By Julie Sowell

There can be no doubt that the challenges and rewards of interracial education have special significance for Berea College," says Steve Boyce, Berea’s provost and academic vice president.

Berea faculty and staff members gathered with Eugene Lowe to discuss how all can better serve the diverse community at Berea.

"The successful work of Berea’s admissions effort in increasing the number of well-qualified African American students gives these issues particular saliency right now."

Increasing diversity and unity on campus, with a particular emphasis on creating better understanding between blacks and whites, is one of Berea’s major strategic plan initiatives. Berea’s three entering classes from 1998-2000 have averaged 62 African-American students, or approximately 15% of the freshman class, as compared to an aver-age of 35 students (8.65%) over the four previous years. Nationally, the average number of African American freshman at predominately white colleges is about 4%.

Berea’s total fall 2000 enrollment of African American students is 206, or 13%. In addition, the Kaplan/Daystar Guide to Colleges for African American Students for 2000 named Berea College one of the top 100 colleges for African Americans based on its academic and social environment, a recommendation it is hoped will help Berea continue to attract African American students.

Dr. Euguene Lowe is the editor of Promise  and Dilemma: Perspectives on Racial Diversity and Higher Education.

On Nov. 9, students, faculty and staff came together to address how to best serve Berea’s diverse campus during a campus-wide symposium and fall faculty conference entitled "Interracial Education: Meaning, Opportunity and Challenge."

Providing food for thought in this unique climate were the symposium’s two speakers, Eugene Lowe Jr., associate provost and senior lecturer in religion at Northwestern University and a Berea College trustee, and Stanford psychology professor Claude M. Steele.

"The recognized value of diversity in higher education," Lowe says, "has shifted from an initial focus on individual civil rights to the ability of institutions to advance their educational missions. At Berea, a mixture of racial experiences is integral to the way Berea understands its mission."

Lowe extolled the need to ensure that teaching reaches into the experience of every student, with the ultimate goal of making every student feel included. "It isn’t saying that we can’t see race," he says. "It makes a difference. What is important is to see differences and talk about differences in a way that everyone feels involved in a common challenge and task."

Claude Steele has conducted and published extensive research on the role of stereotypes in shaping identity and performance. His research reveals that what he terms "stereotype threat"—the threat of being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype or the fear of doing something that would inadvertently confirm that stereotype—can significantly depress achievement, not just of black students but for members of any group to whom negative stereotypes are attached.

"Everyone experiences stereotype threat," said Steele, citing a variety of experiments involving men and women and members of different ethnic and racial groups. "And in a situation where one of these stereotypes applies, we know that we may be judged by it. In such situations, we can feel mistrustful and apprehensive, and effects can be manifold, from achieving less than might be expected, to wearying of the extra vigilance these situations require and the anxiety they produce."

On a more positive note, Steele and his colleagues also have found that by removing stereotype threat in their experiments, achievement not only rises, but equals the performance of subjects for whom no stereotypes have been activated. The question for Bereans was how this phenomenon can be implemented in real situations, specifically in higher education.

"For those affected by stereotype threat, the problem is not so much how they feel about themselves, but about the environment," says Steele. "Merely boosting confidence doesn’t work. Perception of and trust in an environment where social identity won’t have a negative affect are essential to performance."

Following the presentations, Dr. Lowe and Dr. Steele joined faculty and staff who met in small discussion groups, where questions, insights, tensions, barriers and suggestions could be voiced, with the results eventually channeled back to the larger college community for constructive use. Both Steele and Lowe emphasized the importance as well as the effectiveness of continued open discussion of racial issues on campus.

"Just the fact that we are talking about these things is very important," says Lowe. "I had the sense that the faculty appreciated this opportunity to stop and think about Berea’s heritage and the implications of that heritage for teaching and learning."

Steve Boyce comments that it was the complexity of Berea’s mission, with its emphasis on a high quality liberal arts education along with its commitments to equality, service and the intrinsic value of black and white students learning alongside and from each other, which persuaded him to come to Berea in 1969 and to stay.

"This mission has always attracted a core of thoughtful, dedicated faculty and staff with some special interest in interracial education who see the value of struggling with what that means," Boyce says. "In many ways, every student who’s graduated has benefited from that complexity of mission."