Hospitality Management `practices what
it preaches' in promoting diversity

Florida International University's School of Hospitality Management is one of the most diverse schools of its kind in the United States. It attracts recruiters from the hospitality industry because of its diverse mix of students. Domestic students (521) comprise 63 percent of our student body and are a varied group, including four percent Asian American, 10 percent African American, 23 percent Hispanic American and 26 percent Caucasian American. Additionally, 302 (37 percent) of the students are international.

Diversity is a focus in human resources classes, with assistant professor Diann Newman taking leadership. One of the primary objectives in these classes is to teach students to learn to replace fear of people different from who they are with a willingness to seek understanding. Students are encouraged to value diversity and to make it their responsibility to challenge stereotypes and prejudices.

These objectives are accomplished through various classroom presentations and outside activities. Classroom presentations cover diversity and include ethnic background, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age and economic status.

Following the diversity presentation, students are asked to identify a group that causes them discomfort or for whom they hold a prejudice. They interact with members of that group to better understand their misperceptions. Students must then write a term paper discussing their prior assumptions and their new awareness. At the end of the semester, the students share insights gained from this exercise.

To expose students to individuals less fortunate and different than themselves, Newman requires them to volunteer 20 hours in a community agency. These students also complete a paper and a journal, which requires them to reflect upon their experiences and how this new knowledge can assist them.

The faculty of the School of Hospitality Management recognize that one of the most important issues facing future graduates is the management of diverse employees. The diverse student body gives them an important strategic advantage over other hospitality programs in the United States. The School's curriculum committee, in its recent revision of the entire program of study, is mandating that many courses contain team-building components such as team projects. Classes participate in team-building exercises and an all-day ropes course experience. Through these types of activities, students learn to interact closely with people different from themselves.

The School of Hospitality Management is determined to take a leadership position in educating a diverse student body. It is understood that to succeed in the future, managers must have an appreciation for people different than themselves. The ability to manage a diverse team of employees will enable graduates to add value to the organizations that employ them.

Joseph J. West, Ph.D., is dean of the School of Hospitality Management at Florida International University.

 

 

Business literacy:
building transnational business teams

 

The College of Business Administration helps prepare students for a diverse and globally connected world. All of the major areas of study in the College of Business deal with this issue. In particular, the human resources management courses cover recruitment, selection, assessment, and training of multicultural workforces. Human resource courses also include cross-cultural issues in productivity and quality management, as well as ethical issues such as employee privacy, assessment of job applicants and employees, employee searches, "whistle blowing," and fair information practices in the computer age.

Both management and human resource management majors take the following courses:

• Human Resource Management - a major focus is on multicultural workforce management.
• Personnel Selection and Recruitment - a more technical course devoted to issues of reliability/validity in making staffing decisions.

Further, ethical issues and dilemmas facing business are covered in other business courses, such as: Entrepreneurship; Small Business Management; and Strategic Management.

The College has developed, and included in the current curricula, courses that prepare students for changing demographics in the workplace in the next decade.

The core management course discusses management in the 21st century and focuses on "managing in an era of change." Course topics include technological innovation, globalization, deregulation, changing political systems, demographics and the new global workforce, and the growing emphasis on human capital. Separate chapters in the course textbook deal with "Managing in a Global Environment" and "Managing Ethics, Diversity, and Social Responsibility."

Within various textbook chapters, the following sub-units topics deal with diversity: managing aging, barriers to diversity, bases for diversity, boosting performance by diversity, disabilities, ethnicity, gender, leadership and diversity, non-discrimination issues, organizational communication and diversity, race, and sexual orientation.

The College's Department of Management and International Business also offers several courses on an elective basis that deal with diversity issues:

• Women and Men in Management (This course could be re-titled Diversity Management.)
• Intergroup Relations - includes ethnic/racial issues.
• Organizational Behavior - includes issues of ethics and change plus workforce diversity issues, such as changing demographics, cultural differences, gender/age/race issues, and physically challenged workers.

The aforementioned courses address national and global levels of diversity with the use of specific materials that reinforce the notion of diversity. However, it is worth noting that one of the core courses, International Business, covers political and cultural interactions between host societies and problems associated with the building of transnational business teams.

In order to successfully prepare students to deal with people of different cultures in the new millennium, business educators should consider the following measures necessary:

• The essential foundation for any student knowledge base that deals with issues of diversity is a good liberal arts background during the freshman and sophomore years of college study.
• The University needs to make a more serious effort to redirect students that show no interest in "learning how to learn," because not all students are "self-enabled" learners. "Learning how to learn" is a very much needed, 21st century skill that ensures a knowledgeable workforce. "Quality management" is another issue for global businesses in the 21st century, including educational administration.
• Internships are an excellent way to build "reality checks" into education, as are study-abroad ventures. Such programs build organizational and cultural awareness. Coupled with classroom work, these programs build a sense of business literacy among business students.
• The notion of "business literacy" is worth further discussion as an outcome measure for students. Students need a sense of "what's happening" in a variety of industries and countries and, most importantly, a sense of how to "connect the dots" across the various areas of functional specialization. Capstone courses assist with this process, but, in general, business students should have superior reading and information literacy skills if they are to continuously improve their professional skills after graduation.

