St. Mary’s College of Maryland: Three years ago, Maryland’s only public honors college implemented Communitywide Race Relations Study Circles. The two-person public relations offi ce at St. Mary’s wanted to provide leadership and a venue to improve race relations. The study circles were also formed to broaden the impact of the annual Martin Luther King Jr. prayer breakfast, which is held at the college. The study circles involve small and diverse groups of eight to 12 people, moderated by trained leaders and focused on local race-relations issues deemed important by the group. In 2008, the school’s Office of Public and Media Relations won a Public Relations Society of America’s Thoth Award for developing and producing an outstanding, strategic public relations program on race relations in the greater Washington, D.C. area. The award is shared with the St. Mary’s County Human Relations Commission and the county’s Board of Education.

Towson University: At the second largest university in the state there is no Black-White achievement gap as it relates to graduation and retention rates of African-American students. Towson University’s African- American six-year graduate rate of 68.6 percent exceeds the university’s graduation rate of 66.2 percent. The two-year retention rate among minority students is 85 percent, which bests the 82 percent two-year retention rate for all Towson students. The school’s Refl ective Process for Diversity aims to transform the campus by increasing awareness and commitment to diversity issues campuswide, identifying key goals and action steps by department and division, focusing scholarship on diversity, and fostering continued change leading through a comprehensive institutionalized model approach. So far, Towson is the fi rst university in the nation to commit to and implement an institutionwide diversity approach using the Now is the Time framework for a Refl ective Process.