Diversity Blueprints

The recommendations included in the complete subcommittee reports are the product of many individuals and groups at the University of Michigan. In the interest of an inclusive, community-wide conversation, we have shared the full set of subcommittee materials as well as the many suggestions sent to the Task Force by students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members. Specific recommendations reflect this diverse input, and do not necessarily represent the consensus of the entire Diversity Blueprints Taskforce nor the official position and approach of the University.

Graduate Recruitment, Retention and Pipeline

Diversity Blueprints Task Force
University of Michigan
February 15, 2007

Download this report as a 136K .pdf*

Members:
Elizabeth Bunn
Courtney Cogburn
Elizabeth Cole
Sue Eklund
Patricia Gurin
Richard Lempert
Linda Newman
Scott Page (co-chair)
Jim Stapleton
Sanjaya Thakur
Monique Washington (co-chair)
Grace Wu
Gilia Smith and Kristine Molina provided research assistance

Outline:

Executive Summary
Pipeline and Recruitment
Admissions
Climate and Retention
Appendix

Executive Summary

Our proposal fall under three categories: pipeline and recruitment, admissions, and, climate and retention. Within each of these broader categories, we distinguish between major proposals that would require substantial resources, quick fixes, changes that could be implemented immediately at little costs, and longer term, modest initiatives, changes that though small would require programmatic commitment from a unit, department, or school.

Within the pipeline and recruitment category, we offer four major proposals: (i) increased intra university recruitment programs including possible new dual degree programs (ii) new inter university collaborations that would improve student awareness and access to the University of Michigan and which would also make a UM education affordable, (iii) the establishment of an independent 501-C3 foundation to fund scholarships for diverse students, and (iv) the creation of formal procedures to identify structural impediments to creating a diverse campus. We also include more than a dozen smaller proposals that range from the increased use of few waivers to enlarged transfer programs.

Our major proposals within the admissions category focus on administrative improvements within schools and colleges that rely on Rackham support. The committee was struck by the benefits that accrue from the more centralized admissions procedures of the professional schools yet recognizes the need for departmental autonomy with respect to graduate admissions. Thus, the committee advocates (i) informational centralization to enable far flung units to make better choices. We also propose (ii) creating an admissions philosophy statement to be distributed to all members of departmental admissions committees to help ensure uniform, fair criteria across the university. This philosophy would emphasize multiple toolbox based criteria over thermometer measures. An appendix contains a preliminary version of such a statement. In addition the committee proposes (iii) creating quantifiable measures of distance traveled and direction headed to even the playing field as well as (iv) exploring the possibility of working with the School of Information and the Department of Psychology to develop tests that can quantify diverse thinkers. These tests would be administered to students who have passed some initial bar so as to not reduce the number of admissions. Our smaller proposals include several innovative approaches to identifying diverse students.

We also include nine major climate and retention proposals. The first two require substantial commitments of financial and academic resources. We propose (i) a Diversity Studies Center with faculty lines, money for visitors, and fellowships. This center would help position the University of Michigan as the leader in diversity studies. To complement the center, we also propose (ii) the establishment of a diversity collection at the University Library. This collection would gather and coordinate research on all forms of identity diversity and their importance both historically and currently. The other seven proposals advocate (iii) expanding the Michigan Mentoring Initiative, (iv) building our own pipelines (v) creating incentive structures for departments to improve retention and time to degree for diverse students (vi) introducing programs that recognize faculty mentoring (vii) integrating the CRLT seminar on college teaching into the graduate school curriculum and into new faculty orientation (viii) enhancing support of diverse student organizations and (ix) launching a public relations initiative to clarify perceptions of the University’s commitment to diversity.

The committee members appreciate the opportunity to improve the University of Michigan. We would be happy to expand upon or clarify any of these preliminary proposals.

Pipeline and Recruitment

Major Proposals

Create Intra University Pipelines to attract outstanding UM undergrads contemplating entering professional school or PhD programs to choose Michigan for their graduate work. Also identify undergraduates with the capacity to enter such programs who may not be considering them and encourage them to do so. Pipeline programs should through course requirements or otherwise ensure good undergrad preparation. This program would be open to everyone but would seek especially to recruit students from disadvantaged backgrounds, students from families whose extended and immediate families include few people with graduate or professional degrees and students who have demonstrated a commitment to the University's public mission. One recruitment mechanism might involve coupling recruitment and mentoring components with a funded bridge to a graduate studies component.

