In an email sent to the Georgetown community on Tuesday, President John DeGioia and Provost James O’Donnell gave some updates about the University’s Diversity and Inclusiveness Initiative.

Last year, faculty, student, and staff working groups recommended a variety of methods to increase diversity on campus, which the University began to adopt during the spring semester. This most recent email outlines Georgetown’s plan to continue promoting “community in diversity.”

After the jump, we’ve listed their updates and the full email.

Read the rest of this entry »

Georgetown’s Diversity Initiative working groups have made their verdicts—change should come to the Hilltop.

Last night, Provost James O’Donnell sent out an e-mail that listed the recommendations of the Academic, Student Life, Admissions and Recruitment working groups. This year, the three groups were tasked by President John DeGioia to “develop recommendations about how Georgetown can strength our approach to creating and sustaining a diverse and inclusive undergraduate community.”

Out of all the suggestions, highlights include the establishment of an oft-debated diversity requirement, offering a major in African-American studies, a “Diversity Fellows” program, and a push to hire more minority faculty members.

Below, Vox has the complete rundown.

The Academic Working Group suggests:

• Creating a diversity requirement “as part of the General Education requirements for all undergraduates.”
• “[Increasing] the numbers of minority faculty throughout the University,” specifically targeting expansion within the departments of African-American studies, Hispanic/Latino studies, and Asian-American studies.
• Establishing an African-American studies major, to be “followed by” the development of Asian-American and Hispanic/Latino programs.
• A year-long colloquium that brings together “distinguished academics and intellectuals from within and outside our University to discuss and debate current best practices in the study of race, ethnicity, and culture.”
• Focus on “inclusive teaching and learning” by promoting current academic programs and opportunity within the University, such as the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship

The Student Life Working Group suggests:

• Creating a Diversity Fellows program that would offer paid positions to student who are interested in “leading diversity and inclusion efforts in key administrative departments and student initiatives.”
• Expanding the “A Different Dialogue” program, which began in Spring 2010.
• Building a “diversity portal” on the University’s web page to provide the Georgetown community about diversity-related events and information.

After the jump, read the Admission Working Group’s recommendations, plus the complete e-mail.

Read the rest of this entry »

As debate surrounding the proposals of the Academic Life Working Group picks up, Provost James O’Donnell, left, met with student press on Thursday to discuss the progress all three working working groups have made this school year.

“At the end of the day,” he said, the initiatives are about “helping Georgetown line up with its own best image of itself …. To get us where we want to be, and aren’t always as good as being as we ought to be.”

He and President John DeGioia, he said, accepted the recommendations of the Admissions and Recruitment Working Group. First and foremost, Georgetown is “really ramping up its campaign for more financial aid dollars.” One third of Georgetown’s ongoing Capital Campaign, he said, will go to create more need-based scholarships. The University is not yet publicizing how much it has taken in through the Capital Campaign but O’Donnell said, “It’s gonna be a bunch more than we took in last time.”

“Last time, we took in billion. So my official statement is, this one will be a billion and a bunch.”

The University can begin to implement some of the suggestions of the three working groups right away. He said that a desire diversity will be a part of the faculty hiring process for next school year. Others, however, will take more time and resources.

“Developing the African American Studies major probably requires a reallocation of resources or new resources, preferably news resources. Faculty hiring and curriculum changes can be added through existing resources, but we could always have more.”

When asked whether the University was still considering an Asian-American Studies program or Latino Studies program, he said, “I think that there’s just no question that we need to do better in African American Studies. That’s somewhere where we’re way behind our peer schools. Beyond that, it becomes a question of, how much effort do you put into further individual ethnic communities, or do you study ethnic communities theoretically? …. We are already better at thinking about, studying every single other part of the world except America …. We should be thinking about how our American studies about African American, Asian, Latino groups can draw on our larger understanding of the world.”

Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday afternoon, Georgetown University faculty members and students met at the second town hall about the curriculum and faculty hiring changes recommended by the Academic Working Group last week. While there were only a handful of faculty members who were not associated with the Academic Working Group present at the town hall, students filled the rest of the seats in White Gravenor 208, and some stood at the back and sides of the room.

