awareness and multiculturalism on the USM campus and in the
local community. Last spring Honors students organized a conference,
"Crossing Borders," with a group of deaf students from Gallaudet
University. Students and faculty from USM, members of the
Maine deaf community, teachers from the Governor Baxter School
for the Deaf, as well as the general public, attended and
participated in the conference. This multicultural activism
of our students is a result of the Program's overall orientation
towards culture as a domain of praxis, that is, as a critical
intervention.
In both curricular and co-curricular offerings, Honors students
encounter local minority communities not only discursively
but also experientially. The Honors exit seminars (HON 301)
on the Balkan Diaspora and on Africa, taught in the Fall and
Spring respectively, not only engage our students in understanding
distant cultures and learning about the history of colonization,
but also expose them to the actual lives and experiences of
minority groups who have experienced Diaspora. Their stories
are heard, novels read, movies seen, and through all these
accounts of how people's lives have been affected by Diaspora,
the students learn how different identities and cultures are
intricately bound to each other and to ours, all being effects
of power relationships based on divisions of race, class,
ethnicity or sexual identity. Through this exposure the students
learn, via understanding the construction of marginal identities,
how the same power relations have shaped their own identities.
They are encouraged to examine the history of their own families
and to find in them traces of colonization, diversity and
polyvalent identities that have contributed to shaping to
student's own identity.
Students in the Honors Program also learn how to assess critically
the various forms of multiculturalism and diversity rhetoric
presently operative in our society. In many instances the
use of the words "multiculturalism" and "diversity" betrays
the crucial idea of multiculturalism, which is the relationship
between the power of our knowledge and education and our identities--not
the celebration of diversity per se. In our courses we teach
the concept of "critical multiculturalism" which, not at all
diminishing the importance of our diverse backgrounds, emphasizes
the history and context of power in essentialzing differences
among humans.
An important aspect of the multicultural education in Honors
is the understanding that our knowledge of "Western Civilization"
is inseparable from the production and reproduction of "white"
identity or "whiteness." In other words, "whiteness" is not
a biological but a cultural trace stemming from European civilization
and is presented as a pure, objective and rational knowledge
rather than as an identity nested in that knowledge. This
view is particularly important in an environment such as USM,
where "white" education prevails in the curricula. With this
in mind, the Honors curriculum has been carefully constructed
to teach about and examine critically "whiteness" as knowledge
and as identity. It attempts to balance traditional wisdom
and contemporary knowledge, the "whiteness" past and the critical
present, in maintaining multiculturalism as its educational
center. We teach students not only how to discover diversity
in their own identities by relating themselves to those who
are different, but also how to discern and analyze critically
the role of "whiteness" in these relationships.
In this context, "critical multiculturalism" is the point
where the entire Honor's curriculum, which is centered in
the idea of "Western civilization," comes full circle. Western
civilization as the world's center and its responsibility
for the decentralization of race, ethnicity, class and sexuality
among humans, has been brought to the realization of its own
marginality in relationship to the multicultural demands of
a global society.
This, however, is not to say that only the two exit seminars
contribute to the multicultural curriculum. From the first
course taken by Honors students (HON 100), the theme is carried
through the entire curriculum in various ways. In HON 100,
"Thinking and Writing." the students explore their own identities
through imaginative writing exercises designed to lead them
towards discovery of themselves as a polyvalent identity reflected
in texts in which all differences and diversities (racial,
ethnic, class or sexual) became exposed to them individually
and to the class. This creates opportunity for dialogue on
diversity in the true sense of this word. Diversity and identity
are approached here as an internalized order, not only as
an external social structure. It is very important to emphasize
this as a starting point, because once students discover themselves
as a nexus of external power relations, they can conceptualize
culture, knowledge history, myth, philosophy or science as
an elaborate history of their own becoming. Once students
are attuned to knowledge as "know yourself" they are placed
in the heart of "Western civilization" as their own present
experience. This relation to knowledge as an experience of
oneself remains present throughout the entire curriculum.
