In Black America; Diverse Cultures: We Need To Understand Each Other: Dr. James Anderson, Professor of Psychology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

... From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is In Black America. If you take a new position at an institution, you get appointed to a new position within your institution and you're told a handle doesn't handle that, then be aware of the fact that a confrontation is inevitable.

Confrontation especially with the faculty, the one group that's probably most removed from retention efforts, most removed from selling diversity at the institution is the general faculty. And since most of our kids will spend the bulk of their academic time in classes with the general faculty, how could we not include them in this retention effort, or how could you all and how could I not expect them to be included and demand that they be included in some way shape or form, but you see the faculty, seems to general faculty, seems to be the group that is untouchable. And unfortunately if that's the case, then at any institution you will find your retention program, your diversity efforts will not be successful. Dr. James Anderson, Professor of Psychology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Recently, Florida A&M University held its fourth National Conference on Black Student Retention in Higher Education in New York City. The fourth day, working conference brought together administrators, faculty, researchers and students, and others who have a common interest in the education of black college

students. The conference provided a national form for the exchange of ideas and information. It also provided an opportunity to explore issues that influence the retention of black students in higher education, identify retention models which are adaptable to our respective institutions, expand the body of knowledge on diverse aspects of black student retention and to gain insight into educational perspectives which relate to the problem. I'm Johnny O. Hanson, Jr. this week, diverse cultures, we need to understand each other with Dr. James Anderson and Black America. Since confrontation is important, then you have to decide who will be your point person or who will be your point team at your institution. Do not make it to people who are most vulnerable. As an example, I'm a tenured faculty member in the psychology department.

I feel I have the latitude to go out and be the bad guy and confront the administrators and confront, especially the president, concerning the things that we need done. I'm not going to ask someone to develop mental studies. I'm not going to ask someone in the learning center. I'm not going to ask someone who's more vulnerable than me. Politically, again, clear strategies about what you're doing is important and that's something we do on our end. You identify your point team, your point people, not the people who are most vulnerable. For the past four years, the National Conference on Black Student Retention in Higher Education have brought together a very special group with a very special responsibility and a special hope for our Black youth and other minorities. Their specific interest may be diverse, but the general interest in unity that keep minority youth in school and helping them to progress through the educational pipeline at all levels. Dr. James Anderson, a professor of psychology at Indian University of Pennsylvania, has been an active participant since the forum was first held back in 1985.

This year, Dr. Anderson continues to give us insight into the problem of Black student retention. Dr. Anderson's address focuses on diverse cultures we need to understand each other. Dr. James Anderson. Arm yourself. I'm speaking to us again. Arm yourself with a strong knowledge base concerning what you're talking about. It's one thing to say to people, we need to not only recruit more students, but we need to retain more students and then not have the specific strategies which speak to the character of your institution. Let me give you an example. I got a call from someone, a sister in a Chicago Community College system just last week. She said, James, we're having a major retention conference in May or June or something like that. We need you to come to talk about learning styles and how you get faculty members to address students, learning styles, etc. And I said to her, when I'm booked up until September, she said, you can't be and she went into this tirade about how I had to come, etc. And I said, dear, I can just send you the same things that I read.

I can just send you the things that I've developed. My point was, don't sit around and wait for me or don't sit around and wait for Reggie or don't sit around and wait for other people to come. You enhance your knowledge base. So when you have to go to the decision makers and request certain changes and demand certain changes, that you have the knowledge base that you can sell your product, which in this case is retention or overall is diversity. But we don't do that. We don't search out the information like we should and it's funny because this is the very thing that we say to students is that you are not enhancing your knowledge base about your culture, about issues that are important and imperative to you and at the same time, we don't do it. So if one of the seemingly growing concerns now at many institutions is how do we take into account students learning styles and how do we somehow get faculty members to be more involved in fusing their teaching styles, then you read the information. And then you're in a position so that when you have to go into meetings and you have to try to sell retention, you understand what you're talking about.