Chaired by Professors Eusebio Mujal-León of the Government Department and Veronica Salles Reese, the Director of the Spanish and Portuguese, the Academic Working Group is one of three working groups that President John DeGioia established last spring in response to the Student Commission for Unity to increase diversity at Georgetown University. The group is made up of seven students and eleven faculty members.

“We proposed three major avenues,” said Mujal-León, who began the meeting by summarizing the recommendations proposed in the Academic Working Group’s report. “[The first leg] is increasing or extending the hires [of faculty] who are of underrepresented persons in society. The second leg is placing these hires in departments in order to enhance African American studies, Latino Hispanic studies, and Asian American Studies. The third leg is a diversity requirement for students.”

In his introduction, Mujal-León acknowledged that there were still disagreements between students and faculty on some recommendations within the Academic Working Group. He also addressed the proposed diversity requirement for the curriculum, which is contested by many students and faculty members.

The Academic Working Group currently suggests that the core curriculum should be amended to include two courses that have a “diversity stamp.”

Salles Reese explained the requirement, by contrasting it with other required courses at Georgetown, like theology. While “theology is part of a department,” she said, “diversity has different definitions to different groups. A historian may see ‘diversity’ differently than someone who is a sociology professor.”

Read the rest of this entry »

At this week’s Georgetown University Student Association Senate meeting, the Senate voted down the only legislation that came up for a vote—institutionalizing GU-SPAN—but not before they had debated the measure extensively. After rejecting the legislation, the Senate turned to voicing their opinions on recent area crimes and the suggestions of the diversity initiative, which they seem generally opposed to.

Institutionalizing GU-SPAN: It’s unclear what motivated Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ’12) to introduce the “Act to Amend the By-Laws to Institutionalize the Georgetown University Student Public Affairs Network.” The network, better know as GU-SPAN, live-streams meetings of the GUSA Senate, and has approximately 5 regular viewers. Talbot’s bill would have created an administrator for GU-SPAN in charge of live-streaming the GUSA meetings.

Talbot suggested that the position, which would take four to five hours a week, include a stipend of around $300. Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ’13) exhibiting the shrewdness that comes with serving on the Finance and Appropriations Committee, suggested accepting applications for the position without offering a stipend, and only offering the stipend if no one offered to volunteer. Ultimately, however, the Senate voted the bill down even after the Senate had amended the bill to simply make it the responsibility of the vice-speaker to make sure meetings were live-streamed.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Academic Working Group, one of the three working groups formed by President John DeGioia for the University’s Diversity Initiative, held an open forum Thursday evening to present the draft of its review of diversity in Georgetown academics, and its recommendations. Attending the forum were members of the working group, faculty, and students, some of whom had worked to help create the draft.

The draft report outlined areas where it felt the University failed to expose students academically to diversity and pluralism. It met some criticism from present faculty.

“Where Georgetown appears to fall short is in providing its students with a sense of the diversity… of contemporary U.S. society,” the report read.

Members of the working group said they had carefully examined Georgetown’s curriculum, which Eusebio Mujal-León, a co-chair of the working group, called “the central core of the university.”

One of the recommendations the working group presented in their report was the implementation of a diversity requirement, under which students would be required to take two “diversity requirement” classes, one examining issues pertaining to diversity on the national level, and other examining diversity issues on the international level. This requirement would be an “overlay requirement,” meaning it would not add to the number of courses students are required to take. Rather, certain classes that are already considered requirements by the university could also count towards filling the diversity requirement.

The proposal of a diversity requirement met some resistance among faculty.

“There are many more ways to encourage diversity on campus, to encourage sensitivity to issues… many ways of encouraging [that], but seeing the curriculum as the vehicle to do this, we open ourselves up to all kinds of problems,” Professor Charles King, from the government department, said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Later this month, the Academics Working Group plans to release its first proposals for how Georgetown can improve diversity in its curriculum. The group, one of three diversity working groups formed by President DeGioia last spring after The Hoya‘s April Fools’ Issues prompted a broad discussion of diversity at Georgetown, is geared toward determining what Georgetown is lacking in its course offerings with regards to diversity. Stephanie Frenel (SFS ’12), who serves as a student representative to the faculty co-chairs of the group, said its recommendations will probably include recommendations for new course requirements.