Establish New Inter University Collaborations and Exchange Programs with schools/universities that enroll a large number of underrepresented minority students. The CIC schools enroll only 7% minority students. Though important to the University’s identity, this collaboration creates a bias against under represented minorities. To balance that bias, the University must also reach out to more diverse schools to create new collaborations so that both the University and its partners benefit academically and financially. On average 110 students per year attend Michigan through the CIC. A similar sized program at more diverse schools could yield large numbers of students. Such a program could

The NSF has a number of programs designed to foster collaborations with historically black and minority-serving institutions that might help support some of the above initiatives. We should add that the University currently has some programs of this type. These include the UM College of Engineering and Atlanta University Center dual degree program. AU Center comprises Clark-Atlanta University, Morehouse and Spelman Colleges. Students can earn two bachelor's degrees (A.B. or B.S. and B.S.E. in approximately 5 to 5 1/2 years Similar collaborations also exist with Adrian, Albion, Alma, Beloit, Hope, Kalamazoo Colleges, Lawrence University in Wisconsin, Virginia Union University). Students enrolled for three years at these institutions can transfer approximately two or two-and-one-half years of academic credit to meet the requirements to the College of Engineering.

Similarly, the UM Biomedical Engineering Program and Xavier University in New Orleans offer a continuing cooperative engineering program that allows students to earn a B.A. or B.S. in Physics from XU and a M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from UM. The dual degree curriculum meets all degree requirements of both institutions. Students must be academically acceptable to XU and UM at the time they enter their respective universities. The degrees are awarded simultaneously.

Encourage alumni and others distressed by Proposition 2 to establish a privately funded 501-3C foundation to fund activities that would attract diverse students. This foundation could solicit funds that dedicated to promoting and sustaining diversity in the University’s recruitment and retention efforts. This foundation could

Create procedures to identify and eradicate structural barriers to achieving diversity. As noted above, the CIC inadvertently creates a bias in the direction away from diversity. Many of the institutions that dominate our social, political, and economic interactions contain structural biases against women and people of color. The University should establish a formal system that will allow for an investigation of institutional barriers, both internal and external to the University, that limit the enrollment or success of women and students of color. Well-intended policies and procedures may impede efforts to create a diverse campus community.

Quick Fixes

Outreach: Increase contact with undergraduate institutions (primary feeders and those with high populations of students of color). Rotate visits to these campuses. Invite advisors and faculty members for funded visits for a special program to acquaint them with UM and our campus. Prepare special brochures/materials to support this outreach.

Pay for faculty and graduate students to give seminars at schools that traditionally cannot afford to bring in outside speakers as a way to combat the structural inequities that exist. The University can do this as well without violating Proposition 2.

Plans are underway to pilot a program with University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez and COE. A workshop will be held on energy sustainability. Faculty will present research, discuss collaboration and joint research. Faculty from UPR-M will visit Ann Arbor for a similar event to report on progress made since the first meeting. The relationship building will undoubtedly lead to the enhancement to the pipeline of prospective graduate students. This model can be adopted to other topics and to other colleges and universities.

We should identify teachers at leading undergraduate institutions who inspire students, including students of color, to continue on to graduate school. Bring them to campus for a summer workshop on effective undergraduate mentoring and to acquaint them with UM's graduate student opportunities. Identify their recommendations as particularly reliable for graduate admissions committees.

Fee Waivers: Explore increased use of fee waivers. These may be an effective form of outreach. More generally, we should review criteria for determining need-based financial assistance of all sorts to ensure that current income is not inappropriately elevated over own and family wealth in determining need.

Video: Create a polished Michigan Difference style video for use on television that focuses on diversity. An ad from a few years ago about students coming to UM from all over the world and ending up at the Rose Bowl included such features.

Organizational Partners: Partner with organizations that support access to higher education and social justice such as CLEO and PILSE. We should routinely admit students recommended or participating in these programs to keep these pipelines open.

Federal Funds: Continue to pursue private and federal grants that support programs which promote the access and success of groups underrepresented in higher education and that support individuals who are committed to use their education to eradicate inequities in society (ex. NSF AGEP grant; Mellon Foundation).

Housing: Continue to provide comfortable, competitively priced family housing with family friendly amenities and services. This may require remodeling of existing housing facilities.

Flexible Funding: Increase opportunities for flexible and part time funding so that students can support themselves and their families while pursuing graduate degrees.