You can't guess at a lot of this. Be very perceptive, again speaking to us, be very perceptive. Retention cannot be successful unless you take into account the social political factors and my colleagues from Buffalo know what I'm talking about unless you take into account the social political factors that revolve around retention. You cannot be successful. Understand that. That means you have to identify your allies. That means this is our priority now before you even begin your strategies. You have to identify your strategy, you have to identify your allies, you have to identify your point persons. You cannot hope to use trial and error in terms of retention and diversity. And then know how to package your effort to various components on campus. The things you have to sell to the faculty senate are different in the things you have to sell to the people in developmental studies, which are different from the things you sell to people in athletics. You cannot necessarily use the same strategy for each group. For example, people in the faculty senate are only concerned with how what you're talking

about ties into the system of evaluation that might affect them, does it tie into merit pay increases, what does it have to do with what the union thinks if you have a union at your institution, et cetera. They are not concerned with general issues around retention say that impact developmental strategies because most of the general faculty does not work with the developmental program and care not to, all right. So what you package to the faculty is different from what you package to, again, other areas and be clear on that, identify the needs at your campus. Usually people who are in the trenches of retention at the developmental area in learning centers or in the retention program are people that you don't have to sell this to the same way as the general faculty, which is a much tougher sell. Now let me begin to address a few things around diversity and racism in particular, not necessarily things you haven't heard before, but perhaps a new way to look at it and then to just maybe give you some concrete ideas about how to address things. First of all, and I'll look at this racism at three levels, the administrative level, the

second level will be the level of student affairs and developmental programs and then the third level, the faculty level. Again, the level that most people don't want to deal with, don't want to touch, okay. Administrative level. There are three words that administrators seem not to understand the relationship between or among, diversity, access and quality, okay. Diversity, increased diversity implies increased access, but the general prevailing philosophy is that once you increase those two access and diversity, then quality must suffer. Almost any predominantly white institution that is prevailing philosophy, that if we enhance diversity, bring in more diverse student populations ethnically diverse, culturally diverse, economically diverse, then quality will suffer. For you to try to institute retention efforts when that is the prevailing philosophy means you run and head along into a brick wall. The first thing you need to do is get your senior level administrators to make clear, verbal, substantive statements about their perceptions of the relationship between diversity, access

and quality and make sure it filters down to everybody else and make sure they're willing to do it. Now, some of the assumptions that underscore the relationship of these three variables are as follows. That diverse students clearly are both different and deficient, different and deficient, different in the sense of they come in with different psychological, social characteristics, they have different learning styles, they have different behavioral characteristics, et cetera. Now, if we aren't clear in our head what those characteristics are, one of the things I like to do when I go to institutions is say to the general faculty and people that work in programs, can you write down some of the cultural and cognitive assets, cultural and cognitive assets of students of color that they walk into this institution with that you should be using right now as springboards for success. Most people can't even write three. Most people can't even write three and here they are running retention programs. If you don't know the cultural and cognitive assets, the students of colors are utilizing

and behavioral characteristics and psychological dimensions, et cetera, then how can you build those things into your retention efforts? Chances are most people will rely upon traditional kinds of efforts which, I mean, we have 20 years of evidence that traditional retention efforts are not as successful with students of color. So the evidence is overwhelming concerning that. Another assumption that underscores this relationship between these three variables, diversity, quality and access, has to do with, again, putting the responsibility for student success primarily on the developmental program and the retention people. How can you be responsible for student success? Again, when I mentioned that the students spend the bulk of their academic time with the general faculty and you're responsible on your end and your retention program with limited resources and limited people of making their efforts, which usually are very poor quality efforts, making their efforts succeed. In other words, you end up doing their homework, you end up rewriting their wrongs and cleaning

up their mess. You should not be burdened with that responsibility and in the social, political nature of what goes on in your institution, you have to make it clear to VPs, Deans and to your president that that is not your responsibility. There are people here that we have worked together at some of the institutions and we've put into place, for example, any nursing program, any allied health program, any science-based program, or even accounting in business in which you have abstract courses and abstract information, then it's imperative that when kids first get there, especially students of color, that they are introduced to some type of critical thinking skills course, which includes reasoning, problem solving, etc. They must have that, anyone in the sciences knows that students cannot get through without reasoning, problem solving, and critical thinking skills. Consequently, how can you have a college adjustment course or a college survival course that these people rave about, this kills me when I go to, they rave about their college adjustment in college survival courses and when you look at the course, there are none of these components. None of these components.

