In the effort to boost diversity on the nation's college and university campuses, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) has enlisted the Internet to educate administrators, faculty and student about effective diversity practices.
Last year, AAC&U teamed up with the University of Maryland-College Park to create DiversityWeb, an interactive site on the World Wide Web that allows schools to publish campus profiles of diversity program experiences. AAC&U has helped develop DiversityWeb as a component of its major diversity initiative, which is entitled, American Commitments: Diversity, Democracy and Liberal Learning.
"We wanted to make DiversityWeb an important resource for everyone who is involved with working on campus diversity," says Dr. Carol Schneider, executive vice-president of AAC&U.
So far, the Web site is getting numerous visits by Internet users. In January 1997, when the site went fully online, DiversityWeb recorded some 4,000 visits for the month. It reached a high of 50,000 visits in September, according to AAC&U and University of Maryland Web site managers.
In early November, the Advisory Board to the President's Initiative on Race cited DiversityWeb as a prominent online resource with information on issues relating to race and diversity.
The Ford Foundation is a primary sponsor of DiversityWeb through its Campus Diversity Initiative. The partner institutions received grants totaling more than $900,000 to develop the Web site and to maintain it through the 1998-99 academic year, according to Schneider, who added that Ford Foundation officials are now considering extending its support beyond the spring of 1999.
The Web site is organized into nine priority areas: institutional vision, leadership and systemic change; recruitment, retention and affirmative action; curricula; faculty and staff involvement; student experience and development; campus-community connections; diversity research, evaluation and impact; political, judicial and legislative issues; and diversity newsmaking. The site includes the contents of the AAC&U-published quarterly newsletter, Diversity Digest, and Diversity Newsroom, a resource area for journalists.