Information disseminated in the classroom about diversity and the ever-changing multicultural workforce should help prepare graduates of the College of Business for the challenges created by changing demographics in the workplace in the next decade.

Joyce J. Elam, Ph.D., is dean of the College of Business Administration at Florida International University.

 

Diversity prerequisites needed for admission into education

 

The mission of the College of Education at Florida International University is to prepare school teachers, administrators and other personnel to work in diverse settings. Education faculty members recognize the serious need to provide specialized curricula and experiences that enable graduates to work effectively with individuals of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, gender, exceptionalities and sexual orientation.

As the world grows smaller due to its interconnectedness, we realize that what is offered in the curriculum cannot be left to chance. Instead, specific courses and experiences must be sequenced into cohesive curricula at the undergraduate and graduate levels. One example is the curricula for undergraduate teacher education candidates (i.e., persons preparing to be elementary, secondary and special education teachers).

Before being admitted to the College of Education, students must complete a course in Teaching Diverse Populations. Along with this prerequisite, students are required to choose six hours of other prerequisite course work with a focus on international and/or diverse populations. Once students have met these and other requirements and are admitted to the college, they take several core professional courses that build on classes taken previously and that continue supporting each student's development of a strong theoretical basis for examining questions of class, race, ethnicity, exceptionality, gender and language.

Course work is only one part of the curriculum equation for teacher candidates; field experiences are an equally essential component. Through field experiences, which begin early and continue throughout elementary, secondary and special education programs, students learn to apply what they have learned in theory to the real world of teaching. Thus, the classrooms and school where students are placed for these experiences must be carefully chosen to represent diverse populations and contexts. Fortunately, the Miami area has many schools that meet these criteria.

Another aspect that deserves mention is the response to the mandate requiring teachers that work with non-English speaking students to be endorsed in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). As a result, this critical content is required in the curriculum-both in courses and field experiences-to ensure that students have the requisite skills and dispositions to effectively address the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse populations. This affects students that are prospective elementary, English, foreign language and special education teachers, since state endorsement is available only to teachers certified in these areas.

Currently, the elementary education program offers a program of studies that enables students to graduate with ESOL endorsement. In addition, the elementary, secondary and special education programs include specialized courses unique to each program. For example, in the English education program, faculty offer a course on multicultural literature. In physical education, the program offers a course in adapted physical education.

We recognize that the curriculum we offer is not the only way to influence teacher education students to embrace and celebrate diversity. Equally important is the college's commitment to recruiting and maintaining a diverse faculty that serve as strong role models for novice teachers. Indeed, the most important influence on teacher candidates may be the climate created by faculty whose values and actions clearly model what we want graduates to model. We have to do more than "talk the talk." We must "walk the talk."

Linda P. Blanton, Ed.D., is dean of the College of Education at Florida International University.

 

The `hidden' agenda: Exposing biased terminology and prejudices

 

 

What does `blanching' look like on somebody like me?" This question, posed by an African American physical therapy student in one of my therapeutic exercise classes, opened my eyes to how much some of our medical techniques are geared toward the white client and ignore people of color. Blanching is described as a "pallor" of skin which occurs after one minute when the legs are elevated and arterial circulation is poor.

Ironically, the technique we were discussing at the time was designed to evaluate lower extremity circulation-and poor circulation may be due to diabetes, a condition prevalent in persons of color. Spurred on by this student's question, the class started brainstorming ways to determine what blanching would look like in persons of color, and for the next half-hour we had a grand time as we poked, prodded, elevated and dangled the legs of all of the students of color in the class. Now, this activity has become a regular occurrence in my class and one of the students' favorites.

The Third Report of the Pew Health Professions Commission charged educators to provide cultural sensitivity as part of the educational experience.1 Even in the "living laboratory" created by the diversity of the student body at Florida International University, students need to be taught to be sensitive to their own racial, ethnic and cultural biases. They need to be taught to appreciate differences and deal with prejudice.

Sensitivity to our own biases and awareness of the behavior we exhibit is emphasized in my classes. I show the students a video where a white physical therapist goes into a black patient's home and uses a tissue to hold the phone while calling her next client. The students scoff at the video, then are shocked to hear that one of the producers of the film actually saw a physical therapist perform this activity.

