Invitation to Submit Exemplary Diversity Programs and Practices

Be sure to seize this opportunity to highlight your best campus diversity work.  The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) invites your institution to submit an exemplary diversity program to be featured in a new AAC&U publication. The deadline for submission is December 11, 2006. We want to identify cutting edge campus practices that stand on the horizon of what we have learned over the years about diversity, student learning, and institutional change.

In 1996, AAC&U published Reasons for Hope: Promising Practices From The Campus Diversity Initiative, which offered snapshots of an exciting array of campus practices addressing different institutional dimensions of diversity work.  A decade later, we want to offer a milestone assessment of how all the dimensions of campus diversity work have evolved.  We will be entitling our new monograph More Reasons for Hope.

AAC&U believes we are at a critical crossroads in the diversity education reform movement.  We want to capture the most forward looking programs that embody new directions for advancing this work of inclusive excellence. We are particularly interested in efforts that can point to evidence of achieving program objectives.

In issuing an updated version of Reasons for Hope, we are honoring the memory and legacy of Edgar F. Beckham. As a former Ford Foundation program officer and AAC&U Senior Fellow, he recommended the Foundation fund the first monograph and also shaped Ford’s nationwide Campus Diversity Initiative from 1990-1998. Edgar, one of higher education’s most influential leaders, transformed the way we approach this work and deepened our understanding of its profound impact.  He located diversity work at the heart of the academy’s educational mission and understood what was at stake in our local and global communities in making such an investment.

As you consider submitting practices and initiatives from your institution, please review the category descriptions. Individual campuses are invited to submit more than one example. Because we anticipate receiving more submissions than we can include in the monograph, we will also highlight exemplary practices on DiversityWeb, in Diversity Digest, and in other AAC&U publications.

Don’t hesitate to contact me at 202-387-3760 extension 436 if you have any questions.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Sook-Yi Yong
Program Assistant and Editor, Diversity Web
Association of American Colleges & Universities

Click here for Submission Guidelines