These are just courses in which kids come in and cathart and feel good about being at this institution, etc. And then they go into chemistry and then they go into biology and then they go into math 101 and can't compete. So you must have those components. So racism exists then when the institution does not see fit to have those components. And when you canvass to have those things and are rejected, are rejected when there's clear evidence that those things work, okay. We've made some change. Let me just cite a couple examples. We convinced a Cleveland State myself and some of the persons here at Cleveland State convinced the math department to change the way that they teach calculus. There's almost no minority students who are getting through calculus for years. And so we went from a large lecture team to a format to one that's based on a UCLA model and one which when I watched what Asian students do, when they get together and study math and science, we went into that model and got into smaller groups and had different kind of peer group interactions and a lot of other things and boom right away we'll find that minority students are much successful, much more successful. A prairie view at the nursing program and some people here from that program, you can

talk to them. They have decided that they are going to initiate the critical thinking skills course as soon as the nurses get there because they must have it. They must be strong in those areas to go into higher level courses. Don't even fool yourself. And if you don't have a way of assessing where they are when they first get there, again, we're committing a cardinal sin for the kids. But the point is racism exists is operative when the students come in and then we attempt to initiate these kinds of efforts and are rebuffed by the institution. And that's when the confrontation, you have two choices at that point. You simply recede into the background and get your check every two weeks or you become confrontational. Okay? And that's the social, political nature of retention. A couple other things about student affairs. Student affairs efforts assume that students of color must adapt to what's already there when they come in. I think that was, that was the, you know, when you see films, when you listen to students talk, when you go to institutions, that's the flavor that we come in as an outside alien entity and must adapt to everything that's here, as opposed to adaption being reciprocal.

The student affairs program altering itself in some ways. I was reading in a chronicle not too long ago an example of how diversity is being implemented at the University of Vermont and some of you might have read that. And one of the points was that the administration at the University of Vermont has decided to actually become very proactive concerning diversity and to make all incoming freshmen take seminars and other kinds of things concerning cultural diversity. Also in that article I mentioned, the group that was most resistant to this notion were international students who said we are not minorities because they aren't in their country. Psychologically, they are not minorities. However, they did not perceive that they should be part of this cultural diversity effort. The point is, is that the administration had to tell student affairs and some other areas to alter their approach to diversity, to reciprocate. We expect students to come in and make some adaptions, but I want us to make some adaption. If your institution is not willing to do that, again, you have two choices.

Be confrontational. And to do it in a politically sophisticated and savvy way, all right, you're not just going to storm into the president's office and say, man, if you don't do this, you know, we're going to come in here and thump you. No, that's not going to happen, okay? Never say that to someone who signs your check, please. Again, people in the student affairs and developmental skills area still lack the knowledge base concerning students who are culturally diverse and do not make proactive efforts to get that knowledge base. It's one thing to have a knowledge base about how to teach developmental math, about how to teach developmental writing, okay? It's another thing to have a knowledge base concerning how do I teach it to populations which are diverse into students who, when they process information in a classroom, perhaps do it in a way that's somewhat different from, quote, the traditional student. And they do not seek out that knowledge as to how to inject that into the program. And there's no pressure on them to do it.

And there's no accountability when they don't do it. We have retention programs. I go to universities and I find retention programs that for some 10 to 15 years have had some of the most atrocious retention rates going. And the first thing I say is, who's responsible for this? Who directs this program? Who's held accountable for this? Everybody's looking around. I don't know. I don't know. Passing the book. I don't know. Okay? Because no one is held accountable. You see, that's how racism shows itself. No accountability for anything. Now, how can any of us exist in that kind of situation? Well, many of us don't think about that. We're going along. We're trying to make ends meet. We're trying to plug things into the socket and produce a hundred watts when we only have 10 watts coming up. In a third area in which student affairs and developmental areas, et cetera, tend to manifest racism, again, is when decision makers fail to make critical decisions that impact the survival of the student. Critical decisions, in a sense, that there are things that I or Reggie or other people in retention could tell you that you could take to your institution tomorrow that would

