Closing the Gap - UMUC

a series of career pathways for lower-grade employees at Department
of Energy. By completing the necessary steps for advancement
under this program, an employee can move from a blue-collar to
a white-collar job classification. And that could mean as much as
a four-level jump in pay grade.”
Megan Hurley believes that women, in particular, need greater
social support to succeed in their chosen career fields.
“Although we’ve made some real progress in terms of closing the
gender gap, our society continues to struggle with the duality of
women’s roles,” Hurley said. “Let’s face it; women are still being
asked everyday to make choices between family and career that
men seldom have to consider. If we expect women to have greater
employment opportunities, we need to create a much more familyfriendly
workplace. That demands a much greater commitment
on society’s part to advocate for higher-quality day care, for example,
as well as a broader application of family leave policies.”
In keeping with UMUC’s commitment to diversity edu-
cation, Megan Hurley (faculty member and program
director for education in the Graduate School) recently
served on the planning committee for an innovative
University System of Maryland conference entitled
Teaching Diversity/Thinking Diversity, held October 12,
2002, on the Towson University campus.
“This conference was developed to help us all look at the
many ways we can address and incorporate diversity edu-
cation at the university level. On a personal level, it has
given me an exciting opportunity to not only share ideas,
but also find better ways to implement them in my own
work,” said Hurley.
Faculty members from the 11 degree-granting institutions
within the University System of Maryland were asked to
submit papers for possible presentation at the confer-
ence, which was open to anyone interested in attending.
As a result, five UMUC faculty members, from a variety of
disciplines, were chosen among the final 28 presenters:
Julie Carvalho (psychology); Gila Kurtz (distance educa-
tion); Jim Rawson (communications); Uche Ohia (Center
for Teaching and Learning); and Henry J. Grubb (psychology
and counseling).
According to our panel members, affinity groups—organizations
that champion the rights and interests of specific subgroups—
have played significant roles in creating awareness around the
workplace discrimination issue. However, these organizations
must now ally themselves more closely to achieve greater gains
for women and minorities as a whole. Jeanette Glover warned
that when one group’s interests are pitted against another’s, the
“‘crabs-in-a-barrel syndrome’ often results, in which one group
gets a stronger foothold at the top, and pushes others back down
into the barrel.” Santos-DeJesus echoed that sentiment and
added that it’s time for these groups to form larger, cross-cultural
alliances, “because, as we’ve seen in the past, there’s always greater
power in numbers.”
Nevertheless, in assessing progress, our panel members agreed
that America is now well positioned to turn its smaller victories
over discrimination into big wins down the road. Jeanette Glover
said that the events surrounding September 11, although tragic,
united us more closely as a nation, regardless of our individual
differences. Santos-DeJesus noted that a number of large U.S.
corporations—Hewlett Packard, Pepsico, Ford Motor, and Ernst
& Young, to name a few—have done a “great job” in terms of
promoting women and minorities to positions of power. Moreover,
according to Harvey Major, we are entering the “decade of
opportunity” for public service employment, due, in large part,
to the “graying of the federal workforce.” Hasan Sayani said that,
when compared with other countries around the world, the
United States has a number of advantages in winning the war on
discrimination over time. In addition to the many freedoms we
enjoy in the United States, he credits this country’s “tremendous
economic opportunity” for attracting an incredible range of talented
people to our shores. “I also believe that Americans, as people, are
basically very compassionate, and most of them have taken the
first step toward embracing diversity—they have a strong desire to.”
So how can we harness this desire to create a far more even economic
playing field in this country? Our panel members feel
strongly that the answer lies, in large part, within the halls of
academia.
As Santos-DeJesus put it, “Education can play a major role in ending
discrimination. We should be using the power of knowledge to
help our young people think about these issues differently, and to
do that, we should be incorporating diversity education as a core
course into every discipline we offer at the college level. Additionally,
given the global marketplace, we need to begin teaching a
multicultural business model, rather than the very Eurocentric
model we’re teaching now. UMUC has taken a real lead in this
area, especially given our growing online education presence in
just about every major student market around the world.”
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