Seize diversity opportunities in teaching, speaker says

Opportunities to promote diversity at UConn abound in all curricula and should be seized by faculty, a member of the vice provost’s office said Wednesday.

In a lively presentation to faculty members, Cathleen Love, associate vice provost for multicultural and international affairs, used anecdotes and examples to show colleagues how they can use diversity to create a better learning environment for students.

“We need to ask whether we are being inclusive in our classroom, whether we are building a sense of community, or whether some students feel excluded,” she said. She urged her colleagues to examine their teaching strategies, confer with other teachers, and be open to new approaches that may reach a diverse student population better.

Love, who consults nationally on diversity issues, said teachers should step back from the Eurocentric model that dominates government and academia, and instead look at how subjects might be taught or seen by people of wholly different orientations.

Being inclusive in class
Drawing on examples from UConn and other universities, she described how diversity issues can arise in often unlikely environments, such as a class on soil science. In that example, a professor wanted to acknowledge the diversity in his class, but wasn’t sure exactly how.

After some thought, he realized that the very soil under a population’s feet affects its culture and way of life — what people grow, what they build, how well they are nourished, and so on — and he wove that approach into his teaching.

Another professor, teaching computer-aided design, had U.S.-born students design their ideal home. They then asked an international student to review the design. That student, not surprisingly, would have created something entirely different. As a result of sharing their approaches, Love suggested, the students gained a greater appreciation for someone else’s perspective.

Another example: the “manifest destiny” taught in American history about European settlers’ sweep westward might also be taught from the perspective of Native Americans who view that period as “Eastern encroachment,” Love said.

She noted that diversity, flirting as it does with political correctness, is often a subject that teachers are happy to avoid. She described a scene that’s likely to be especially familiar to suburban mothers with infants in shopping carts:

“The child says, ‘Mommy, why is that lady’s skin so dark?’” Love said. “And what does the mother reply?”

“Shush,” replied the audience at Babbidge Library.

“And that,” Love said, “sets the foundation for how we talk about this subject for life.”