A joint project with the USC Center for Urban Education

(Funded by The James Irvine Foundation)

Report to the President

Submitted by:

California State University Diversity Scorecard Team

Justine Bell-Waters, Executive Assistant to the President

Steven Frieze, Acting Director of Institutional Research, Co-Chair

Maria Hurtado-Ortiz, Assistant Professor, Psychology

Tom Landefeld, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences

Gus Martin, Assistant Professor, Public Administration

Alonzo Rodriguez, Associate Vice President, Student Affairs

Linda Pomerantz, Interim Assistant Vice President for Undergraduate Programs, Co-Chair

USC Diversity Scorecard Team

Martha Soto, Research Associate

Georgia Bauman, Research Associate

 Introduction

Background on Diversity Scorecard Project

The effectiveness of post-secondary institutions is being determined, in part, by evidence of excellence and equity in the educational outcomes of their students.  Toward that end, The James Irvine Foundation awarded a grant to the USC Center for Urban Education (USC-CUE) to fund the Diversity Scorecard project.  This is a partnership of 14 institutions to use existing institutional data to monitor their progress toward equity for their historically underrepresented students in four areas: access, retention, institutional receptivity, and excellence. 

 In December 2000 California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) was invited to participate as one of the partner institutions in this project.  President James Lyons accepted the invitation and appointed a CSUDH Diversity Scorecard team.  USC-CUE named Dr. Martha Soto and Dr. Georgia Bauman to CSUDH’s team.  Our task was to check CSUDH’s “score” on the academic achievement of African-American and Latino students. 

 The Diversity Scorecard constitutes a set of objectives and measures aimed at providing an institution’s leadership with a comprehensive view of issues related to the academic performance of historically underrepresented students.    It is intended as a tool to raise consciousness and expand awareness regarding critical information associated with campus diversity issues. The scorecard represents a “mirror,” which institutions may use to view information indicating how they are doing in attaining their selected goals and measures. 

 The Diversity Scorecard project consists of four perspectives: access, retention, excellence, and institutional receptivity.  Access refers to programs and resources that can significantly improve life opportunities for underserved students.  Retention refers to continued attendance from one year to the next year and to completion of degrees.  Excellence contains both access and achievement dimensions.  When excellence is viewed with regard to access, we might ask, for example, if  different majors or courses function as “gatekeepers” for some and “gateways” for others.  When excellence is viewed with regard to achievement, we may question, for example, minority student completion rates in highly competitive programs.  Institutional Receptivity encompasses goals and measures of institutional support that have been found to be influential in the creation of affirming campus environments for underserved students.

 The Diversity Scorecard team at CSU Dominguez Hills has met frequently during the period January 1, 2001 through September 30, 2002.   There were five meetings held at USC that were attended by Diversity Scorecard teams from all of the 14 colleges and universities participating in this project, including participants from the CSUDH team. In the course of its work, the CSUDH Diversity Scorecard team examined data from various sectors within and without the campus and eventually came to focus on two of the four Diversity Scorecard perspectives, retention and excellence. This focus represents an abiding campus concern with two interrelated problems: the need to improve graduation rates for all students, but particularly for freshmen, and, secondly, the need to improve the overall quality of teaching and learning in the university. It is our hope that the data presented below will assist the university community in addressing these issues.

 The structure of this report is divided into six sections. Section I is an overview of CSUDH, providing the contextual background for the Diversity Scorecard. Section II comprises a description of our work as a team. Section III discusses the retention perspective, while section IV discusses the excellence perspective. Section V summarizes the results of the Diversity Scorecard project in relation to the University’s larger planning initiatives, and Section VI sets forth a series of conclusions and recommendations.

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