DIVERSITY AT COLLEGE

A professor and a group of recent graduates offer recommendations for improving the college experience.

In this education policy book, Stellar and some former students at Queens College and the University of Albany (debut authors Martinez, Eggan, Poy, Weiser, Eager, Cohen, and Buras) present narratives of their personal experiences on campus. They use their own stories as launching points for broader discussions about how colleges can support students from a variety of backgrounds. After an overview of relevant concepts from the field of diversity studies, the book moves through a series of thematic chapters, each of which opens with a contributor’s tale about facing a particular education challenge. Poy describes the differences between his inner-city upbringing and the campus environment; Eager explains how a lack of confidence in her abilities kept her from pursuing medical school; and Buras writes about the difficulties of learning English as an immigrant. Following each former student’s story, the text moves into a broader discussion of educational research, effective ways of addressing potential problems, and analysis. A concluding chapter brings the tales together and offers concrete suggestions for strategies schools can implement to improve the college experience for students from diverse backgrounds. The book is strongest in the specific details the contributors share in their stories, like the distinction Poy draws between paid and unpaid internships as realistic options for low-income students. But the transitions between the first-person tales and the more scholarly text could be smoother, as the format provides little indication when the narration moves from a former student’s voice to Stellar’s. Still, the informative book succeeds in its presentation of realistic and attainable tactics schools can implement based on the contributors’ experiences, such as peer and faculty mentoring, ensuring all students are familiar with the norms of academia, and providing opportunities for experiential learning. While it lacks the extensive research base of some of the more authoritative works on the subject—like Anthony Jack’s The Privileged Poor (2019), discussed in this volume—the authors’ addition to the field does an excellent job of drawing broad conclusions from a collection of individual experiences.

An illuminating exploration of how colleges can support diversity.