Longer Term Initiatives

Bridging: Attempt to identify undergraduates who might not be expected to think of attending graduate school but clearly have the talent to do so and seek to specially encourage them and to attend Michigan. Information can be provided about career possibilities that are opened up, how to pay for graduate or professional education and the like. Priority might be given to those students who have no close relatives with graduate degrees (determined by a questionnaire when they choose a major) since these are probably the people least likely to consider graduate school as an option. Perhaps develop a summer program for trying out graduate school that would include a grad level seminar and a research experience on a faculty member's project aimed at producing a paper or poster. Admissions priorities could be given to students who participated in the program and whose record indicated they could do Michigan quality graduate work. But don’t regard a failure to attract to Michigan students aided by these progams as program failures. The larger issue is the education of discriminated against groups and if beneficiaries of programs lie those suggested choose to pursue graduate or professional school education when they otherwise would not have done so, they should be counted as program successes.

Personal Pipelines: Seek out “diamonds in the rough” from trusted colleagues at other institutions and our own UM undergraduates with special arrangements with faculty and advisors. This could even be done through an online referral page. This information would then be sent to departments who could encourage those people to apply here.

Data Mining: Scrutinize Candidate Referral Services data to see what slices of potential applicants we might be promising without overreaching. A letter seeking interest might indicate they seem to be the type of applicant to whom we offer funds. A letter seeking interest might offer to make a decision based on an application that was sent to another institution

Transfers of Past Admits: Solicit transfer students and students we recruited who went elsewhere when we believe that a move to Michigan offers clear advantages to the student.

Legacy Networks: Conduct heavy recruitment through use of alumni, alumni receptions, esteemed employer receptions, preview weekends, faculty outreach, administrative outreach, and student outreach. Outreach to legacies of color to cultivate groups of alumni recommenders and interviewers we trust.

Federal Funds: Secure new federal funds that can be used consistent with Proposition 2 to promote gender or race-based diversity. These should include the NSF-IGERT grants. These grants, while not primarily justified by diversity promotion. emphasize recruitment of women and under represented minorities in the sciences, and unless a commitment is made in the grant proposal to ensure that women and minorities will be among the graduate students benefiting from these programs an IGERT award is unlikely of not impossible. Other NSF programs, like ADVANCE, are specifically aimed at diversity promotion as are programs at other federal agencies like NIH.

Advertising: Offer 'on campus events' and print and advertising campaign (see AspiringDocs.org campaign offered by AAMC to increase diversity in medicine)

Community Building: Develop a centralized student services center for all graduate students with information and resources pertinent to the life issues faced by graduate and professional students (housing, immigration, elder care, community involvement).

Admissions

Major Proposals

Centralize information at Rackham to determine if the thresholds for the various predictors of success such as test scores, grades, and evidence of previous research can be validated. Rackham should identify criteria for success that have empirical support. Rackham should also review the criteria and procedures of departments and schools that have been successful at attracting and graduating diverse students.

Codify an admissions philosophy based on toolboxes not just measuring sticks. Build the idea of units defining multiple criteria for admission that include evaluating (perhaps with formal weights) how a student's goals, commitments and research is likely to reflect the University's and the unit's mission as it relates to the public good, along with other indicators, like GRE scores, of a student's potential for significant disciplinary contributions. The statement would specifically mention the importance of geographic and economic diversity as well as a diversity of research interests within specific fields. Taking into account the latter may require Rackham to notify departments of students from disadvantaged backgrounds (see below).

This statement would define common criteria for admissions that cross all departments, schools and colleges and include considerations of diversity of thought, experience, opportunity, and goals. This statement would make clear that the University sees no single way to describe an ideal student, that an ideal cohort will contain a mix of students with different interests and strengths, and that great strength on some criteria will justify taking risks when there are weaknesses on other criteria. The composition of our graduate school should represent our multiple goals and missions. See the appendix for a preliminary draft.

Create quantifiable measures of distance traveled (as the Medical School has done) and direction headed. The first of the measures would capture what people have done with the resources at their disposal. The second would capture what they hope to do if they receive a Michigan education. Special weight would be given to people who want to improve the public good with special attention to addressing the concerns of and providing service to underserved segments of society. Similar weight should be given to studying, contributing to understanding of and working to abolish racial, gender, ethnic, and other prejudice and inequalities. In evaluating this second criteria recognize that past activities are the most objective guide we have to likely future contributions. Even if not quantified, this approach should be a core philosophy of the University. Both measures would have to be credible, verifiable, and non-manipulable.

