People of Color in Predominantly White Institutions

Different Perspectives on Majority Rules

10th Annual National Conference (November 6-8, 2005)
Cornhusker-Marriott Hotel
333 South 13th St., Lincoln, Nebraska

General Info | Call for Papers | Concurrent Sessions | Registration | Conference Schedule | Advisory Committee | Conference Proceedings

Achieving Greater Expectations by Making Excellence Inclusive

Alma R. Clayton-Pedersen, Vice President for Education and Institutional Renewal, Association of American Colleges and Universities

Abstract
AAC&U's major initiative-Making Excellence Inclusive-is designed to explore how colleges and universities can fully utilize the resources of diversity to achieve academic excellence for all students. This initiative builds upon decades of campus work to build more inclusive communities, established scholarship on diversity that has transformed disciplines, and extensive research on student learning that has altered the landscape of the academy. Over time, colleges have begun to understand that diversity, in all of its complexity, is about much more than a diversity program or having students of color on campus. While many campus leaders agree on the need for systemic change, separate initiatives that have been insufficiently linked to the core academic mission and inadequately coordinated across different parts of the academy typify current institutional engagement with diversity. This session will discuss how campuses might fully engage the entire campus in recognizing the unique contributions that each community member brings to the learning endeavor, while also acknowledging that when myths and stereotypes about people of color go unchecked, everyone's learning is diminished

Alma R. Clayton-Pedersen is Vice President for Education and Institutional Renewal at the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U). She is Co-director of AAC&U? Network for Academic Renewal (a series of working conferences), and director of the Greater Expectations Institute as well as several grant-funded projects that focus on organizational learning and sustaining change efforts. Dr. Clayton-Pedersen is a national leader on issues of institutional change, particularly collaborative leadership, student preparedness for college level work, retention and success, and linking diversity and academic excellence. She is co-author of Enacting Diverse Learning Environments: Improving the Climate for Racial/Ethnic Diversity in Higher Education, which provides a framework of the dimensions of campus climate and illustrations of promising practices to enhance the climate for diversity. She has fifteen years of campus-based experience, including directing a significant number of studies on student engagement and retention, and campus services. Her consulting expertise is on diversity, success of underrepresented students, policy, organizational learning, and program development and evaluation. Clayton-Pedersen received a B.S. from UW-Milwaukee in community education, and both the M.Ed. in human development counseling and the Ph.D. in public policy from Vanderbilt.