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November 08, 2005
Cultural breadth inquiry examining collected data
Last spring, questions were raised about how students should deal with grievances about diversity in their classes. Questions regarding the Cultural Breadth requirements of the Hamline Plan were also brought up. According to Nancy Holland, Philosophy department chair and member of the Academic Affairs Committee (AAC), this is not only an issue of the curricular requirements but also of classroom climate and the constantly changing face of diversity.
“Diversity is not something you [learn about] for one semester and forget about,” Holland said, but an on-going process throughout one’s education. The AAC is trying to collect data on what the shortcomings are within this issue of diversity in our classrooms by looking at the teacher and cultural breadth evaluations done at the end of each course. These evaluations are completed anonymously online by students and are not mandatory, but they will help immensely in judging the degree and direction of changes around this topic.
Some students are very good about filling out these evaluations and giving their honest opinions about the classes and teachers. “For how much we’re paying, we should let them know,” said sophomore Katelynn Jensen.
“Besides,” said junior Chris Chamberlain “it only takes about 15 minutes to do all of them.” One problem brought up was the fact that many students don’t show up for class and therefore do not know or care what happened. If evaluations are not filled out by enough students, there will not be sufficient data to make any changes in either curriculum content or classroom climate from the faculty. If diversity really is an important issue to students, as it should be, filling out evaluations is the best way to make student voices heard.
A study done at Hamline in 1997 by professors Jim Bonilla and Patricia Palmerton showed that students today have a lot of the same complaints as students eight years ago did regarding diversity in our classrooms and our school as a whole. Curricula lacking in diverse sources and perspectives, different ethnicities not understanding each other, and classrooms full of students and teachers not being able to admit they might be wrong were prevalent in 1997, and still are today.
Although the data from the AAC compilation of this year’s evaluations will not be processed and evaluated until next fall, making personal efforts to make classroom climate more accepting and open is a way for students to create a better atmosphere of diversity in classes.
Changing the curriculum is only a small part of improving how everyone gets along in circumstances such as these. The evaluations will help improve the instruction side of things, but there is nothing keeping students from trying to make a difference on their own. Both Bonilla and Holland stressed that no substantial modifications can be made to the system until there is enough information to make decisions about what needs to be done. Curricula can not be changed, the grievance policy can not be clarified, and teaching styles can not be altered without the help of the students. Then the hard work and technicalities will be in the hands of the AAC and students will simply need to be patient and keep open minds about the whole process.
Posted by msveum at November 8, 2005 12:02 PM
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