The voices of nearly 400 Cornell students discussing their experiences with diversity on campus form the basis of a new study completed this month. Students engaged with diversity scholar Sylvia Hurtado and her team in focus-group discussions during fall 2013 for the study, “The Climate for Diversity at Cornell University: Student Experiences.”

In October, the research team engaged in face-to-face interactions with 99 students in 14 focus groups representing diverse constituencies including Latino, Asian, black, Native American and LGBT. A website collected individual comments and recommendations from an additional 298 students (190 undergraduates and 108 graduate students). The researchers then identified emergent themes, focused on authentic forms of engagement; diversity skills and knowledge; bridging diverse communities; bias, discrimination and harassment; and power dynamics and equity.

“We value the Hurtado study’s role in giving voice to groups and to individual students whose voices might not otherwise be heard,” said Laura Brown, senior vice provost for undergraduate education and co-chair of the University Diversity Council, which requested the study. “There are real challenges about engagement and inclusion that Cornell must find ways to address.”

Cornell’s diversity planning initiative, Toward New Destinations (TND), has been revised to highlight and support particular opportunities to improve the climate for students, Brown said.

Hurtado, professor and director of the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, teaches intergroup relations and studies diverse learning environments. Her qualitative research at Cornell augments surveys in 2012-13 of undergraduate, graduate and professional students, including a spring 2013 student survey, “Beginning to Assess the Student Climate for Diversity,” conducted by Cornell’s Institutional Research and Planning office.

Excerpts from Hurtado’s report summary follow; the full report is available online.

Students from many constituencies were interested in having more conversations, addressing issues and listening to others. “Students from minority communities … often have to take on the ‘burden of educating others,’” Hurtado wrote. Some students also attributed “ignorance” to differences in experiences and prior socialization. Many students recommended having diversity requirements in the curriculum across all colleges.

In discussions on diversity and equity, student respondents encouraged recognition of diverse communities based on disability, religion, international identities and political viewpoints. “We are constantly thinking about not only the black community, but how we bridge the gap between our community and other communities,” a male African-American student surveyed said.

Researchers learned that many students do not know about all of the existing opportunities to engage across difference on campus, and the occasion of the focus groups brought them to spaces they had not previously visited. The findings pointed to an opportunity to plan and coordinate a network of diversity/inclusion efforts across campus.

Researchers identified “an opportunity to create an intentional educational and cross-unit initiative that creates opportunities for ongoing, sustained conversations promoting self-reflection at the individual level and proactive activity at the institutional level.” To augment Tapestry of Possibilities training for new students, a series of events in such common residential experiences as North Campus “could further deepen the conversations,” Hurtado wrote.

From discussions on bias, discrimination and harassment, the report compiles “different examples drawn from students’ experiences that range from overt forms of traditional racism, sexism or homophobia to more subtle offenses or microaggressions that cause students to feel unsafe, internalize negative messages or use adaptive strategies to subvert them,” Hurtado wrote, adding that the report “names these experiences and may help individuals to realize that they are not alone in these experiences” and that education around microaggressions may enable others to better understand their impact. She recommended a “focus on prevention through educational activity.”

Researchers said students find their sense of belonging in specific niches at Cornell, such as areas of mutual interest or related to their personal goals. “Cornell students who devise adaptive strategies to navigate power dynamics and the maze of obstacles tend to make their own satisfying experiences, but their efforts are in contrast to the effortless worlds of privileged groups,” Hurtado wrote.

In response to the study, key Cornell commitments to improve campus climate for students are launching or under continued expansion for 2014-15. In a preface to Hurtado’s study, the University Diversity Council has highlighted, among other activities, a grant program for innovative diversity and inclusion initiatives; further development of the Intergroup Dialogue course to build intercultural skills and communication across differences; the Skills for Success performance program for staff in Human Resources; and new Bias Report Team planning.

Newly designed initiatives for students around Toward New Destinations’ core principles of engagement and inclusion include support for collaboration across colleges to emphasize Hurtado’s research on bridging diverse communities, and helping campus diversity planners identify joint initiatives that will improve the climate for students.