Multiculturalism, Faculty and Administration

In higher education, administrators seek to develop students as much as possible. As such, we move to incorporate many different facets into educational development. Multiculturalism is an important component in student development, but it is equally important to incorporate multicultural education and development for professors and administrators. As such, institutions must encourage professors and administrators to acknowledge and address their own prejudices to properly educate students.

Professors and administrators in higher education are at a disadvantage with their students; they engage them for only short amounts of time and, many times, cannot identify with their students (Gollnick and Chinn, 2009). It is for this reason that professors and administrators need to understand the culture and backgrounds of their students, particularly on diverse campuses. By exposing professors and administrators to multicultural training and development, they will be better able to understand their students’ points of view. Professors and administrators with diversity and multicultural training can also better prepare their lesson plans to help incorporate better developed lesson plans. By initiating multicultural development for professors and administrators, a college or university ensure another venue for multiculturalism to enter the classroom. Giving professors and administrators the multicultural tools to create lesson plans and relate to their students will incorporate diversity in the classroom.

Providing additional seminars and sustained dialogues for professors and administrators after initial training will help develop supporting dispositions for professors and administrators (Gollnick and Chinn, 2009). It is important to gage and impact the values and professional ethics of professors and administrators. Through faculty-administrative sustained dialogue series, the educator community can come together to discuss and develop. To further engage faculty and administration, a committee of colleagues can be formed to develop dialogue discussions. These dialogues and reflections are important components of training and development for faculty and administration because it helps to refresh professors and administrators, brings both groups to a similar forum, and helps spread and understanding of culture, fairness, honest, and social justice. Additionally, sustained dialogues will help encourage critical thinking of social justice issues within the classroom and advising sessions.

Gollnick and Chinn also cite some recommendations for educators who are working with teens/ young adults that are critical to helping educators remain fair and just in the classroom; particularly notable are the recommendations of pushing students to do their best- equally, grading fairly, caring about what is going on with them, and not betraying their confidence (394-395). Professors and administrators who are well versed and trained in multiculturalism should easily adapt to these recommendations. We need to address these needs as educators and leaders to provide equality and excellent learning environments for our students.