This is the eighth edition of Diversity Exchange magazine and it is my first as publisher. I am delighted to be associated with this important medium of dialogue and its focus on building greater understanding and appreciation of differences. The magazine has been a wonderful tool for cultivating ideas of faculty members, students, and national leaders on matters of diversity.

Many individuals believe that diversity is just about numbers, quotas, gender, ethnicity, race, religion, or sexual orientation. It is about much more than that – it is about the culture of the institution – it is about whether people feel that they are a part of the community. It is about inclusion. Inclusion means creating a culture in which faculty members, students, and staff from all backgrounds feel valued and are able to function at their best. Institutions that fail to provide a welcoming, supportive environment for multiculturalism will be unable to recruit and retain the brainpower needed to sustain themselves. If we are to build institutions that will have a competitive advantage today, in the next decade, and beyond, we must build the kind of institutional communities that will attract students and faculty from different backgrounds and provide them with the support needed for them to flourish.

This edition of Diversity Exchange focuses on cultural diversity and the health professions as a general theme, with several articles written by FIU faculty members. Each of the articles touches upon the need to address health disparities experienced by a growing culturally and ethnically diverse patient population while also challenging the need for culturally competent practitioners. The perspective provided in “Diversity in Medicine” by Carlos Martini and Tom Breslin indicates that a diverse physician workforce is a critical component in making health available to those who need it most. They also indicate that the lack of diversity of students currently enrolled in medical schools is a contributory factor to health disparities.

All diversity efforts are most effective when individuals begin to look inward at how issues of diversity, discrimination, and harassment (biases about race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, and age) inform or misinform them about working with people different from themselves. Several articles by our students and staff, included in this edition, reflect their experiences and challenges of diversity and inclusion.

As individuals and as a university, we must recognize that we have both a unique opportunity and a responsibility to reflect a fundamental respect for one another because of our differences, not in spite of them. President Nancy Zimpher of the University Cincinnati, our contributing final comment, drives home this point.

It is my hope that you will enjoy this edition and that you will be stimulated to conceptualize ethnic and cultural factors in both your individual life and within the institution in a different way. As you assess your personal position on many of these issues, ask yourself – What will I contribute to this effort? What are those barriers that are getting in the way of our truly being an inclusive community?

Rosa L. Jones
Publisher