Valuing diversity is explored by a variety of activities. One of the most effective is the use of critical incidents2 to explore the diverse reactions of patients from various ethnic backgrounds to clinical encounters with health professionals. Students also explore their own cultural orientations to variables such as time, competitiveness, individualism and power, and compare these to those of persons from other cultures.3 Guest lectures on heterosexism (a system of advantage that favors heterosexuals) and ableism (a system of advantage based on physical or mental characteristics)4 expand the students' awareness of diversity beyond racial and ethnic factors.

Since many of our students are from diverse backgrounds, we have found that they may encounter overt or covert racism in the clinical setting.5 While occasionally the discrimination encountered is a result of deeply ingrained prejudice that can only be resolved by removing the student from under the supervision of the clinician who is biased, often it is the student's failure to understand and meet the cultural expectations of the clinician. Thus, students learn about the generic behaviors important to success in the clinic,6 engage in classroom and lab activities to practice the behaviors, and are expected to exhibit these behaviors in and out of the classroom. Departmental policy establishes the expectation that the student will develop these behaviors as part of the process of becoming a physical therapist and stipulates that failure to develop these behaviors will result in dismissal from the program.

Preparing students for a career in the health professions requires that we provide them with the educational experiences and skills that prepare them to work in a multicultural environment, to deal with clients from diverse backgrounds, and to understand and deal with any overt or covert discrimination they may encounter. Students living and learning in South Florida have the initial advantage of a multicultural community. If students are taught to be aware, sensitive and valuing of diversity, as graduates their understanding of diversity and their ability to work in any multicultural community in the world will be their greatest asset.

Awilda R. Haskins, Ed.D. P.T., is associate professor, physical therapy, in the College of Urban Affairs and Health at Florida International University.

Grant funds research of minorities
pursuing psychology studies

 

The American Psychological Association (APA) Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention, and Training in Psychology recently found that representation of persons of non-European decent markedly decreases at each succeeding level of psychology's educational pipeline (high school through postdoctoral studies). In response to this concern, the APA Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs (OEMA) submitted a grant application to the National Institute for General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) titled "Developing Minority Biomedical Research Talent in Psychology: A Collaborative and Systematic Approach for Strengthening Institutional Capacity for Recruitment, Retention, Training, and Research." This grant was funded, and Florida International University's Department of Psychology participates as a member of the Southeast Regional Center of Excellence, established by the grant to develop strategies for recruiting and training individuals in psychological research.

Under the direction of the project's leader, Marvin Dunn, several psychology faculty (Luis Escovar, Marilyn Montgomery, and Bennett Schwartz) and one College of Arts and Sciences administrator (Fred Bouma) comprise the Psychology Research Initiative Mentoring (PRIME) committee that oversees APA-NIGMS activities at FIU. During the 1998-1999 school year, the committee awarded Summer Research Awards, funded from the APA-NIGMS grant, to eight students. Psychology Department faculty members mentored these students in planning and carrying out research projects in areas of mutual interest. In the fall, the PRIME scholars gave presentations of their work in a research colloquium sponsored by the Department of Psychology.

A number of PRIME scholars carried out projects at FIU's Child Anxiety and Phobia Program, under the direction of Wendy Silverman. Two student projects, including those of Jacqueline Alfonso ("Ethnic Differences in Anxiety Sensitivity: Changes from Childhood to Adolescence") and Eileen Rodriguez ("The Role of Attachment Style in Identity Formation Process") were also accepted for presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence. Two additional student projects, including those of Melissa Russo ("Test-retest Reliability of the Separation Anxiety Disorder Subscale of the Anxiety Disorder Interview Schedule") and Heather Coll ("Social Validation of the Presence/Absence of Anxiety in Children, Parents, and the Dyad") have been submitted to the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy for its meeting in 2000.

Two other PRIME scholars, Judy Percival ("Children Presenting with Physical Somatic Medical Complaints") and Bertram Tulloch ("Psychosocial Intervention and Wellbeing in HIV-Positive Black Women") coordinated with faculty at the University of Miami to carry out their research, through the efforts of Dunn. The cooperation of UM and FIU psychology faculty allowed these students to work in research labs with a specialized biopsychology focus, thus gaining experience in an area of psychology with excellent prospects for growth during the next decades.

Colin Dowe, mentored by Michelle Marks and Scott Fraser, completed a project titled "Organizational Team Coordination." Claudia Vescovi worked with Escovar to collect data investigating "Parental Antecedents of the Dependent Personality." These projects contributed to ongoing nationally renowned investigations.

The PRIME Committee will continue participating in the APA-NIGMS project in future years. Specifically, the program seeks to attract students transferring from the Florida Community College System and involve them in psychological research soon after they enter the University. This early research experience and mentoring will assist students who decide to pursue advanced degrees to reach their goals, thereby improving the representation of diverse individuals in the field of psychology. FIU's first group of PRIME students have shown that undergraduate students mentored by faculty with active research projects can achieve both local and national recognition.

Marilyn J. Montgomery, Ph.D., is assistant professor of psychology at Florida International University.