Questions and Answers about
American Commitments
Goals: Helping higher education respond to diversity
What is American Commitments? What are
its goals?
How does American Commitments define
"diversity"?
What view of American democracy guides
this work?
How does the initiative serve AAC&U's
mission?
Approaches: How the American Commitments initiative
works
How many institutions are involved in
American Commitments?
What resources does American Commitments
provide?
What did faculty teams working in the
initiative actually study?
Results: Changes in the curriculum and in student
learning
What changes in the curriculum are emerging
from this work?
Is there any research on the effects
of diversity courses on student learning?
For More Information: Additional resources and
ways to become involved
Where can I find more information?
How can I become involved?
Goals: Helping higher education respond to diversity
What is American Commitments?
What are its goals for campus diversity?
American Commitments is a multi-project initiative that focuses
on the connections between societal diversity and democratic
aspirations. Begun in 1993, the initiative provides resources
to help colleges and universities address diversity in their
mission, campus community, and educational programs. American
Commitments links a national network of colleges and universities
seeking to increase diversity on their campuses and in their
curricula and to make diversity a positive educational resource.
The American Commitments initiative has supported faculty
learning about cultural diversity in the United States and
is helping campuses to change their curricula to reflect American
cultural and democratic pluralism. A primary goal is to graduate
students who are prepared and inspired to contribute to the
success of a just and diverse democracy.
Return to top
How does American Commitments
define "diversity"?
American Commitments defines "diversity" broadly.
It addresses not only race and gender but the intersections
of these and other sources of human identity such as religion,
ethnicity, age, sexual preference, class, and ability. By
linking diversity with democracy, AAC&U argues that diversity
is a civic issue, not special pleading for particular interests
or a recipe for Balkanization. As a civic issue, diversity
calls for reengagement with democratic aspirations, principles,
and possibilities and also for recognition of the asymmetries
of acknowledgment, opportunity, and justice that are woven
in our nation's past and current histories.
Return to top
What view of American democracy
guides this work?
As Benjamin Barber says, "The leading dilemma of our
time is whether the need to honor and acknowledge diversity
can be reconciled with the need to create a common civic fabric
with which Americans can identify."
American Commitments addresses societal diversity as a means,
not an end. Its goals are the dignity of full recognition
for all peoples and more just relationships among us. In exploring
American pluralism, the initiative has become a creative catalyst,
challenging educators and learners to develop ways to live
together productively in communities that value difference.
Toleration, once considered a signal social virtue, is insufficient.
Society needs communities collaborating to build more just,
responsive, and inclusive forms of what John Dewey has called
"associated living."
- The following questions about the intersection of diversity
and democracy guided the various AAC&U American Commitments
activities:
- What must we know and understand about the multiplicity
of groups and people that have been unequally acknowledged
in our nation?
- What democratic concepts can we draw on from our own U.S.
history to guide us in forging new civic covenants among
our people?
- How are we to understand the contradictory interconnections
between democratic aspiration and structural injustice?
- What kinds of intercultural competencies will graduates
need to negotiate their disparate and multiple commitments
and communities, inherited and self-chosen?
- What kinds of knowledge and capabilities are required
for full participation in a pluralist democracy? What kinds
of values?
- What are the crucial distinctions between recognizing/acknowledging
difference and learning to take grounded stands in the face
of difference?
- If both are goals for liberal learning, how can students
develop both kinds of capabilities over time?
Return to top
AAC&U's mission is to
advance high quality liberal education. How does American
Commitments serve this mission?
Liberal education helps learners develop the cognitive skills,
affective understanding, and societal knowledge they need
as individuals, citizens, and members of the community. Learning
about American democratic and cultural pluralism contributes
to all these goals. American pluralism is intrinsically complex
and challenging, enlightening and rewarding. Studying it helps
both learners and educators develop skills for analysis, thoughtful
reflection, and grounded decision-making.
Society continually struggles with competing values and
aspirations. Learning about diversity and democracy prepares
citizens for engaged and responsible citizenship. Intellectual
and experiential knowledge of societal diversity has become
prerequisite for success in virtually every profession, as
well as in daily life. AAC&U also places high value on
educating students for participation in the global community.
The association views study of both United States diversity
and world cultures as equally necessary and mutually enlightening.
Return to top
Approaches: How the American Commitments initiative
works
How many institutions are
involved in American Commitments?
Over 160 institutions have
been involved in American Commitments. American Commitments
is the largest single network in the Ford Foundation's Campus
Diversity Initiative (CDI). Since its inception in 1990, CDI
has supported over 400 colleges and universities in institutional
planning, faculty development, and curricular renewal related
to societal diversity. AAC&U has cooperated with other
consortia in developing resources for all 400 institutions.
Return to top
What resources does American
Commitments provide?
