Michael Chen ∙ Lisa Hahn ∙ Francesca Ngo ∙ Shilen Patel

 

>> Students’ race and class, generation, and home communities comprise experiences that shape their beings. Technically, they are factors that can be easily measured and collected by established institutional research methodology. For example, quantifying class could be accomplished by using students’ reported incomes or by examining financial aid forms, such as the FAFSA or Profile. Race data can be collected through student surveys or examining college entrance forms.

>> The administrative institutional research from Pomona College and Pitzer College takes a very direct and public look at race in comparison to the other three colleges. Both colleges solicit race experiences from their student bodies. For example, Pomona College asks for racial identity as part of the annual senior survey. Pitzer College compiled a campus climate report called the “Testimonios 2004: Campus Climate at Pitzer College,” resulting in many narratives relating to race. With relation to the faculty, Pomona College does look at their racial background. In the annual “Faculty Affirmative Action Report,” faculties’ race is measured and graphed. However, Asians are placed in the same category as Asian Americans. At the end of the report when studying overall faculty makeup trends, all minorities are grouped together.

>> There exist differences between these two colleges. Pomona College possesses a longer history of collecting this sort of institutional research, whereas the aforementioned report is the only such document for Pitzer College. It is also important to point out the differences in the types of report that are produced. Pitzer College chose to collect student experiences via first-hand narratives, whereas Pomona College has traditionally approached the process with a more quantifiable and objective viewpoint. “The Senior Survey” collects student responses on Scantron forms. It does have questions prompting for responses about race, class, generation, and home communities. Nevertheless, this introduces potential for leading questions and responses.

>> Scripps College, like the Pomona College and Pitzer College, has conducted campus climate research, mainly focusing on race. The latest was the “2001 Campus Climate Report.” However, unlike the public approach taken by the two previous colleges, Scripps College keeps the collected data private to the administration only. In reference to these types of reports, the 2003-2004 Scripps College Diversity Chair said, “Scripps is very secretive concerning this stuff, so I'm not sure what you can dig up.” Although Scripps College does measure racial data, unlike Pomona College and Pitzer College, it does not release the findings publicly. For the remaining schools, Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College, the research group was unable to obtain institutional research on race, let alone on class, generation, and home communities. The latter college has recognized in their “Blueprint for Diversity” documents that they lack racial diversity on campus.

>> For the colleges that actually conduct administrative institutional research, students’ race is the main factor that is studied. Because only race is examined, students of color are grouped together, placed opposite the unspoken and unacknowledged group of white students. All five colleges do not directly examine the other factors, namely class, generation, and home communities. In addition, with the sole exception of Pomona College’s faculty diversity report, students are the focus of the institutional research.

>> An interesting counterpoint to the administrative institutional research is the student institutional research. These are two publicly available documents, “A Call To Action” and “Revisiting A Call To Action.” In both these documents, race is directly addressed and analyzed. Within “Revisiting A Call To Action,” religion and class are explicitly included. However, these student documents both recognize the interconnectedness of the different experiences of students, staff, faculty, and administration. In regards to this latter point, research goes beyond that of students and into the larger campus college community.

 

>> Measuring a student’s satisfaction to a particular college is important to see how well the college is meeting the basic needs of their students. At the five Claremont Colleges, we have a diverse group of people from different backgrounds. After looking at the different climate reports from the different colleges, it seems that the general overview of the Claremont Colleges is relatively negative. It is important for the five colleges to look at these documents to fully understand what is going on. Many of these reports are heavily student based with testimonials of how they experienced such things as racism, sexism, and not feeling a general sense of community and belonging. This part looks at the different schools and how students mainly of Asian American decent feel not only based on satisfaction alone, but also on the issues of diversity, community, and race.

>> When we look at the general overview of the different colleges, it seems like Pomona students are generally satisfied mainly with the education they receive and interestingly enough dodge the idea of student satisfaction by stating that students must be satisfied because the transfer rate at Pomona is very low. Based on the several reports done at Pomona it seems that many Pomona students are satisfied with their education, and often brush aside many of the social issues like racism, gender, and sexuality.

>> Scripps unlike Pomona seems to have a different overall response to student satisfaction. The Scripps Campus Climate Report gives a detailed report to how Asian Americans feel about issues such as diversity, community, and race. The campus climate report serves to answer many of the questions about these issues and includes date of Asian Americans at Scripps. The total for all three of these issues is an average of 3.79 out of 7. What this basically means is that Scripps students are generally not satisfied with the college. Pitzer is much like Scripps when it comes to general satisfaction.

