Teaching Diversity Focus of New Conference on Campus

Ioana Patringenaru | Jan. 31, 2011

Dr. Tony Jackson, a UCSD alumnus, was the keynote speaker at the campus' first Teaching Diversity conference.

How do you teach students about privilege and discrimination? How do you teach students to embrace and celebrate other cultures? How do you teach the Principles of Community and instill a sense of respect toward others?

These are some of the questions that members of the UC San Diego community examined during a daylong teaching diversity conference that took place Thursday at the Cross-Cultural Center on campus.

“We need each and every one of us to be involved,” said Jim Lin, a math professor and interim provost of Muir College and one of the conference’s key organizers.

The seed of the idea for the conference was planted when Lin and Carrie Wastal, director of Muir’s writing program, became frustrated with the aftermath of a racially themed off-campus party last year. The two also were aware of a recent proposal for a diversity course requirement made by the Council of Provosts.

They started talking to other stakeholders around campus and asking what that diversity requirement would look like. Today, diversity is taught in a wide range of courses, from history, to visual arts, to psychology and even linguistics, Lin said. The conference aimed to bring specialists from all these areas together to network, share ideas and learn about best practices, Lin said.

Teaching diversity and acceptance of others will lead to a better campus environment now and in the future, said Tony Jackson, co-chair of UCSD’s campus climate council and the conference’s keynote speaker. And it can be easy, he added. “We’re dealing with simple civility,” said Jackson, a UCSD alum and emergency room doctor. “That’s what we’re seeking.”

Jim Lin, a mathematics professor and one of the conference's key organizers, speaks about the importance of teaching diversity.

We’re all taught the basic principles of civility in childhood, he said. Share. Don’t hit people. If you hurt somebody, apologize. Clean up your messes. But these rules are somehow forgotten as we grow older, he said.

“We’re so hung up on trying to be the best, trying to be first in line, that we’ve pushed aside the rules we learned in early childhood,” Jackson said.

Isolation compounds the problem. We hate each other because we don’t know each other, Jackson said, paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr. And technology has made this isolation worse, he added. He urged audience members to reassess their beliefs and question authority. “Don’t accept what others tell you sight unseen,” he said.

After Jackson’s keynote speech, conference attendees broke out into small-group sessions to discuss how to better teach diversity. Some sessions examined hands-on programs, while others examined courses in various departments and programs, as well as outside the university.

The Partners At Learning program, or PAL, brings together these approaches, two faculty members explained during one break-out session. Each year, about 500 UCSD students take PAL classes, offered by the Education Studies program. They learn how to tutor and mentor students in preschool through 12th grade. They also learn about education theory and the struggle some schools face to provide college access for their students. As a result, students get a better grasp of what life is like outside of the comfort zone and the UCSD community, said Luz Chung, an education studies lecturer.

“We’re here to work with children, parents, teachers and administrators and empower them,” she said.