City College of San Francisco - California Competes

THEME VI
The College Diversity Committee, chaired by the Chancellor, oversees the development of initiatives that
realize the Strategic Plan 2003-2008 priorities related to diversity. These priorities include “diversifying the
curriculum across the College” (Strategic Priority 2.2), “promoting diversity at all levels of the College” and
“ensuring that the College’s workforce reflects the diverse communities we serve” (Strategic Priority 8.1).
The Diversity Committee recommended changes to the faculty and administrative hiring processes that
updated and strengthened the standard for evaluating an applicant’s ability to work with a multiculturally
diverse student population. The changes, implemented by the Human Resources Department, now require
that applicants describe in their application cover letter how their course/counseling content and teaching/counseling
methods meet the needs of culturally and academically diverse learners. Hiring interviews,
as in the past, must include a question that directly relates to the candidates’ experience working with
diverse student populations. The Human Resources Department also promotes a diverse composition of
faculty and administrative hiring committees and faculty tenure review committees.
The College and its Board of Trustees are committed to employing administrators, faculty, and staff
members who are dedicated to student success. CCSF recognizes that diversity in the collegiate environment
fosters cultural awareness, promotes mutual understanding and respect, and creates an improved
environment for teaching and learning. CCSF is committed to hiring that supports the goal of equal
employment opportunity and provides equal consideration for all qualified candidates—this means
that all qualified individuals have a full and fair opportunity to compete for hiring and promotion and
to enjoy the benefits of employment with the District. Equal employment opportunity should exist at
all levels and in all job categories, and ensuring equal employment opportunity involves creating an
environment that fosters cooperation, acceptance, democracy, and free expression of ideas and is
welcoming to men and women, persons with disabilities, and individuals from all ethnic groups and
other groups protected from discrimination.
Committed to the charge of embracing diversity and diversifying the curriculum across the College, the
Diversity Committee supported the development of the Multicultural Infusion Project (MIP). The MIP,
now in its second year, is a rigorous professional development program that has trained participating
faculty to recognize and assess individual and cultural learning styles, infuse multicultural content and
perspectives into their curriculum or counseling content, and employ teaching/counseling strategies that
meet the needs of a culturally diverse student population. Participants in MIP are attempting to become
more culturally competent, which, broadly applied to teaching and counseling, means developing the
ability to interact with individuals from cultures other than one’s own without stereotyping or reinforcing
society’s inequities. Further, MIP is a crucial opportunity for participants to form community, initiate
sensitive dialogs, and support one another across departmental, cultural, ethnic, gender, and other lines
that often inhibit trust and sharing.
Another initiative, the Basic Skills Improvement Initiative, which grew out of the Title III grant, was
developed in response to the needs of the large percentage of students who place into pre-collegiate
coursework in English and math and experience low pass rates, particularly students of color. Details
about this initiative can be found in the Theme I essay.
The College has an extensive offering of student retention programs whose specific purposes are to reach
out to students in need of learning assistance, particularly at the level of pre-collegiate basic skills coursework.
These programs are designed to focus on those underrepresented populations that are at high risk
for attrition and noncompletion. Such programs provide students with supplementary instruction and
regular academic counseling; some of the programs work with students in collaboration with their
instructors. Students who participate in these programs have demonstrated generally higher rates of
course success, higher GPAs, and higher graduation and transfer rates than their non-participating peers
both by discipline and by ethnicity.
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