Develop a cognitive diversity evaluation procedure. To accomplish this we would have to restructure the admissions form so that we could somehow "quantify" diverse thinking - this might be done by asking people questions about their major, their minor, and their extra curricular activities. We could then weight "diversity" of thought. Crafting such a test would be difficult, especially given that applicants might try to misrepresent themselves.

Despite the complexities and costs of developing this tool, the committee feels this is an important goal. One of the primary reasons that we want identity diverse students on campus is because they often bring diverse perspectives. We should try to identify this directly. The result will be a stronger, more interesting student body. We might begin with a small pilot program that includes a question on the graduate school application that asks students how they would go about analyzing or researching a particular disciplinarily relevant problem. Score in a way that gives students who answer with perspectives that are sensible but not widely shared or whose answers yield unique insights into the problem credit that can counterbalance lower than average test scores.

We note that any evaluation of this sort would have to take place in a second round of admissions. If it were made part of the core admissions procedure, we would suffer a fall off in applicants and in rank. Michigan may be able to work through the college board and add questions to he LSAT and MCAT that not all schools would use.

Quick Fixes

Matching Programs: Offer to meet the competition’s offers based on our best judgment of the degree to which the student is “in demand”. For any student we admit, say we’ll do our best to beat the financial aid offers from competitive institutions. We can be more aggressive in seeking out students we fear we may lose. We would need to see a copy of the award letter from the other schools. This approach will keep us competitive with other select institutions. It may even require that we enhance federal and other aid funds when necessary to make packages competitive.

Identify Low SES Applicants: Ensure that the MPathways student administration system captures the SES and other background data collected through the pipeline, recruitment and admissions process to enhance institutional reporting. Secure more information on family wealth and educational history. Invite special explanations of family contributions and dependents and use professional judgment on a case by case basis.

Interdisciplinary Diversity Fellows: Offer admission to a handful of students each year who have interdisciplinary interests in the study of diversity. These students would not have to select a department until the end of their second year of study. This program would allow students interested in diversity issues broadly to explore the University prior to choosing a departmental affiliation and could provide a competitive advantage.

Profile Success: Collect names of students recommended by faculty and administrators who we feel have been great additions to the UM student and intellectual climate or who have made meaningful contributions to the public good or their profession after graduation. Review their files and develop “profiles” for successful admits.

Linguistic Diversity: Award bonus points for fluency in languages in addition to English for all departments and colleges.

Longer Term Initiatives

Outside the Box Applicants: Expand the holistic evaluation approach to application review. Invite students to submit projects, videos, or other work product testifying to their potential. We have to be careful that this holistic approach does not create a bias in favor of wealthier candidates who have more resources to produce these materials.

Interview: Conduct substantive interviews (perhaps on other campuses). Invite UM Ph.D.s in teaching to serve as on campus interviewers at the schools where they teach and consider their judgments in making admissions decisions. Use previous UM experience with successful recruits to determine when interviews might prove fruitful.

Alumni Outreach: Begin an “adopt” a student program for alumni and alumni clubs. The alumni volunteers would support the S/Cs efforts' to enroll applicants offered admission and to mentor enrolled students.

Debt Management: Create a debt management program in which loans convert to grants post graduation based on performance criteria.

International Students: Develop pools for international student financial aid to maintain diversity. Target special programs to areas of the world, like Africa and Latin America, that are underrepresented in the UM’s graduate enrollment.

Climate and Retention

Major Proposals

Create an umbrella Diversity Studies Program that includes participants from CAAS, Women's Studies, The Program on Intergroup Relations, and the International Institute. The mission of this program would be to encourage interdisciplinary studies related to diversity. This would be freeing for students, would promote the kind of interdisciplinary work that advances the frontiers of the social sciences but usually cannot begin until post Ph.D. or even the pot tenure stage for most people. At present, people across departments and schools study issues related to race, gender, and ethnicity and their impact on society, but we do not have much collaboration between these diverse scholars, nor do we publicize their efforts, or do give people in these programs resources to support or a special say in admitting graduate students. Examples of kinds of programs that work but are consistent with proposition 2 include Berkeley’s efforts at Boalt Law School, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago, and The Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity at the University of Maryland. This program could be integral to the above suggestion of admitting both undergraduate and graduate students with a special interest in diversity studies without requiring them to immediately choose a specific disciplinary home. This program could offer a nationally competitive dissertation writing fellowship for a year in residence that might include teaching a course on the fellow's research. Such a program might be a means to recruit for faculty positions. We could also offer diversity fellowships for doctoral students in the program.