When students move to a particular set of original texts
from other times and places such as the Greek, Roman, Jewish,
Christian and Islamic cultural empires, they are able to see
themselves as microcosms of this history. Cognizant of differences
among the Greek polis and Roman Empire, Jewish, Christian
and Islamic theology, which often have been used to emphasize
cultural incommensurability, they also as a part of complete
knowledge of the past must find the common denominators among
them all--such as Abraham being the "father" of all three
monotheistic religions.
Once the cultural foundations, the canons of the western
"mind" have been established, the colloquia (HON 201 and HON
202) take students closer to our present experience. Both
colloquia have strong elements of critical evaluation of European
Enlightenment and Modernity. The colloquia examine issues
of sexual inequality in Western science, of social classes
and inequality in wealth, justice or cultural expression,
the relation between European-based sciences and racism, colonialism
and orientalism. As a part of the critical evaluation of Western
culture, we introduce the writings of African-American male
and female writers, we examine feminism and sexism in European
science and US poetry, and we question mass media representation
of Oriental peoples.
When the totality of its classroom and community education
is assessed, it is quite clear that the Honors Program is
dedicated to multicultural education. It is also important
to note that Honors Program faculty and students believe that
in order for multicultural education to be fully implemented,
it has to transcend the boundaries of traditional disciplinary
education.
Action: During the period 2003-2005, the USM Honors program
will establish measures for assessing the
outcomes of critical multiculturalism in the academic experience
of students.
GOAL III: Student Recruitment and Retention
USM strives to increase the diversity of its student
body through active outreach and recruitment. USM increasingly
works to develop structures and mechanisms that support the
retention of all students, particularly students of color
and other underrepresented populations.
The physical environment of the Honors house provides prospective
students an accurate vision of the program, in that, our classrooms,
offices, and support staff are under one roof. Because the
Honors Program thrives within a model of community based learning,
this structure is a beneficial recruitment and retention tool.
Students feel at home and often make a point of studying in
free spaces between classes. As we grow our program, however,
the Honors house will become too small to support our student
body and we may require larger and more accessible space.
The Honors house has been reviewed for ADA compliance (1991)
and every reasonable effort has been made to make the structure
compliant. Currently, we move classes and/or meetings upon
request should a student of visitor require accommodations.
Students requiring cognitive and/or emotional support are
referred to the variety of student support services in both
Portland and Gorham, including, but not limited to, The Learning
Center, Student Legal Services, Health and Counseling Services,
and the Department of Residential Life.
Twice a year (fall and early spring), Honors sends out letters
to the greater USM faculty requesting their input concerning
the recruitment of potential Honors students within the current
USM population. This process is open to every department and
discipline.
Currently, The Coordinator of Honors Student & Alumni
Activities, Beth Round, attends orientations with current
Honors students. We find our students often make the best
recruiters. Future strategies will build on this idea to include
personal contact between current Honors students and USM faculty
who may not be familiar with the program.
We are in close contact with the office of Admissions and
specifically with the, Director for Multicultural Recruitment,
to expand our recruitment strategies beyond our strong relationship
with international students currently attending USM. In the
coming years, Honors will recruit alongside Admissions in
areas that identify underrepresented populations, including
Upward Bound programs in New England and Portland High School.
In addition, our students are urged to attend regional and
national conferences, create and host programs that challenge
boundaries and identities. Because these experiences are open
to the greater USM student and faculty population, Honors
is responsible for educating the community about underrepresented
populations, which, in turn, becomes a recruitment and retention
tool. Activities such as these provide a meaningful and continuing
dialogue for our students and because Honors challenges the
historical definitions of identity while still creating a
strong community, there is a return on each student's investment
of time, passion and energy.
In our courses and activities, students and faculty seek
to achieve synthesis between their own cultures, international
cultures and the university culture (they have chosen to be
a part of) in such a way as to create cultural reformation
and freedom. Our Diaspora Seminars, dealing with issues pertaining
to the Balkans and Africa, seek to reach the growing refugee/immigrant
populations in Greater Portland.
