Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Paying Forward, PhD-Style

Great IHE article about SisterMentors, "a unique D.C.-area program working to nudge girls and women of color through the notoriously leaky academic pipeline at all levels":

...SisterMentors will send its first group of five high school students off to college this September, just as the organization, which started as a dissertation support group in 1997 and expanded to mentor young girls in 2001, celebrates its 10th anniversary. The essence of the program is simple, but significant: Female minority doctoral candidates living and working in the D.C. area while they write their dissertations benefit from mentoring one another through a long (they’ll say prolonged) process. They then “pay it forward,� so to speak, in their work mentoring the middle and high school girls (many of whom, it’s worth noting, are avid young volunteers themselves). More minority girls go to college, with the hope that more minority women will be there ready to teach them...

During my most pessimistic moments, I believe that higher ed access for folks of color will be up to grass-roots groups like this as there appears to be little will or ability or both to fight for it on a large-scale institutional level. Although maybe there is hope to be found in this College Board report, “From Federal Law to State Voter Initiatives: Preserving Higher Education’s Authority to Achieve the Educational, Economic, Civic, and Security Benefits Associated With a Diverse Student Body� (pdf). As reported in Diverse Issues in Higher Education:

According to lead author Arthur L. Coleman, the paper was written in response to the questions posed in the light of Michigan Proposal 2 and other ballot initiatives in Washington, California and the executive order in Florida.

“It was an effort to educate higher ed leaders in order to preserve their diversity goals… and to provide strategies to legitimize the need for the compelling nature of diversity in their institutions,� Coleman says.

A number of strategies to deflect or defeat voter initiatives need to be considered, say the authors. Coalition groups need to be built not only with education leaders, but also with business, military, government and other leaders to help shape future policy. Advocacy should reach across a broad spectrum of people, and must represent everyone’s interests. Finally, besides full-scale public discourse about the benefits of a diverse student body, the report says “the complexities and nuances of research regarding the many benefits associated with student diversity must be effectively translated into common-sense propositions that have meaning to voters.�

...“We can’t divorce the message from the messenger, or policy from the public perception,� he says. “This is for college leaders to go beyond the four corners of their institution and do the educationally smart thing and the legally right thing.�

In conclusion, the report says it is important that higher education leaders not lose sight of the core issues and challenges associated with access, opportunity and diversity throughout the education pipeline.

“Thus, attention to longer term investments (such as support for pipeline-building programs) and shorter term strategies (such as rigorous evaluation and pursuit of all available avenues — race-conscious and race-neutral — likely to advance institutional goals) can frame a comprehensive and coherent action agenda that is compelling in the court of law, just as it is in the court of public opinion,� says the report.

Hmmm: the "educationally smart thing" and the "legally right thing" to do. Have we completely given up on the economically smart and morally right things to do?

Related Note: Remember to check out this conference if you're in the Twin Cities area next month.

Posted by perry032 at March 27, 2007 07:41 AM | TrackBack
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