Build a Diversity Collection at the University of Michigan Libraries. This collection would be a virtual destination for any student, researcher or staff member interested in race, gender, ethnic studies or general research on diversity. It would maintain the University’s position as a leader on the subject of diversity. Academic research and initiatives as well as programmatic research and initiatives would be housed in the collection (including the DB Task Force recommendations). The creation of such a collection would require substantial effort but could pay dividends not only for retention and climate but also for recruitment and improving the pipeline. For individuals who conduct research with underrepresented populations, this initiative would give access to valuable resources that support the 'mainstream' resources existing at UM, including the data at ICPSR. This project could be an initiative of the NCID. In addition, works that are accessible to all students, staff and faculty (as opposed to experts) could be identified and incorporated into theme semesters and reading or discussion groups that would take place in departments, on North Campus, at the Trotter Multi-Cultural Center and in our residence halls.

Promote the Michigan Mentoring Initiative (based upon the STRIDE Model). There is evidence of a strong connection between academic success and good mentoring. Mentoring is an important way to train and retain graduate students. Students who are mentored acquire knowledge, skill and positive and supportive networks to navigate successfully and in a timely manner the graduate education and post graduate education process. The University of California system campuses, The University of Texas-Austin, and The University of Washington have established mentorship programs open to all students but particularly sensitive to the differential needs that students of color, women and others can bring.

Programs and departments should have some accountability for their practices related to graduate student mentoring. Programs and departments could be required to develop a set of mentoring practices and to monitor their application. This policy would be intended to guarantee that mentoring occurs in a systematic way for all students, while acknowledging that no single approach is likely to work well for all disciplines.

Mentoring is a multi-level process. It can includes academic advising, research training and development, career advice and aid in acquiring funds or accessing specific research populations. Department and programs should recognize that a student may need more than one mentor to adequately address these different functions. A multiple mentoring unit can spread the workload across the faculty in a unit. But even so it should be recognized that some faculty are likely to find themselves mentoring more than their fair share of students and some will be better mentors than others even when mentors are similarly motivated. (A junior faculty member, for example, may have more difficulty than a senior researcher in helping a graduate student secure research funds or writing job recommendations that will carry great weight in the hiring process.)

Departments and the University should acknowledge one on one mentoring as an important part of teaching, the degree of mentoring responsibility and success in mentoring should figure in establishing salaries and teaching loads, and the University should consider establishing a number of cash awards to be given each year to faculty who have been outstanding mentors, particularly when their mentees have not been the budding superstars whom many faculty try to draw under their wings. Exploring the possibility of strengthening academic advising for all students through the use of fourth year and graduate student mentoring may increase access to supportive and timely advising.

Faculty should be offered workshops that discuss the value of graduate student mentoring and provide background information and concrete advice about practices that make recruitment for diversity and excellence more successful (contact: Professor Alec Galimore, Rackham and College of Engineering). These could include workshops modeled on the GRADE (Graduate Recruitment to Address Diversity and Excellence) workshops that have already proven their value. These workshops, geared toward faculty, provide strategies and tactics for recruiting to improve diversity and excellence. This project is a NSF ADVANCE project at U of M. Mentoring across identities requires cross-cultural understanding and would also benefit from workshops based upon some of the best practices incorporated into the Program on Intergroup Relations including facilitated dialogues.

Given that Proposal 2 may make it more difficult to recruit faculty of color and women in certain fields, programs for faculty should incorporate insights from the empirical literature on the factors that facilitate the effectiveness of cross-race and cross-gender mentoring (e.g. Cohen & Steele 2002) A barrier of mistrust: How negative stereotypes affect cross-race mentoring). Encouraging a broad range of faculty to become effective and committed mentors for students of color and women will also help foster a positive climate for students from underrepresented groups.

Workshops might also be developed for graduate students on how to be an effective mentee. Graduate students should know what it is reasonable to ask for in the way of mentoring and what should not be expected. Students should also be encouraged to be assertive in making known their needs or desires for mentoring and in approaching their mentors for assistance they should have. Such workshops might be especially important for people who because of their minority status in a field are worried that they might appear to be asking for special favors based on their race or gender when all they seek are what other more assertive students are getting.

