Engaging Student Diversity Through a Social Justice Learning Community

Liberal arts institutions are unique in their emphasis on learning and social environments that value diverse interpersonal and intergroup relationships. This case study examines the institutionalization of a faculty-initiated program-the Social Justice Learning Community (SJLC)-at an historically White liberal arts college for women that recently experienced significant change in the race, class, and sexual orientation of its student body. The SJLC served as a curricular response to the tensions surrounding diversity and as a tool for crafting an inclusive institutional identity through its use of a critical multicultural framework grounded in dialogue and social engagement and its strategy of linking institutional mission to programmatic goals to insure sustainability and viability within the institutional structure. We use a framework of phased institutionalization to explore how the SJLC changed and challenged institutional responses to and engagement of diversity on campus. The study poses the following research questions: (I) What were the structures and processes used by the SJLC to respond to student diversity? and (2) How has the implementation of these structures and processes influenced a phased institutionalization of the SJLC as an effective diversity initiative? Our work is supported with the insights of two study participants who served as founding members and as past directors for the SJLC and offers a model of how committed attention to diversity by faculty, staff, and students utilizing a critical multicultural framework as an organizing principle supports the building of a multicultural campus community.