Educating a Diverse Nation: Lessons from Minority-Serving Institutions - Tapa blanda

Conrad and Gasman insightfully take us into the living-learning environments of exemplary minority-serving institutions and highlight a variety of nontraditional approaches to effective pedagogy and culturally relevant practices. Their book is an invaluable asset for educators and institutions looking to generate strategies for enhancing minority student recruitment, retention, and high academic performance.--John Silvanus Wilson, Jr., President, Morehouse College Educating a Diverse Nation gives us a compelling narrative, filled with robust research, facts, and recommendations to help colleges and universities better educate the growing population of Americans who will comprise the majority of college students in the decades ahead. Conrad and Gasman have made an extraordinary contribution in studying the work of exemplary minority-serving institutions (MSIs) to educate students for success in all walks of life and professions. This book provides important lessons to inform the rest of American higher education about high-quality, culturally relevant teaching and learning for the twenty-first century.--Martha Kanter, New York University and former U.S. Under Secretary of Education

In an increasingly diverse United States, minority and low-income students of all ages struggle to fit into mainstream colleges and universities that cater predominantly to middle-income and affluent white students fresh out of high school. Anchored in a study conducted at twelve minority-serving institutions (MSIs), Educating a Diverse Nation turns a spotlight on the challenges facing nontraditional college students and highlights innovative programs and practices that are advancing students' persistence and learning. Clifton Conrad and Marybeth Gasman offer an on-the-ground perspective of life at MSIs. Speaking for themselves, some students describe the stress of balancing tuition with the need to support families. Others express their concerns about not being adequately prepared for college-level work. And more than a few reveal doubts about the relevance of college for their future. The authors visited the four main types of MSIs--historically black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions--to identify strategies for empowering nontraditional students to succeed in college despite these obstacles. Educating a Diverse Nation illuminates such initiatives as collaborative learning, culturally relevant educational programs, blurring the roles of faculty, staff, and students, peer-led team learning, and real-world problem solving. It shows how these innovations engage students and foster the knowledge, skills, and habits they need to become self-sustaining in college and beyond, as well as valuable contributors to society.