SEAHO Report - Spring 2017 - 20

SEAHO Features

Meeting the Students Where They Are:
A Curricular Approach to Cultural Competency
By: Dr. Ashley Brown, Randy Brown, Dr. Zduy Chu, and Justin Hua, Georgia State University
Working with and developing students has been a core component of our mission as student affairs
professionals, but have we been as effective as we think? Have you ever heard the phrase, "meet the students
where they are?" At Georgia State University (GSU), we have innovatively combined assessment and a creative
curriculum to truly meet students where they are. Utilizing the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI),
University Housing at GSU created a 12-week course to develop cultural competency. In the four years that
the course has been offered, we have been able to truly gain access to a student's cultural lens and how they
interact with the world around them. This article will explain how Georgia State University Housing created an
environment for students to enhance their cultural competency skills through the course: Panther Ambassadors
for a Culturally Competent Campus (PAC3).
Georgia State University, founded in 1913, has a mission of excellence in teaching, research, and service.
Located in the heart of downtown Atlanta, Georgia State University is the Southeast's leading urban research
institution and has an enrollment of 53,000 undergraduate and graduate students in seven colleges making it the
largest university in the state of Georgia. Georgia State continues to be recognized as one of the most diverse
universities in the nation as evidenced by the 2016 "America's Best Colleges" edition of U.S. News & World
Report magazine; ranking Georgia State among the country's most diverse institutions. Georgia State students
represent 150 counties in Georgia, all 50 states and more than 190 different nations. Newly represented in the
student body this year are students from Guadeloupe, Iceland, and Tajikistan.
Although GSU has a diverse student population, many students felt that the campus was culturally siloed
and that students do not engage with each other cross-culturally. In the fall of 2013, the GSU student body
demographically identified as the following:
Native/Indigenous/American Indian (0.3%), Asian Pacific Islander Desi/American (12.8%), Black/African/
American (36.8%), Latino/a/x (7.9%), Multiracial (4.3%), and White (39.6%). Individuals who chose not
to report racial/ethnic identity (6.2%). In 2011, Dr. Dhanfu Elston wrote his dissertation on the diversity
threshold of White students in relation to their disengagement at Georgia State University. Within his research,
Dr. Elston found that White students disengaged when it came to traditional student organizations and events
predominately represented by students identifying as a racial/ethnic minority by a minority race. Dr. Elston's
research also suggested that the student population as a whole exhibited balkanized behaviors in which students
self-segregated, especially in student groups and organizations. Moreover, there seemed to be a competition of
resources and leadership opportunities among racial groups at GSU that sometimes lead to uneasy intercultural
interactions (Elston, 2011).
The PAC3 program was designed to address residential students' concerns around crosscultural engagement on
campus through first increasing residential students' individual intercultural competency, and then by increasing
cross-cultural awareness, engagement, and competency on campus. The PAC3 program was designed to address
residential students' concerns around cross-cultural engagement on campus by increasing residential students'
individual intercultural competency first, with a secondary goal of increasing cross-cultural awareness and
SEAHO Report Spring 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of SEAHO Report - Spring 2017