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Creating a web of support: an important leadership strategy for advancing campus diversity

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Abstract

Research demonstrates that leadership, particularly among presidents, is important for moving a diversity agenda forward and make appreciable progress on it. The research questions pursued here are: What is the role of the college president in advancing a diversity agenda? What strategies do presidents identify as important to facilitating a diversity agenda? There were three main findings: (1) strategies are deployed in a non-linear way best represented through a web metaphor, (2) six sets of actors that serve as key nodes on the web and specific strategies were crucial to enhancing and deepening the web-developing an internal network, hiring, mentoring, partnering with faculty on the curriculum, supporting student affairs staff, working directly with and learning from students, and establishing external networks; and, (3) strategies within the human resource frame are noted by presidents as particularly important to moving a diversity agenda forward.

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Notes

  1. A diversity agenda or initiative as I am defining it and as defined by the presidents is multi-faceted and attempts to integrate diversity into the structure, culture and fabric of the institution—so that it is truly institutionalized (Curry 1992). Diversity initiatives have several broad goals including developing an understanding of diversity; infusing attention to differences by race, sexual orientations, and gender; and creating greater equity and parity in the experience and outcomes of individuals from diverse backgrounds (Hale 2004; Hurtado et al. 1999; Musil et al. 1999; Smith 1989). While I did not impose a definition of diversity, almost all presidents defined it broadly to include race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, class and the government designated protected classes and beyond.

  2. The American Association of College and Universities has a series of publications about diversity agendas/initiatives (for example see: Bauman et al. 2005; Milem et al. 2005; Musil et al. 1999; Smith and associates 1997). This article complements these publications by providing a detailed examination of presidential leadership. Within these publications the authors describe the importance of committed leadership, but do not provide the type of detail that this study provides on leadership strategies and the role of presidents.

  3. This critique relates specifically to how leaders are described in the literature—not the nature of the diversity literature in general. Therefore, diversity literature now emphasizes the importance of changing the climate and culture, but does not relate that specifically to the role of leaders. Some exceptions exist, e.g., Hurtado et al. 1999, but the critique relates to the majority of literature in this area. And even in the exceptions, structural aspects of leadership are still mostly emphasized. Certainly the importance of changing the culture has been emphasized in the diversity literature, but this is often not linked to leadership strategies, which still maintain the structural focus. What we are identifying is a disconnect in the literature.

  4. Although this paper focuses on identifying promising strategies for advancing a diversity agenda, the larger study examined resistance to diversity efforts and ways to negotiate the politics of diversity. Therefore, the researchers acknowledge that advancing diversity needs to be examined in complex ways focused on more than promising practices. However, the importance of the human resources strategies, which are missing from the literature, deserves special focus within a paper.

  5. The term Araneae describes a family of spiders, such as those found in North America. Found at Spiders of North America http://www.kaston.transy.edu/spiderlist/

  6. In a separate paper we describe the way presidents navigate and negotiate political situations and novel approaches to using symbolic strategies. There is simply not space to do justice to these concepts within this paper.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Adrianna Kezar & Melissa Contreras-McGavin

  2. American Council on Education, Washington, DC, USA

    Peter Eckel

  3. University of Marylane, College Park, MD, USA

    Stephen John Quaye

Authors
  1. Adrianna Kezar
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  2. Peter Eckel
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  3. Melissa Contreras-McGavin
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  4. Stephen John Quaye
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adrianna Kezar.

Appendix

Appendix

Web of leadership

figure a

1–6 represent the central threads that make up and sustain the web of leadership. Specifically they represent key actions and practices within organizations.

For example:

  1. 1.

    Hiring the right people.

  2. 2.

    Setting up mentoring networks.

  3. 3.

    Creating partnerships with faculty to transform the teaching environment.

  4. 4.

    Supporting student affairs practitioners and creating safe spaces.

  5. 5.

    Interacting with and learning form students.

  6. 6.

    Creating external networks and support.

The blue stars represent “nodes” or institutional actors positioned without the organizational web. These represent faculty, administrators, and staff, including: student affairs educators, students, governing boards, and external organizations.

The yellow arrows indicate strands that link the central threads and nodes and are produced as the result of certain strategies that build the illustrated web. Each of these strands is the result of a human centered relationship building strategy pursued by a leader or leaders. In this study these include: supporting and hiring the “right people,” being involved in the hiring of faculty of color, mentoring faculty of color and setting up multigenerational mentoring, creating partnerships to change the teaching environment, supporting student affairs staff and creating safe havens, interacting with and learning from students, creating external networks and obtaining board support.

A node in the leadership web

figure b

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Kezar, A., Eckel, P., Contreras-McGavin, M. et al. Creating a web of support: an important leadership strategy for advancing campus diversity. High Educ 55, 69–92 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-007-9068-2

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