Multiculturalism at Historically Black Colleges & Universities
Alcorn State University, the Southern Education
Foundation, the Association of American Colleges and Universities
and other partners hosted the inaugural National Leadership
Institute on Multiculturalism at Historically Black Colleges
and Universities (HBCUs) recently. Participants discussed the
challenges and opportunities inherent in increasing racial
and ethnic diversity, multiculturalism, and internationalization
on campuses originally created to educate African Americans.
Dr. Clinton
Bristow, Jr., president of Alcorn State University explained
that the convening is important not only because of the judicial
fiats, but also because, “our
colleges and universities must prepare students to work and
live in this globally independent world.” Attorney Lynn
Huntley, executive director of the Southern Education Foundation,
a project partner, agrees. Said Huntley, “In order to
prepare students to live in a new world of diversity wrought
by globalizing economies and the revolution in technology,
our nation's colleges and universities must themselves become
models of inclusion, and intergroup and international understanding
and learning.”
The goals
of the National Leadership Institute are: (1) to begin developing
new knowledge and understanding by opinion makers, policy
shapers, senior executives and other stakeholders about the
unique role HBCUs play in the national effort to foster and
reap the educational benefits of diversity; (2) to identify
and promote policies and practices that will strategically
position HBCUs as foremost free-standing, mission-based higher
education institutions and as pipelines through which students
attending two-year Hispanic Serving Institutions, Tribal
colleges and other two-year institutions can complete a four-year
baccalaureate degree at moderate and low-cost institutions;
and through which historically and predominately white institutions
can secure a “critical mass” of multicultural,
academically well prepared students for graduate and professional
schools; and (3) to lay the foundation to formulate, disseminate
and promote the use of “Principles and Standards of Good
Practice to Maintain Multiculturalism at HBCUs.”
“AAC&U is especially pleased to be a
co-sponsor for the upcoming National Leadership Institute at
Alcorn State University,” remarked AAC&U president
Carol Geary Schneider. “We all recognize that higher
education still has much work to do in expanding educational
opportunity, teaching all students about America's struggles
for democratic inclusion and justice, and providing all students
with the intercultural skills they will need in a diverse and
still fractured world. Historically Black Colleges and Universities
and other minority serving institutions have always played
a pioneering role in American society. It is especially appropriate,
then, for HBCU's to take the lead in shaping new forms of intercultural
learning. This important meeting promises to be a landmark
event,” added Schneider.#