The American Commitments National Panel has published three
reports on higher education in a diverse democracy: The
Drama of Diversity and Democracy: Higher Education and American
Commitments, Liberal
Learning and the Arts of Connection for the New Academy,
and American
Pluralism and the College Curriculum: Higher Education in
a Diverse Democracy. For other diversity publications,
see AAC&U's Publications.
American Commitments also sponsors a continuing series of
open institutes and conferences on curriculum and institutional
change that have been attended by over 2,000 faculty members
and academic administrators from some 400 institutions. Faculty
reflections about some of those conferences have been published
in various issues of AAC&U's journal, Liberal
Education.
Currently, project staff publish Diversity
Digest, a periodical which reaches campus leaders
and faculty members at institutions nationwide. Digest reports
on campus examples of institutional and curricular change
and summarizes current research on the effects of diversity
initiatives on student learning. DiversityWeb,
an interactive resource hub for higher education, is the most
comprehensive compendium of campus practices and resources
about diversity in higher education that you can find anywhere.
Return to top
What did faculty teams working
in the American Commitments initiative actually study?
American Commitments institutes and reading lists take a "both/and"
approach to American pluralism, exploring both the distinctiveness
and the intersections of diverse American traditions and communities.
Initiative seminars and reading lists place special emphasis
on the evolution of democratic aspirations and principles
and the role played by marginalized groups—women, peoples
of color, gays and lesbians—in expanding both the meaning
and the application of democratic principles. American Commitments
also challenges educators to reexamine fundamental assumptions
about what counts as significant knowledge and about the cultural
uses of learning.
Return to top
Results: Changes in the Curriculum and in Student
Learning
What changes in the curriculum
are emerging from this work?
Participants in the American Commitments initiative are working
to revise general education programs to address issues of
diversity in American history and society more comprehensively.
Typically, new courses on American pluralism teach students
about the diverse racial, cultural, social, and other identities
that characterize American society. Usually comparative in
structure, they incorporate sophisticated understanding of
the multiple influences that affect both how one defines one's
own identity and how one is defined by the larger society.
Many explore the sources and results of bias and discrimination.
Faculty members in the project are also helping students explore
what it would mean to create communities that respect distinctive
traditions while also creating new forms of inclusion, equality,
and connection. Many of the new courses place strong emphasis
on experiential as well as analytical learning. Some incorporate
service learning. In general, these new courses challenge
students to think in more complex ways about history, culture,
identity, and power relationships.
New diversity courses also stress the skills students need
to function in a diverse world—skills like intercultural
communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, and complex
problem-solving. In addition to teaching a more accurate version
of America's complex history, they are helping students gain
skills and insights for leadership and a sense of their own
responsibility for the quality of American community and civic
life.
For additional information on changes in the college curriculum,
visit DiversityWeb
and Diversity
Digest.
Return to top
Is there any research on
the effects of diversity courses on student learning?
Research findings set forth in the AAC&U publication,
Diversity
Works: The Emerging Picture of How Students Benefit, by
Daryl Smith and her associates, indicate that diversity courses
are creating positive learning outcomes for all students.
Several recent studies suggest that these courses, along with
other institutional efforts to address diversity in all areas
of campus life, are "related to satisfaction, academic
success and cognitive development for all students."
Courses and programs that address issues of diversity are
also powerful determinants "of student satisfaction and
of commitments to racial understanding."
The University of Michigan, for example, requires every student
to take a course on race and ethnicity. A longitudinal study
of first-year students showed that students who took courses
dealing with racial and ethnic issues characterized these
courses as the most compelling influence in developing their
support for educational equity.
Alexander Astin's 1993 study of 24,000 students in What
Matters in College? Four Critical Years Revisited reported
that students who take courses in women's studies, ethnic
studies, and third world studies broaden their thinking. They
are more aware of cultural differences, more satisfied with
college, more committed to promoting racial understanding,
less materialistic, and more supportive of social change.
The
Courage to Question: Women's Studies and Student Learning,
a study of the impact of women's studies courses on student
learning, found that women's studies creates connections across
student voice, empowerment, self-esteem, and critical thinking
so that when students graduate, they want to improve things
not only for themselves but also for other people. As in Astin's
study, The Courage to Question suggests that women's
studies courses lead students to see the world from a variety
of viewpoints and to become more engaged in dialogue with
people who are different from themselves.
Return to top
For more information: Additional resources and
how to become involved
Where can I find more information?
See AAC&U's Publications
to find the publications described above, as well as several
reports on institutional change, including Achieving Faculty
Diversity: Debunking the Myths and Diversity in Higher Education,
A Work in Progress. Order online
or by faxing us a print out a copy of the publications
order form (pdf format).
For additional information about campus diversity, visit DiversityWeb.
How can I become involved?
AAC&U continues to sponsor open institutes and conferences
on diversity, democracy, and student learning and sponsors
a biennial Diversity
& Learning conference each October on even years.
See AAC&U's Network for
Academic Renewal Meetings for upcoming diversity conferences.
Return to top
|