Build Our Own Pipelines: Encourage training graduate students to be teachers at colleges and universities with diverse student bodies. We should help prepare future academicians for teaching not only in institutions like Michigan but also in schools, including two-year institutions, that will increasingly serve students with gaps in their academic preparation. Climate will also be improved if we insist that ALL students learn how to use diversity for educational purposes. CRLT offers a 5 week intensive seminar with these aims to 50 students. The seminar covers a range of topics including how to take advantage of the diversity of college students, learning outcomes of diverse classrooms, and how instructors influence classroom climate for all students. Expand the capacity of this seminar to accommodate more students using the resources of CRLT, CSHPE, and IGR.

Create strong monetary incentives for departments to (i) improve retention of all students, with particular attention to groups that have higher than average leaving rates, (ii) reduce time to degree and ensure that progress is, on average, the same for students of all backgrounds, (iii) encourage academic accomplishment for students on route to their degrees as evidenced by such indicators as papers co-authored with faculty, posters presented at professional meetings, NSF and NEH dissertation fellowship awards and the like, and (iv) create and maintain a climate that enhances success for all students. In addition to rewarding Department accomplishments on these dimensions, study what different departments do, identify what works and doesn’t work, and arrange for the sharing of best practices. In LSA, these criteria can become key performance indicators.

Recognize and reward individual faculty and staff through strong incentives. The efforts of faculty and staff who put forth extra time and effort mentoring under represented graduate students are underappreciated. These efforts should be included in the faculty evaluations used to determine salaries and promotion.

Enhance support for student organizations with the financial means and staff expertise and guidance necessary to create a positive climate for all students at Michigan. This might be accomplished through line items that guarantee funding for organizations and sponsoring units that work to improve the climate through campus wide offerings that build community and explore identity and social justice issues. This effort would benefit from the extension of scalable best practices developed and utilized within the Division of Student Affairs (with graduate as well as undergraduate students). These best practices include student organization and recognition practices (SAL), the student organization roundtable (SAL), the student advisor roundtable serving all academic units (SAL), leadership education (SAL), use of dialogues and facilitated yet challenging conversations around identity and social justice (IGR, Expect Respect), resident advisor training (Housing, IGR, LGBTA), service learning projects (Ginsberg Center), community partnerships (Ginsberg Center, MESA), ally training (LGBTA, IGR), speakers’ bureaus (LGBTA, Dean of Students), and M-Justice student organization advising for social justice projects. Student engagement is highly correlated with student success and an investment in the co-curricular life of students will foster increased engagement in the university community.

Introduce diversity training for faculty and graduate students. The University has a responsibility to educate new faculty and graduate students on the University’s commitment to diversity and to provide incentives for new faculty to help the University influence a cultural shift that embraces diversity of thought, research and individuals. Faculty training should deal with diversity issues at both the graduate and undergraduate level and emphasize the ways in which faculty can unknowingly model behavior and attitudes for students. Graduate student training should include sessions social identity and on how to be peer mentors to incoming graduate students and to undergraduate students. This training will help new students become acclimated to UM resources and systems, strengthen the networks that help the student to achieve their goals and provide support for challenges that the student faces, and graduate student mentors learn to become good future faculty mentors. Training should be rigorous, educational and engaging; not a formality which people are required to sit through but which requires no real attention. Diversity training presented or received as something that must be endured can be worse than no training at all. Reliable scientific research on diversity issues should take precedence over exhortations to virtue. Units that currently support efforts that may be scaled up and modified to support this include IGR, Residence Life, CRLT, and the Division of Student Affairs’ division wide professional development effort, Common Threads.

Launch an outreach campaign. The University must recognize that some of the people who voted for Prop 2 saw themselves as acting in the interests of racial non-discrimination and equal treatment. We would all benefit if the University would start a major initiative across campus and within the state to fight discrimination on the basis of race and to promote equal racial treatment in all respects. Make it clear that we are especially interested in recruiting to campus and educating students who have these goals and create programs they can participate in to advance them.

We must, as part of our public mission, continue to educate Michigan citizens on the benefits of a diverse community. The University should promote and increase the opportunity for members of the community to participate in inter group dialogues and service learning, and to attend lectures on research efforts conducted at the U and across the country. The humanities should not be neglected, for they have an important role to play in revealing dimensions of diversity and promoting cross-cultural understanding.