Our seminar format courses engage students in the intimate
expression of individuality. Diversity makes itself present
in these interactions on many levels. These dialogues are
often carried outside Honors to other classes in a variety
of departments and our students take it upon themselves to
recruit other students they feel could benefit from Honors.
In addition, Honors retention success comes from the goals
both set and accomplished by our integrated curriculum, its
colloquia and seminars. This structure provides semester sub-goals,
which promote stability and momentum for any and all students.
As an outreach program, our student thesis projects also
function as recruitment tools. Student thesis projects draw
from a variety of sources on and off campus and across disciplines,
helping students develop a complex understanding of him/herself
in the world. The opportunities for each student to find and
confront his/her identity in a supportive environment is also
a strong retention tool.
Each student has a voice in the program. Student representatives
to the Honors Faculty Board have the opportunity to provide
observations and suggestions in the areas of recruitment and
retention. The Honors Faculty Board reports to the Honors
Council twice per year in order to relate student issues and
receive feedback concerning these issues.
The Honors Program conducted a Self Study Report in August
2001 for external reviewers of the National Collegiate Honors
Council. It was determined that though we receive consistent
returns from our recruitment and retention efforts, we require
assistance from the Office of Admissions in order to reach
a larger population of underrepresented students about our
program. Admission will also help us better assess our strategies.
We provide students opportunities to evaluate each course
and respective faculty. These evaluations provide predictors
for satisfaction and/or dissatisfaction. By identifying critical
points, and validating outcomes, evaluations help courses
evolve to increase retention.
Our student population is made up of a variety of ages, abilities
and financial and cultural backgrounds. We are aware of the
role finances, family responsibilities, intellectual challenge,
and self-confidence play for these traditionally underrepresented
students. These variables affect their pursuits and Honors
makes every effort to provide support where possible.
Though we have an understanding of our population in reference
to gender (62% female/ 38% men as of our Self Study Report
2001) and age (average age is 26), we are in the process of
building a comprehensive database that will yield useful information
concerning recruitment and retention of underrepresented populations.
It will be designed to track the progress of our recruitment
efforts as well as track each Honors student to help us identify
students who may need meaningful interventions to enable them
to attain their academic and personal goals. The data may
also be used in reports provided for local and state educators,
legislators, the general public, and others interested in
the value of investing in Honors education.
Action: During the period 2003-2005, the USM Honors program
will establish measures for assessing the
diversity (as outlined in the preamble) of its student body.
Through active outreach, recruitment, and advising, the Honors
program will increase retention of a diverse student body,
particularly students of color and other underrepresented
populations.
GOAL IV: Faculty and Staff
USM strives to increase the diversity of faculty
and staff, particularly faculty and staff of color, but inclusive
of other underrepresented populations as defined in Goal I.
As indicated previously, the Honors program does not hire
its own faculty. We do however participate in the selection
of new faculty by departments who have an ongoing partnership
with the program (e.g. classics). We also consciously search
for USM faculty who have not taught in the program to develop
new courses and to maintain some interdisciplinary balance
in students' thesis committees. In these two opportunities,
we actively seek faculty who may provide students with a critical
perspective on matters of race, class, gender, sexual orientation,
religion, etc. These efforts have perhaps been more successful
on matters of gender and religious diversity, than they have
been in relation to race or ethnicity. Our recent curriculum
development efforts are making inroads here. Our hiring practices
could better support USM's diversity plan if we actually had
any opportunity for recruiting and hiring new faculty and
staff. In our desire to expand and widen the Honors program
at USM, we hope to have such opportunity to include more diverse
faculty and staff. To this end, we are now pursuing curriculum
development initiatives which we hope will offer more minority
faculty at USM an opportunity to teach in our program.
Action: During the period 2003-2005, the USM Honors program
will develop new curricular offerings in collaboration with
faculty and staff of color at USM whose work is consistent
with our academic goals. Through this collaboration, the Honors
program will increase the participation in our program of
faculty and staff from underrepresented populations.
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