Conference

Measuring What Counts: Institutional Assessment and Accountability for Representational and Intellectual Diversity

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Abstract

Diversity reporting in institutions of higher education tends to count what can be measured. These reports often only represent diversity in terms of numbers of students, faculty, and staff from nondominant racial/ethnic and gender groups and/or in terms of numbers of events thematically connected in some way to these groups. This representational approach is a limited envisioning of what diversity means to campus life because it does not encompass the broader forms that (1) diversity takes, and (2) does not link diversity-related activity to diversity-related learning. Using an interactive format that will encourage participant input, this presentation will outline a plan for institutional assessment and accountability that creates a necessary bridge from representational to intellectual diversity so that we can measure what counts about diversity and make it an essential expectation for excellence in the university environment.