Quick Fixes

Lower Costs for Current Students: Be generous with costs of attendance. Offer to cover child care costs. Have funds available for students who had unanticipated changes in their financial situation. In determining need pay special attention to family wealth and capacity to take on debt.

Create loan forgiveness programs whereby students are loaned money to pay for advanced education but the loan is forgiven at a rate of, say 6 1/2% a year, for each year after graduation that the students work primarily with disadvantaged clientele or on research or other work designed to understand or enhance race relations in the United States. This may be somewhat more applicable to professional schools (medicine, law nursing, education, public health, social work, etc...) than to Rackham programs.

Bridge Medical Funding: Provide bridge funding to graduate students needing medical leave for childbirth or other conditions so that their continuance at the University is not endangered due to precarious finances. Develop supplemental, need based funding to assist parents with the costs of feeding, housing, clothing and caring for dependents. Federal aid does not typically cover these costs.

Arts Training: Expand the number of faculty who participate in the 'Arts of Citizenship" program, a program that fosters the role of the academic arts, humanities and design in civic and community life. This effort can enhance public and community relations within the state of Michigan while helping to support pipeline activity. See Professor Margaret Dewar's recommendation.

Campus Visits: Organize trips for people in schools that don't send many students to Michigan for campus activities, including tickets to concerts, plays, museum exhibits, etc.

Longer Term Initiatives

Recruit Faculty: Step up efforts to recruit and retain faculty who promote diversity of thought, who value diversity within the U community and who value student mentoring. A focus on recruiting more women and people of color, particularly in fields where women and people of color are underrepresented, is a priority, but race itself should not be a hiring criteria.

Climate Funding: Provide resources to enhance programming and support to students throughout their enrollment. Examples may include: conference opportunities, diversity and leadership training, workshops, peer mentoring.

Investigate and Improve: Establish a formal system that will allow for an investigation of policies, procedures, negative environments and negative interpersonal relationships that impede student success. Centrally document these incidents to develop institutional approaches to improving the success of graduate students. This might be accomplished by an expansion of the Expect Respect reporting system for incidents of bias to include reports of systemic issues or through expansion of the role of the Ombudsman.

Return to top of page

Appendix: Admissions Philosophy (Draft)

The Michigan Difference:
Purposeful Toolboxes, Collective Success

The University of Michigan’s ability to produce breakthrough research, educate bright, inquisitive students, and serve the interests of the State depends on faculty and graduate students who possess diverse skills and interests. The Michigan Difference can be found in our commitment to recruiting diverse, intellectually fertile cohorts not ideal individuals. Michigan encourages its departments, schools, and colleges to admit those students most likely to make a difference both in the academy and in the world without regards to race, ethnicity or gender. We also take into account applicants’ character and past accomplishments relative to their opportunities. We prize applicants who have come a long way from their intellectual starting points or who have well-formulated goals

Making a difference requires a sense of purpose and the ability to achieve success. For that reason, we seek talent, commitment, and diversity.

We measure applicants’ sense of purpose through their application materials and their prior activities in the classroom and in society. We seek people with sustained drive to improve the world either by advancing knowledge or through direct engagement. Applicants’ past records of achievements and interests need not align with any particular ideology or worldview.

As the song goes, we want the leaders and best. Determining which applicants will succeed is equal parts science and art. For some disciplines, standardized test scores and grade point averages have proven valid proxies for ability. In others, the connection between test scores and grades and ultimate success — as measured by the University and the individual — proves weak. In those disciplines, we rely less on test scores and more on demonstrated achievement.

In all of our programs, we look closely at the specific skills applicants’ have acquired or could be expected to acquire, what we call applicants’ toolboxes. Producing innovate scholarship and meaningful public service requires cohorts with diverse toolboxes. In evaluating toolboxes, we take into account applicants’ coursework, background, and life experiences. The skills that departments, schools, and colleges most desire range from research experience and disciplinary knowledge to geographic and cultural awareness.

Our toolbox-based approach allows us to build diverse cohorts of talented individuals. These diverse, talented, purposeful communities of scholars make the Michigan Difference.

Return to top of page

* To download .pdf file with a PC:
Right mouse click on link below, then choose "save as" in Netscape ("save target as" in IE) to save it to your computer, and then double click on it to run it.

* To download .pdf file with a Mac:
Click on link below, then choose "save this link as" to save it to your computer, and then double click on it to run it.

NOTE: If you don't already have a copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader to access PDFs, you can obtain a free copy from Adobe.