University of Richmond Students Discover Value in Encountering Difference
Students thought so positively of Perspectives that nearly all of them agreed that every student at the University of Richmond should be required to take the program.
One of the greatest impediments to developing truly inclusive communities is equipping people with the capability to interact across divides… CDI served as a tangible way of helping students understand why this is important.
Challenges
Dr. Ronald Crutcher, President Emeritus of the University of Richmond, has mentored students with his wife, Dr. Betty Neal Crutcher, for over 21 years. The pair have always worked with diverse groups of students and believe strongly in helping them bridge their differences.
When Dr. Crutcher arrived at the University of Richmond in 2015, the university had recently become very diverse in a short period of time. As a result, he and his wife felt a strong need to help first-year students feel comfortable interacting with people from different backgrounds. “Most of our students come to us from segregated communities – religiously, racially, and culturally. And so they don’t really have an experiential base from which to build relationships across this difference,” Dr. Crutcher explained.
What We Did
When Dr. Crutcher heard about the Constructive Dialogue Institute's online learning program called Perspectives, he tried it personally and was very impressed. He appreciated how the program distilled academic research into lessons that his students would be able to understand and act upon. His hope was that Perspectives would help incoming students feel prepared to interact with students with diverse backgrounds, beliefs, and values. Dr. Crutcher assigned his students to complete Perspectives in August, a few weeks ahead of the fall semester.
Outcomes
Dr. Crutcher reflected that the trends that we’re seeing across the country – such as rising polarization and the tendency to sort ourselves into bubbles of people like ourselves – are also playing out on college campuses.
According to Dr. Crutcher, it’s the responsibility of universities to break these societal patterns and help their students understand the value of engaging with diverse perspectives. The goal isn’t to paper over differences. It’s to have a deeper understanding of why people hold the views that they hold. Dr. Crutcher found that “[Perspectives] has prepared students to do that in ways that other students would not have been prepared.”
For example, two years ago, two of his students were paired up for an exercise. One of the students was of East Asian descent and was very conservative. The other student was very liberal and was surprised to learn of his partner’s beliefs.
The liberal partner reflected that if he hadn’t done Perspectives, he would’ve shut down and not been sure of what to say. Instead he explained that “because of what I learned in Perspectives, I was curious to learn more. I wanted to learn more about him and his ideas. I wanted to learn what it was that drove him to think this way.”
Looking Forward
Dr. Crutcher and his wife have used Perspectives in their mentoring sessions for the last 3 years. He plans on requiring the Perspectives program in his first-year and upper-level seminars at the University of Richmond when he returns from sabbatical.
In addition, he recommended that faculty use the program in a seminar for first-year students as part of the general curriculum. Per this recommendation, the University of Richmond is considering incorporating Perspectives into a required first-year course called University 101. Dr. Crutcher professes, “If I could, I would require all of our students to take it because I think it would really help us to push through some issues that we face as a community.”
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