Insider Views: What JMU Focus Groups Reveal about Diversity
Course# TD1331

NOTE: You must pre-register for lunch and each concurrent session you plan on attending.

This presentation summarizes one of the accomplishments of a year-long collaboration between the College of Business and the College of Integrated Science and Technology, motivated by their joint interests in exploring the campus climate at JMU and assessing the degree to which students are receiving sufficient exposure to the multicultural opportunities and complexities that will characterize their experiences in their careers to come. Recognizing the value of "testing the waters" as essential preparatory steps to a more representative and comprehensive campus climate study, a series of focus group interviews were scheduled. These interviews were carefully transcribed and analyzed so that specific themes, concerns, expressions and even relevant JMU idiosyncrasies might be appropriately recognized for inclusion in subsequent survey research and/or future strategic dialogue. The Annual Diversity Conference of 2009 provides an important opportunity for the insights from those focus groups to be presented to a wider audience. Glimpses of the experiences described and the perspectives expressed by groups of faculty, groups of students, and groups of individuals with especially strong concerns about campus diversity may provide valuable learning outcomes to apply in teaching, advising, recruiting, event planning, group facilitating activities, socializing, group studying, and so on.

The presentation will be highly interactive. Adams and Zingraff will share material drawn directly from the focus group interviews and invite the participants to react by anonymously indicating their level of agreement, disagreement, surprise, belief, understanding or the lack thereof. These collective reactions will launch group discussion, with the aim of amplifying in a meaningful way the range of perspectives discovered through the focus groups to begin with. For closure, we will reflect on the viewpoints in all of their diversity and consider how micro and/or macro changes at JMU might address some common areas of concern.

Presented by Rhonda Zingraff and Elizabeth Adams

Monday, April 6, 2009

11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Alleghany Room, Festival Conference and Student Center

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