Saturday
September 4, 2010
Cultural climate evaluator visits campus
In the upcoming 2010 school year, Indiana Wesleyan University will implement numerous initiatives to improve various aspects of the campus. One of these, concerning campus diversity, became more of a reality with the visit of Cultural Climate Evaluator Dr. Pete Menjares on April 7.
Menjares, who currently serves as the associate provost of leadership diversity at Biola University in California, spent t ime at the Marion campus in order to produce a cultural climate report and offer suggestions for leaders at Indiana Wesleyan to use to improve diversity on campus.
“Based on statistics, the cultural landscape is changing, globally, and in order for us, and other institutions of high education to really accommodate and really support students, now to the next 10 to 15 years, we have to be prepared to equip ourselves and educate ourselves and train our campus to be culturally minded,” said Michael Moffitt, the vice president of student development at IWU.
According to a 2007 survey, IWU’s small campus consists of at least 82 percent white or non-Hispanic students, making it seem that IWU may not seem to need to focus on diversity. Yet, according to student Diversity Coordinator Libby Watson (jr), diversity goes beyond race or ethnicity.
“I’m not just talking about celebrating a person’s culture based solely on the color of their skin, but celebrating who they are as a person, down deep,” Watson said. “I would like to see the campus start to think about these issues less as a race issue, and more as an issue of loving each other.”
Approaching diversity in this way would broaden the term to encompass a greater part of campus than just those who are ethnically diverse. Instead, the term would refer to anyone with different interests and talents, as well as culture and heritage.
“Diversity is just recognizing what God has created in each of us and celebrating those differences, celebrating the parts of Christ and the parts of God that have been placed in us, whether we recognize it or not,” Watson said.
Diversity at Indiana Wesleyan is not only an important issue for campus, but it also plays a role in determining how the Marion community interacts with the institution as a whole.
“I think the communit y viewed us as an ivory tower,” Moffitt said. “Only certain people can come in and that’s it. I think what this allows us to do is to open those floodgates and say, ‘Hey, this community of learners wants to embrace around it and everybody around it. There needs to be an awakening, so to speak not just on our campus, but in our community.”
As a member of the Marion community for the past 22 years, pastor Alex Huskey of (New) New Bethany Church of God and Christ is familiar with both the Marion community and Indiana Wesleyan. He said his interactions with students and IWU President, Dr. Henry Smith, have demonstrated the passion university leaders hold for diversity at Indiana Wesleyan, as well as the importance of increasing cultural sensitivity at the university.
“When we learn how to operate together regardless of our ethnic backgrounds or racial backgrounds, we become very much more like the picture I believe the body of Christ is supposed to be,” Huskey said. “We can have so much more to offer by adding more diversity and being aware of our diversity in this community.”
Changes are coming for theculture at IWU. According to Moffitt, these changes are for the betterment of the university, the student body and the Kingdom of God as a whole.
“I think God calls to embrace, to love one another. He didn’t say love that type of person, he just said love one another,” Moffitt said. “I think we’re called if we are going to reach people for Christ … to be comfortable and engaged in the masses.
And the masses look like every color in the world. So if that’s our challenge, I think as an institution of higher education it’s a natural fit for us to want to embrace that and to want to be all that God’s calling us to be.”
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