begin to bolster your efforts. Real common sensical things, you don't even need a PhD for, for example. Most retention programs have a format in which when kids come in, high risk kids, and a large percentage of the students of color are high risk when they come into many institutions, they have to purportedly attend tutoring classes, developmental classes, and then they're generally mid-classes. However, none of it is mandatory. None of it is mandatory. You bring kids in, you call them high risk, you put them in a high risk component, and then you say, you don't have to go to tutoring, you don't have to go to developmental classes, you don't have to go to your general limit classes. Come on, who are we kidding? Who are we kidding? How can you allow that to happen? I mean, if there's one thing that I am going to quote, bitch about, it is that these kids are going to come in, and if we have something good to offer them, they're going to sit in here until they can test out of it. Now again, I don't need a doctor to know that. I know from common sense, and I know just from perusing to retention literature and perusing developmental literature that clearly at-risk students must attend developmental classes,

must attend tutoring sessions, et cetera, however, when no one is held accountable for that decision, for that laxity, then that's racism, okay? Lays a fair approach to high risk education. Now you have to remember, the administration will have arguments to counter whatever you say. For example, one of the persistent arguments is that, well Jim, why should we bring these kids in and treat them any different from the rest of the student population? Isn't that discriminating? I say, if you really think that's true, then you don't bring them in in some high-risk category. You bring them in like everybody else. If you're going to treat them like everybody else, however, if you do all these assessments prior to their entering and you bring them in and then say, this is a high-risk category then they're not like everybody else. Real simple, okay? You just make the decision whether you are going to confront and contend with that philosophy and the kinds of strategies that are necessary to overcome it.

And then I have to even include something about black folks in here in this second section of racism under student affairs and developmental studies. And that is when people of color co-opped the students. We have many administrators, we have many persons in developmental areas and many persons in student affairs area who do not assert themselves when they know they should, when they know they should, when things are clearly wrong, when things clearly are not operative and they simply fade into the background too and I can't think of a euphemistic way to say this, so I'm going to say it as we would say it in the street to just cover their ass. All right? That's the co-optive racism that will allow every year one, two, three hundred kids to just fall by the wayside another year after that. Simply because they are not willing to assert themselves in a proactive way to demand that we have the kinds of things that are effective and functional and I'm sorry I didn't see

the young brother over there, I wouldn't have said that so I won't curse anymore, okay? But he's hurt it. That's cool. And so when we co-opt and maybe someone might say this is self-preservation, maybe someone might say that but remember that kind of individual self-preservation has nothing to do with the collective self-preservation that this conference in our efforts represent and that's what's important, okay? And if one is not willing to give up the individual gains which are really superfluous kinds of gains if the collective body suffers and in this case we're talking about the kids, understand you're being paid primarily if you're involved in a retention effort you're there for the survival of the students and nothing else, not to get a title, not to get a high salary, you're there for the survival of the kids. If those other things come along, those insular things that's fine and more power to you but when you sacrifice the bottom line for those other things and then become a co-optive kind of racist along with the rest of the administration then you deserve all the comments that the students

make about you. And lastly the faculty. And lastly the faculty, again understand prevailing philosophy of the faculty when it comes to diversity and when it comes to retention and prevailing philosophy says, hey, this is not my responsibility. I have nothing to do with it which clearly suggests that these persons have never, ever adopted the true mission of an instructor or a teacher. Also with this prevailing philosophy is the notion that there is an ideal student that comes into that classroom and generally that is who they want to see. Generally that is who they want to talk to. And the further away a student gets from that ideal standard, okay, the more denigration, I guess the word I have to use, the more denigration they often will have in terms of how they deal with that student, how they talk about that student, how they think about that student. Okay.

What do we do about that? That's a toughy, again because many faculty members are protected by unions, many departments are autonomous and seemingly untouchable and then when you start dealing with high powered research institutions then we really are talking about not being able to have the impact that we would like. But let me give you both extremes in terms of an example to show you what an institution that's committed to diversity does and what one isn't looks like. At Miami Day together with the University of Miami have decided on a joint effort, one of the first joint efforts ever to happen at Miami Day, it's funny just to show you how institutions can be lost. University of Miami sits in Miami proper, 55% Hispanic, 12% black, white folks, the minority down there. And the University of Miami had never considered cultural diversity. Because they had all these rich white kids coming down from the North because the University of Miami has a reputation as a party school, these kids were coming from all over to attend the University of Miami and now they're not doing that in the same numbers.

