Managing Students while "Doing Diversity"

Abstract

At a recent conference on the history of African American student activism a student presenter remarked that being a diverse institution is not the same as doing diversity. Indeed doing diversity represents an active engagement with recruitment, training, and retaining a diverse work force while having a professional mindfulness of cultural sensitivity. These components of doing diversity are particularly at the fore when managing student workers. As both mentors/role models and managers, student worker supervisors face several challenges: creating and supervising a student work force that is diverse in all shades of meanings of the word; being cognizant of varying cultural expectations; making accommodations as needed while adhering to library policies and procedures; and promoting both public service and workplace paradigms of tolerance and respect. The presenter, a department head of a large, academic, urban library, will explore these issues and offer examples, solutions, and techniques based on real-life scenarios. ,