CONTACT: Mike Silverthorn, (517) 774-3197, [email protected]
UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIP PREPARES STUDENTS TO LIVE, WORK IN ETHNICALLY DIVERSE SOCIETY
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. -- A fledgling university partnership that seeks to build racial understanding has produced some heated classroom exchanges but also some eye-opening discussion between students from different backgrounds.
The unique partnership, called "Building Community through Technology," links students from Central Michigan University, a predominantly white university, and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, a historically black institution. (The partnership was featured on the cover of a recent issue of the national publication "Black Issues in Higher Education.")
The two schools are working together to develop and offer classes using both team teaching and interactive television. A CMU faculty member and about 15 CMU students meet in a "distance learning" classroom on CMU's Michigan campus in Mount Pleasant, while a UAPB faculty member and a group of UAPB students meet in a similar classroom on the Arkansas campus.
The classrooms are linked via two-way interactive television technology, which allows for the transmission of live audio and video through telephone lines. Students and faculty from both locations see and interact with each other, share in discussions, ask questions and participate in class exercises despite the 900 miles that separate the two campuses.
The project, funded by a five-year $1.3 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, is in its third year, and university officials are just now starting to note the results of the program.
"Universities have an obligation to prepare students to live and work in a racially and ethnically diverse society," said Carole Beere, project director and assistant vice president for research and dean of graduate studies at CMU.
"Most college graduates will find themselves working side-by-side with individuals from different cultures," she said. "The best way to understand other cultures and ethnic groups and to learn to work comfortably and proficiently with people from different backgrounds is to experience that interaction firsthand, whether in the classroom or through other campus activities."
CMU, like other universities, works to ensure a multicultural experience by recruiting students from different cultures. Universities outside urban areas, however, often face greater challenges in attracting students of color, said Beere. The Kellogg project offers a solution: linking diverse students through advances in educational technology.
Faculty from the two universities spent a year preparing for a program that would help their students broaden their knowledge about and improve their attitudes toward persons from different racial, ethnic and geographical backgrounds.
The first classes, "Social Problems" and "African American Literature," were taught in the fall of 1997. "Introductory Psychology" and "Criminology" were added in 1998. "College Algebra" and "Introduction to Marketing" will be offered in 1999.
Is the project reaching its goals? Initial results are encouraging though not conclusive, say UAPB's Ted Knight and CMU's Robert Newby, the professors team teaching the "Social Problems" class.
"Team teaching is a great thing, and it's great for schools of different racial persuasions," said Knight. "Our greatest challenge is to make students understand that there is no advantage to either classroom, and that they are more the same than they realize.
"Some of the Michigan students have not been exposed to the environment in the South, and most of the Pine Bluff students have not been exposed to the environment in Mount Pleasant. Both groups of students have gained access to the opinions of students who have different viewpoints on life and the world in which they live. In my opinion, the class has exceeded expectations," he said.
The notion of having students from black and white universities interacting is a good idea, said Newby. It's too early, however, to judge the Kellogg program's effectiveness at changing attitudes, he said.
"Students are confronted with perspectives that they haven't been attuned to," said Newby. "There has been a lot of animation, even hostility, in some classes. But the exchange is taking place, and the attempt is being made to get people from different world views and experiences to reach a common ground or understanding about them."
The students, particularly those in the "Social Problems" class, give high grades to the project.
"There wasn't a day I didn't looked forward to class," said Isha Cogborn, a CMU African American student from Mount Clemens, Mich. "There were days when the discussion was tense, and students argued and debated issues, but it was a very healthy discussion. They key to the class is being open-minded.
"Certain issues really hit home to some students. One example was welfare. Some students voiced strong opinions against welfare and said that individuals who benefit from welfare are lazy and should get a job. That was a very personal discussion for me because I am a single mom going to school full-time, and I rely on welfare," she said.
For some students, the class was their first introduction to individuals from different cultures.
"I came from an all-white, small country high school and never had the opportunity to communicate with individuals from other cultures," said Bryanna Johnson, a white student from Fostoria, Mich. "The class opened up my mind to interracial issues, and I began to understand why people feel the way they do. I learned it's okay to ask questions.
"There were some students who voiced some offensive viewpoints. But if those feelings aren't shared, how can we make progress to work through them?" she asked.
"The class was interesting because it was a chance to see how other students who are not in the majority feel about certain issues," said Maplean Donaldson, an African American student at Pine Bluff. "Some students tend to get offended by the opinions of others, but eventually they learn to respect each other's opinions."
"I found the class to be a very positive experience," said Jeff Falcusan, a white CMU student from Battle Creek, Mich. "As a sociology major interested in studying inequality and social problems, I was prepared to deal with different theories as presented by the professors. Because of its nature, the class was successful in exposing people to different cultures and backgrounds."
By the fifth year of the project, the program will involve 16 faculty and include eight classes per semester, serving a total of 480 students per year, half at CMU and half at UAPB.
"I'm unaware of any other partnership like this," said Beere. "Most distance learning courses are designed for reaching students who have difficulty gaining access to education. Our program is different because both university sites have faculty and students from different backgrounds interacting with each other.
"By working together, universities like CMU and UAPB can attempt to foster racial understanding by using innovative programs that augment those designed to attract and retain students from diverse backgrounds," she said.
The two universities in the partnership are significantly different institutions.
CMU is a comprehensive, mid-sized university set in Mount Pleasant, a city of about 25,000. The university, set in a rural region, attracts both undergraduate and graduate students from all of Michigan. CMU enrolls 25,595 students in both on- and off- campus programs. A significant portion-about 25 percent-of students in the off-campus programs are minority students, many of whom are enrolled in programs offered at seven sites in metro Detroit as well as in other states.
In contrast, an overwhelming majority of the students on the Mount Pleasant campus are white, and approximately one-third come from suburbs around Detroit. Of CMU's on-campus enrollment of 17,155 students, 7 percent are minority students, 3.78 percent African American.
UAPB is a historically black, primarily undergraduate university that is part of the University of Arkansas higher education system. Located in Pine Bluff, a city of 57,000, UAPB has an enrollment of about 3,000 students. Eighty-five percent are African American, and 87 percent are from Arkansas. Many are from the Delta region, an area characterized by high poverty and unemployment rates.
The Battle Creek, Mich.,-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which is funding the program, is one of the largest private philanthropic organizations in the world. It was established in 1930 to "help people help themselves."
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