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Flourish Online Magazine | Fall 2009 |
More than skin deep: The College of the Arts embraces broader ideas about 'diversity'
By Vanessa H. Fardin and Jarmea L. Boone
“Diversity is all around us. It is what makes us unique. For some, it causes fear and insecurity, but when embraced, it is a powerful learning tool that can change the way we view the world and those around us. Without diversity, I believe true learning cannot occur.” Sarah Winograd, a KSU music performance major.
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College of the Arts students (from top) Brett Carson, Bora Moon, Tai Courtney and Erin Dedrickson |
Diversity has been a hot buzzword in American culture. The old idea of America as a “melting pot” that blends our differences into homogeneity has given way to the “tossed salad” theory that our culture is vibrant and successful because its many flavors can remain distinctive while working together.
Kennesaw State University has long been a proponent of exploring and celebrating diversity through its course offerings, public presentations and mutual respect. In 2006, Kennesaw State formed the Diversity and Equity Assessment Initiative, a goal-based program focused on creating and promoting diverse living and learning experiences for students, faculty and staff. Representatives of several departments and colleges across the campus formed four cohorts of investigation. The goals of each cohort were to carry out an assessment of diversity and equity at KSU; to use the gathered data to make formal recommendations; to contribute the components to the overall strategic plan; and to identify necessary objectives for future progress and long-term success for diversity and equity at the school.
Ivan Pulinkala, director of the Program in Dance, was the team leader of the Recruitment and Retention Team of the DEAI Project. “I feel honored to have been a part of the KSU Diversity and Equity Assessment Initiative,” he says. “The experience helped shape my personal perspective about diversity and inclusion. The DEAI created greater campus awareness about diversity and its numerous dimensions and created a structure and framework for organizing our efforts.”
Jane Barnette, assistant professor of theater and performance studies and resident dramaturg, was a participant on the Structures and Research Team and is currently on the KSU College of the Arts Diversity Committee, a program branched from the university DEAI. “I was thrilled to serve on the committee because I wanted to see the college and ultimately the university open up the definition of ‘diversity’ so that it represented a more holistic view,” she says. “Besides physical appearance, we needed to focus on other ways that we are diverse, such as with family dynamics and sexual orientation. COTA was very receptive to opening up the idea of ‘diversity.’”
The COTA Diversity Committee’s mission is to create and maintain an environment that is accepting of those from diverse backgrounds, to select performances that are representative of various ideas and to offer courses that promote inclusion for majors and non-majors within the college. For instance, COTA engages with the KSU Institute for Global Initiatives’ “Year of”
programming by highlighting performance, design and scholarship related to the featured country studies program. Diversity studies are also interwoven throughout many courses in the COTA curriculum.
“After my involvement with the DEAI, I updated my syllabi to reflect more diversity,” says Barnette. “For a past 1107 theater course, I placed emphasis on Asian theater, which the students really appreciated and embraced. One of the more popular units that I have taught looked at gender as something we perform. The class pushed the boundaries of gender through performance. I feel that professors have to be selective and attempt to bring in glimpses of other worlds.”
COTA is dedicated to visionary thinking in promoting student participation in studies abroad. For instance, faculty members from the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies recently returned from Morocco where they performed a trilingual re-adaptation of Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” during an annual theater festival at Hassan II University. Not only did the KSU group win “best performance” of the festival, but the faculty and students were able to bridge the East and West with French and Arabic interpretations.
“There’s something about the arts that lends itself to represent diverse cultures,” says Barnette. “Shakespeare said that theater holds a mirror up to nature. What is this mirror, and who is responsible for it? Who gets to represent whom? What are the lines that make us nervous? What makes us think? Theater has the responsibility to reflect and refract its image, and I believe this is also true of dance, music and visual arts. There is no spoken language in the arts. The arts speak across cultures.”
The COTA Diversity Initiative involves engagement in international and intercultural arts activities within the community and in having a creative and talented faculty determined to equip students with the practical skills for success and fulfillment in the modern professional arts world.
Pulinkala believes that the campus and the COTA Program in Dance have been equally influenced by the initiatives towards diversity. “The Program in Dance has a very diverse population of students and faculty. Because of the DEAI and similar programs, recruitment efforts have been more focused towards diversity goals, and academic and artistic programming now represents our diversity objectives.”