The group has been working to examine how Georgetown’s curriculum offerings compare to peer schools’ and form suggestions for how Georgetown can improve their requirements in ethnic studies since the Spring of 2009. Over the summer, they compared the curriculum at Georgetown to that of schools with similar rankings to determine where Georgetown needed to enhance diversity in its course offerings.

The group is co-chaired by Veronica Salles Reese, the Director for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Professor Eusebio Mujal-Leon of the Government Department and began as small discussion groups among students that were loosely overseen by Provost James O’Donnell. Duyen Bui (SFS ’10), who acts as a facilitator for student discussions and Stephanie Frenel (SFS ’12), who serves as a student representative to the faculty co-chairs, were the two students mainly responsible for gathering student input on how to increase diversity in the curriculum.

The graphs above show the results of their research. Points were allotted to Georgetown and its peer institutions based on their course offerings. The University of Maryland-College Park was one of the institutions with a model curriculum for ethnic studies. They examined their top institutions like Harvard, Columbia, and Yale, finding that each has a much more diverse curriculum than Georgetown. As the graph shows, Georgetown is at the bottom compared to its peers, and is the only school that offers only a minor in African American studies with no general education requirements or majors in any of the three diversity areas.

Bui said that based on these findings, one question became obvious to the whole group: “If we’re one of the top international institutions, why are we so behind?”

Read the rest of this entry »

The Student Life Working Group, one of the three diversity working groups that President John DeGioia established at an April 2009 town hall, is not quite ready to present all of the proposals it has for encouraging more diversity and tolerance in student life at Georgetown. But Joshua Guzman (SFS ’10), pictured right, who co-chairs the group with Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson, said they have already come up with several things they’d like to include.

“We’re just trying to find a way that we can institutionalize all that work that students put into making Georgetown a safer place and a more diverse environment,” Guzman said. “In my opinion, there’s definitely a culture of apathy on campus and a lot of people just don’t care, but we definitely should start telling people to care about these issues.”

Last semester, the admission and recruitment working group revealed its suggestions for altering admissions so that it encourages a more diverse applicant pool. These included new scholarships aimed at increasing need-blind aid, diversifying tour guides, changing essay prompts, and many other ways Georgetown could increase enrollment by underrepresented minorities.

“Student life made it a priority to get as much input not only from students, but from staff involved. I think people were really engaged and active in these dialogues and conversation, and overall the feeling was very positive about the work that we’re doing.”

The working group is split into two subcommittees: the Institutional Change Subcommittee for long-term goals and the Student Programs/Organizations Subcommittee for short-term goals. Each subcommittee has provided three preliminary recommendations as a framework for what they hope to get accomplished.

The Institutional Change Subcommittee suggests the creation of a Diversity Fellows program. Members of this program would remain fellows throughout each year at Georgetown, and be responsible for proposing new initiatives and programming related to diversity. The program would get these student leaders involved with CMEA, the LGBTQ Resource Center, and the Women’s Center as a way to provide more cohesion among the various groups already working to improve diversity at Georgetown.

Read the rest of this entry »

Provost James O’Donnell sent an e-mail to students tonight that criticized December’s Heckler controversy and updated students on the University’s three diversity initiatives.

O’Donnell said the Heckler‘s latest issue was another failure of the University’s culture:

We continue now in the shadow of another failure — the Georgetown Heckler website’s tasteless and offensive attempt to revisit last spring’s issues, which showcased a failure to comprehend some toxic parts of America’s past and present, a failure to realize that lynch mobs not only aren’t funny, their very invocation sends a painful message to many in our community who directly or through family members had to deal with such threats, while offending many others.

He also wrote that one working group’s proposals are under consideration by President John DeGioia and the Provost’s Office, while the other two working groups will soon present their suggestions for improving Georgetown on diversity issues.

Full e-mail after the jump

Read the rest of this entry »