For Immediate Release
Book Highlights Diversity Successes
January 20, 2009 (Baton Rouge, LA): With an eye toward providing practical advice about diversity in higher education, the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, has published a free book that highlights examples of successful diversity programs in universities around the country.
Funded through a grant from the Knight Foundation, the book, titled “Diversity That Works,” contains personal reports from journalism/mass communication programs about successful efforts and the ideas and activities that made them work.The book is available in its entirety on the school’s Forum on Media Diversity website, http://www.masscommunicating.lsu.edu/.
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“Our goal in sponsoring this conference and publishing this book,” said John Maxwell Hamilton, dean of the Manship School, “was to share demonstrated success in a way that they could be adapted by other programs to meet local needs and requirements. We hope educators and professionals will find it useful.”
The publication – with personal reports from 17 representatives of 14 universities and organizations -- includes sections on diversity principles, recruiting students, recruiting faculty, curriculum development, academic leadership and research. Four chapters summarize the participants’ discussions on these topics in May 2008.
Given particular emphasis throughout is the need and value developing strong relationships with an academic program’s total communities, the book’s editor, Ralph Izard, Sig Mickelson/CBS professor in the Manship School, said.
“Diversity works best when we are sincerely committed to expanding our reach and when we do so with personal interest in individual students, faculty, other administrators across our campuses and, perhaps especially, with local professionals,” he added.
Among participants were representatives of South Dakota State University, San Francisco State University, California State University-Northridge, the University of Georgia, the University of Illinois, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania State University, the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, Louisiana State University, Santa Clara University, Columbia University, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Texas Christian University and the University of Missouri.
Hard copies may be obtained free of charge by contacting the editor, Ralph Izard at izard@lsu.edu.