>> Pitzer’s climate report is a detailed personal account of many of the marginalized groups on campus and their experiences with harassment, sexism, and racism. The overall jist of the climate report is that many Pitzer students are not satisfied with the college. Many students feel that the college demeans and marginalizes non-dominant groups. They also believe that the college is unaware of the ethnic, racial, cultural, religious, and the socio-economic class, and different sexual orientations of people. Many students do not feel like the college is taking an active approach in resolving these issues like race and sexism by leaving them to student and student groups to handle them for themselves. Finally, it is interesting that many of the students felt that the curriculum does not serve to their needs meaning that the education taught serves primarily as a hegemonic scheme of “white supremacy” not taking into account minority issues and issues which are important to people of color.

>> At Harvey Mudd and Claremont McKenna, they conduct or base student satisfaction on yearly surveys, the Quality of Life Survey, which does not grasp the idea of these issues and they do not make these documents readily available. After looking at all of the five different colleges, it can be said that the overall satisfaction rate is generally pretty low when it comes to the issues of diversity, community, and race. Though the overall climate at Pomona seems to be relatively positive, Pitzer and Scripps have overwhelming low satisfaction with CMC and Mudd bearing no difference.

>> On the Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, and Scripps campuses, a majority of admittedly scanty data is collected via surveys distributed to students. Head mentors Daniel Shi and Sandra Kim of the Asian Pacific American Mentor (APAM) program at Claremont McKenna both believe no APA-specific institutional research has been performed there, to their knowledge. Alumnus Keith Miyake, creator of the now defunct Asian Pacific Islander Sponsor Program at Mudd (API-SPAM), performed a survey concerning APA student satisfaction at Harvey Mudd; unfortunately, he admits he has since “lost the results.” He also adds his belief that to date no other research has been conducted of the institution.

>> The Diversity Action Plan Team, composed of Harvey Mudd staff, faculty, and alumni, states in their “Blueprint for Diversity” that they somehow gather and analyze data about the composition and satisfaction of the student body, but this set of documents does not explain their methods of data collection or analysis. Therefore, these three colleges seemingly rely mostly on annual surveys of graduating seniors to assess the quality of student life.

>> In addition, every few years Scripps seems to distribute surveys from which it can extrapolate larger trends; however, the small size of the 2001 Campus Climate Report sample raises questions about the precision of their analyses. Also, neither the annual student surveys nor the special Scripps surveys specifically inquire about the satisfaction of APA students. Collected data about the APA students of these three institutions seems either nonexistent or is currently unknown to the 5-C Institutional Research group as well as to key figures in the APA mentor programs and diversity programs at these schools.

>> On the other hand, Pitzer and Pomona both examine APA student satisfaction beyond these cursory surveys. Pitzer for example hosted a forum for representatives of different minority groups, including twenty students from Center for Asian Pacific American Students (CAPAS), twenty Latino/Chicano students, ten faculty members, five queer students, and eleven Pitzer Women’s Union members. Each group provided several testimonials of differential treatment from faculty and administration, outright harassment, and Eurocentric course curriculums. From its surveys of graduating seniors, Pomona compiled data from its APA students, about such things as race, satisfaction, employment status, and involvement in clubs and organizations.

>> Pomona also distributed many more surveys and published their results—testimonials as well as formal institutional research—in such documents as “Race and the Classroom,” “A Call to Action,” “Responding to a Call to Action,” and “Revisiting a Call to Action.” The samples for these studies were largely composed of students of color, though staff and faculty members also contributed to the most recent of the “Call to Action” series. Finally, Pomona studied the situation of its APA faculty in the “Faculty Affirmative Action Report.” From hiring information of all the faculty members, Pomona gathered data about departments, professor statuses, genders, and races/ethnicities. The depth and availability of the research performed at these two institutions, compared to that of their three sister schools, suggest higher interest in APA campus life.

>> Given the various data, the Claremont Colleges, as institutions, generally do not interpret the data. Any interpretation of data concerning social factors for Asian-American students is done by student groups or student boards. At Pomona, all institutional documents except that from the Pomona College Board of Trustees, do not include any overall interpretations; data is only presented. The Pomona College Board of Trustees agrees with research done by students in the “Call to Action” and seems to interpret that the research is significant because the suggested changes in the “Call to Action” were prompted initiated carried out.

>> Documents from the Pomona College Dean of Faculty, the Pomona College Office of Admissions, and the Pomona College Office of Institutional Research do not contain any interpretations. Similarly, the institutional data available from Scripps College in their 2001 Campus Climate Report only contains data tables and no overall interpretations are made. Despite earnest attempts to find and obtain institutional data, none were available from Pitzer College, Harvey Mudd College, or Claremont McKenna College. It may also be interesting to note that of the data available from Pomona and Pitzer student boards’ and student groups’ research all made overall interpretations, and also made suggestions for improvement.