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The Inaugural Edition
Much has happened since the December, 2008 conference on the Future of Diversity and Opportunity in Higher Education. Events have highlighted the juxtaposition of crisis and opportunity, which reverberated as a theme at the conference.
Susan Sturm, Director fo the Center for Institutional and Social Change
The economic crisis has forced higher education institutions around the country to face tough choices revealing whether diversity and opportunity will remain core values when push comes to shove. We ushered in the presidency of Barack Obama, a president who has committed to “transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.” We were heartened by President Obama’s call for imagination “joined to common purpose and necessity to courage,” which is urgently needed because “the ground has shifted” beneath us. The Center for Institutional and Social Change identified this ground shift as an organizing frame for our work, as reflected in the name of our website that launched in early December, 2008. As higher education institutions grapple with the financial crisis, those committed to advancing higher education’s public mission in a democracy must figure out how to use this crisis as an opportunity to reshape priorities and build democratic values.
Toward that end, the Center for Institutional and Social Change has undertaken to harness the momentum and knowledge generated at the conference, which truly became a national forum on innovation and collaboration. Over 350 university presidents, educators, professors, policy makers, foundation leaders, lawyers, students, and community activists participated in the conference. Several themes served as the conference’s organizing themes: The agenda developed a strengths-based approach to diversity and inclusion. This approach goes beyond addressing barriers to the participation of under-represented groups; it sets out an affirmative vision of an inclusive institution aimed at advancing “institutional citizenship”—the institutional conditions enabling women and men of all races to realize the capabilities as they see them. There was also tremendous energy around the project of rethinking merit to reconnect higher education to its public mission. Each panel underscored the importance of mutual partnerships and collaborations as a crucial mechanism for creating and sustaining inclusive institutions. We witnessed powerful examples of “organizational catalysts” --- transformative leaders able to bridge silos and mobilize change. The panels also grappled with sustainability and scalability of innovative projects operating at the institutional level. Knitted together through policy, networks and boundary-spanning institutions, these approaches create an architecture of inclusion.
The Center’s collaborative webiste has integrated the knowledge developed for the conference. On the site you will now find a rich collection of materials from the conference including:
- Thematic panel summaries and analysis
- Power point presentations
- Panel transcripts
- Photos and video clips from the conference
- Links to publications relevant to the panel themes
Through our website, the Center will continue the brainstorming and knowledge sharing begun at the FutureDiversity conference. We will keep you abreast of new information and opportunities for further collaboration through periodic publication of the GroundShift Chronicle. As a conference participant, you are a member of the GroundShift community and can log into the website in order to access our Libraries and Conference Resources. To log into the site, you need only enter your user name (first initial of your first name and your last name) and your password (which was initially set to “groundshift”).
Going forward, we will be posting further analysis of the conference dialogue, video clips and mini-documentaries, and profiles of innovation featured at the conference and elsewhere. We will also link to research and resources relevant to the themes of the conference and the Center’s related work. Our newsletter will provide (somewhat) monthly updates about new materials, as well as opportunities to continue the knowledge sharing, innovation and collaboration generated at the conference. If you have information to share, events to post, or websites to link, we encourage you to contribute through our Submission Form. This information will be available only to members of the GroundShift community. We look forward to future collaboration.
Sincerely,
Susan Sturm, Director
The Center for Institutional & Social Change
www.groundshift.org
