The James Irvine Foundation has awarded Scripps College a three-year grant of $800,000 to support efforts to create a strong multicultural academic and residential community, as part of the College’s recently developed Campus Diversity Initiative.
Scripps will use the grant to fully or partially fund four main areas: new faculty hires, which will target candidates from underrepresented populations; the development of more intercultural courses and the enhancement of the intercultural content of existing courses; augmentation of resources designed for student multicultural programming and activities, including the establishment of an Alumnae Multicultural Mentors Program and a fund to finance student-initiated research projects; and the creation of an intensive academic summer program for ninth and tenth grade girls, with a particular focus on students from underrepresented populations, in order to generate applications to Scripps from program participants.
According to Michael Deane Lamkin, vice president and dean of the faculty who heads the Campus Diversity Coordinating Committee, a critical goal of the initiative is to strengthen the campus consensus that an understanding and appreciation of diverse peoples, cultures, and perspectives are at the foundation of Scripps’ intellectual mission. The initiative also seeks to promote respect of differences among people as a prerequisite to achieving institutional and educational excellence; create an environment that acknowledges and engages issues of race, ethnicity, religion, belief, opinion, sexuality, economic class, and physical ableness; and increase the diversity of the campus community and its scholarship, as part of a community dedicated to women’s education.
The desired outcomes of the initiative are that Scripps students will have a better education through more interaction with a more diverse faculty and a more intercultural curriculum; Scripps students will have increased understanding, appreciation, and respect of differences; the number of underrepresented students in the applicant pool will increase; student satisfaction with multicultural programming will increase; and academic performance and student retention will increase.