So you of Miami had to look up one day and say, oh, we have to deal with the indigenous population here which is diverse and we don't know what to do. So they have engaged in a joint effort with the University of Miami and both presidents, especially President McCabe at Miami Day, who's a man, I genuinely respect. President McCabe said to his faculty two years ago, look, we exist in an area of diversity, diversity is our mission. Therefore, all of you, all of you, will become well versed at this area. In other words, to faculty members, he said, you will know how to teach. You're teaching style. In fact, we'll reflect diversity. You will become knowledgeable about diversity in student learning styles, et cetera. And do you know how I'm going to make it work? He said, I'm going to tie the things we offer to you to merit pay increases to the system of evaluation that's important for mobility towards tenure, et cetera. You see, he tied it to things that they value. He didn't do like a lot of presidents do, give that symbolic lip service and say, on the

day of faculty institute, well, diversity is now part of our mission for the school year and then you never hear another word to rest of the year. He tied it to things that they value, okay? And I created a course for them that's being taught at the University of Miami, a graduate course, and all faculty. All new faculty to come into Miami date must take this course during the semester on cultural diversity and teaching styles and learning styles, and then all existing faculty must take it. Now that's one end of the continuum in terms of commitment. The other end of the continuum is an institution I was at and I won't name it in Virginia a couple of weeks ago. And at that institution, after having met with the faculty, after having met with the students, I then met with the presidents and the vice presidents. And at that point, the president said, well, you know Jim, it's nice to have you here, but we are not ready for this stuff. Stuff, that's what, and I looked at it and I said, stuff, I said, I said, stuff is what's on my plate. This was at a lunch. I said, stuff is what's on my plate. The knowledge base that I've spent five hours given to your people today is what makes kids get out of this institution.

Now this philosophy that you have, meaning we're not ready here in Virginia, here in the south, in essence, is what he was saying. That philosophy is a murderous philosophy and you have to tell people this, it's good to bring in outside people to tell people that because then they leave, okay? And you may or may not come back. But the point is, is that those are two examples of extremes, okay? That's how you get faculty involved. But there are other ways. Let me give you an example. Southern Illinois, Edwardsville, somebody here from there, right? Okay, SIO Edwardsville decided that they didn't have the support from the top right now. So we're going to use a bottom-up approach, okay? We're going to get the developmental program, super strong, we're going to get the minority engineering program, super strong, we're going to get the nursing program together and then we're going to have two departments come in and buy into all of this and we're going to become so strong with that component that every other department, when they see this success that they're going to have, every other department is going to have to look at them

and then explain why they're not that successful, okay? So you don't have to always use a top-down approach to impact the faculty. Sometimes you can use the bottom-up approach and give you one more example, a Rutgers, okay? New Brunswick campus. The high-risk students and the minority students come in through the gateway program. Never in the history of Rutgers had the high-risk students who were mostly white but minority students also come through here. Never in the history of Rutgers had the high-risk kids in the gateway program, ever done better than the general admit kids who are all these 11, 12, 1300 SAT kids, done as well as that group in the general psych sections. And so we went and worked with the general psych students and taught them about how to incorporate relevancy into your lecture and how to incorporate aspects of multicultural teaching styles and learning styles, et cetera, and then for the first time last year, the gateway students did better. And then they thought it was luck, and the next semester the gateway students did better. Now, do you know what the general psych faculty is saying?

How is it that these gateway high-risk kids are doing better than all these rich white SAT students who are coming into Rutgers? See now there's pressure on the general faculty, not as pressure on the other grand students to explain why they are not as successful when they have a pool of students who are coming in and purportedly are critical thinkers and purportedly are good writers and critical readers. Dr. James Anderson, Professor of Psychology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I would like to thank Florida A&M University for their assistance in the production of this program. Remember views and opinions expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin. Until we meet again for in Black America's Technic-Overtuicer Cliff Hargrove, I'm John A. O. Hanson, Jr., please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America

cassettes, Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building V, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John Hanson, join me this week on in Black America. Moreover, we're beginning to find now that many of the things that apply solely to minority students when we begin to map high-risk white students for their learning styles. When we begin to look at their coping strategies, we're beginning to see that they match up.

Dr. James Anderson, this week on in Black America.