Pro-Change Behavior Systems, Inc. is collaborating with the University of Rhode Island’s (URI) Multicultural Center to help promote and evaluate multicultural competence among their student body. As part of this project, an assessment of readiness to be multiculturally competent and measures for assessing the pros and cons and self-efficacy will be developed and validated. A literature review and interviews with various experts has helped to identify these 7 key behaviors that reflect expressing multicultural competence within knowledge, awareness, and skills: 1) knowing your own cultural identity and values, 2) acknowledging multiple perspectives, 3) placing yourself outside of your comfort zone which causes you to examine your own attitudes, stereotypes, privileges, and actions, 4) engaging in multicultural organizations, activities, and classes, 5) building relationships with others from different backgrounds, 6) advocating for initiatives to advance diversity, and 7) challenging culturally insensitive remarks and behaviors. This study will identify the most important behaviors of multicultural competence.
“Being a multiculturally competent individual is not only an asset, but a requirement for succeeding in today’s global world. By exposing our student body to information and experiences related to cultures, religions, and life experiences that differ from their own and providing them with the skills necessary to be sensitive to and accepting of those differences, we are preparing them to be competent and contributing members of society,” says Melvin Wade, Director of the Multicultural Center, URI.
URI holds an extensive Diversity Week each year during which up to 75 workshops on various topics are held, all with the goal of increasing awareness, skills, and knowledge of diversity on campus and around the world. The assessments developed for this project will be used to help evaluate the effectiveness of Diversity Week at increasing multicultural competence of student attendees. The measures will provide a concrete way to assess the value and benefit in student participation of Diversity Week. In the long term, these measures also can be used to evaluate the impact that attending URI has on multicultural competence by surveying incoming first year students and then following up with them toward the end of their college tenure.
Leanne Mauriello, Ph.D., Vice President at Pro-Change, is pleased to be collaborating with the Multicultural Center on this joint venture.
“These measurement tools will help demonstrate concretely the benefit of the important work and mission of the Multicultural Center.”
About URI’s Multicultural Center
In support of the primary mission of the University toward building a culture of learning, the University of Rhode Island Multicultural Center critically engages students, faculty, staff, administrators, and other allies in creating and sustaining a campus culture in which diverse persons, organizations, and groups can learn and develop to their greatest potential, and participate in society to their maximum ability. For more information, visit http://www.uri.edu/mcc/.