Resources

• Improved racial and cultural awareness
• Enhanced openness to diversity and challenge
• Greater commitment to increasing racial understanding
• More occupational and residential desegregation later in life
• Enhanced critical thinking ability
• Greater satisfaction with the college experience
• Perceptions of a more supportive campus racial climate

• More student-centered approaches to teaching and learning
• More diverse curricular offerings
• More research focused on issues of race/ethnicity and gender
• More women and faculty of color involved in community and volunteer service

• Cultivation of workforce with greater levels of crosscultural competence
• Attraction of best available talent pool
• Enhanced marketing efforts
• Higher levels of creativity and innovation
• Better problem-solving skills
• Greater organizational flexibility

• More research on the effects of affirmative action in the workplace
• Higher levels of service to community/civic organizations
• Greater equity in society
• A more educated citizenry

Source: Milem, Jeffrey. (2002). The educational benefits of diversity: Evidence from multiple sectors. In M.J. Chang, D. Witt, J. Jones, & K. Hakuta (Eds.) Compelling interest: Examining the evidence on racial dynamics in colleges and universities (126-169). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Inclusivity
Broadly speaking, inclusivity refers to the intentional consideration of all aspects of human lived experiences when creating, revising, or removing institutional structures and programs. An inclusive educational institution is defined by equality of access and opportunity and a sustained sense of belonging.

Equity
In education, equity refers to the principle of fairness in pursuit of equality. Equitable efforts are implemented in pursuit of equality. At MIAD, we use this term to describe our focused efforts to offset imbalances in power, access, privilege, or opportunity.

Equality
The state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities.

Diversity
Refers to the range of human differences in identity, experience, and worldview, and means that each individual is unique and equally worthwhile. In an art and design educational environment, the scope of differences necessarily encompasses factors such as learning abilities and artistic approaches.

Cultural Competence
A set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency or among professionals and enables those involved to work effectively in cross-cultural situations.

Essential elements to becoming more culturally competent include:

1. Valuing diversity
2. Having the capacity for cultural self-assessment
3. Being conscious of the dynamics inherent when cultures interact
4. Having institutionalized culture knowledge
5. Having developed adaptions to service delivery reflecting an understanding of cultural diversity.

Cultural Humility
The ability to maintain an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented in relation to aspects of cultural identity that are most important to the person. Cultural humility focuses on self-humility rather than achieving a state of knowledge or awareness.

 Culture
The integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of a group. The culture of any one groups is continuously impacted by the culture of other groups and is thus constantly in flux.

Access
The ways in which educational institutions strive to ensure students, employees, and guests have equal and equitable opportunities to take full advantage of their education. This may include adding services or removing potential barriers to participation.

Campus Climate
Also referred to as “campus culture.” Refers to the beliefs, perceptions, relationships, attitudes, and rules – written or not – that shape and influence how a particular school functions, e.g. the physical and emotional safety of students and employees, the orderliness of classrooms and public spaces, or the degree to which a school embraces its diversity.

Bias
Prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair. Unconscious or unacknowledged prejudice is often referred to as implicit bias.

Multicultural education
Education or teaching that incorporates the histories, texts, values, beliefs, and perspectives of people from different cultural backgrounds.

Intercultural
Focuses on the mutual exchange of ideas and cultural norms as well as the development of deep relationships. On an intercultural campus, no one is left unchanged because everyone learns from one another and grows together.

Hidden curriculum
Refers to the unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons, values, and perspectives learned on campus, e.g. the implicit academic, social, and cultural messages communicated to students.

Opportunity gap
Refers to the ways in which race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, English proficiency, community wealth, familial situations, or other factors contribute to or perpetuate lower educational aspirations, achievement, and attainment for certain groups of students. Generally speaking, the opportunity gap refers to the unequal or inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities.

Personal identity
Our unique sense of ourselves and our relationship to the outside world; an awareness of and identification with oneself as a separate individual. Any given individual has multiple personal identities, and their meanings and relevance are contextual.

Examples of personal identities include how a person names for themselves their gender, race, or sexuality. These names or terms may be different than what the person shares with others.

Social identity
The set of characteristics by which a person is definitively recognizable or known by the society in which they live. Any given person has multiple social identities, and their meanings and relevance are contextual.

Examples of social identities include being a father, mother, student, physician, lawyer, homeless person, Catholic, etc.