Assessment of Impact of Civil Rights Pilgrimage on Student Participants
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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(2) 199 214. University of Wisconsin Eau Claire Office of Institutional Research. (2011) Retrieved from http:/www.uwec.edu/ir/ U.S. Census Bureau. (2010) Retrieved from http:/www.census.gov. Overview The Civil Rights Pilgrimage experience was developed to achieve the learning outcomes set by the Association of American Colleges and Universities' Intercultural Knowledge and Competence Rubric. Participants learned of the immersion experience via campus advertisements. UW Eau Claire students selfselected to participate in the Civil Rights Pilgrimage and accompanying study. In order to engage in this experience, students must pay a $500 fee or receive a scholarship. Pilgrimage participants traveled to sites in Atlanta, Georgia; Birmingham, Montgomery, Tuscaloosa, and Selma, Alabama; Gulfport, Mississippi; New Orleans, Louisiana; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Memphis, Tennessee. Itinerary items for the Civil Rights Pilgrimage included visits to historical sites and museums, interactions with people who were directly in the Civil Rights Movement, and other cultural experiences and opportunities for critical thinking about issues of social justice in the past and present. A total of 181 people participated in the immersion experience. Modern Racism Scale The Modern Racism scale assesses the attitude of White participants towards African Americans (McConahay, 1982) Our measure of Modern Racism included six questions on a scale that ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree (e.g. "Over the past few years, the government and the media have shown more respect for Blacks than they deserve" Modern Sexism Scale The Modern Sexism scale evaluated views on prejudice and discrimination against women (Swim et al. 1995) To assess participant's views on sexism, an eightquestion scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree was used (e.g. "Women often miss out on good jobs due to sexual discrimination" White Privilege Attitudes Scale The White Privilege Attitudes scale examines factors such as awareness, willingness to confront it, and remorse (Pinterits, Poteat, Spenierman, 2009) Measures of White Privilege consisted of 28 questions to deduce how aware White participants are of their own privilege using four subscales (e.g. "I plan to work to change our unfair social structure that promotesWhite privilege" Openness NEO PI In order to assess how open participants are to opinions different from their own, they completed a questionnaire comprised of 56 questions (e.g. "I believe that laws and social policies should change to reflect the needs of a changing world" Participants were also surveyed on the other four factors of the Big Five personality traits using the TIPI. Miville Guzman Universality Diversity Scale The Miville Guzman scale is a 45 item questionnaire that seeks to measure the attitudes of students concerning diversity (Miville et al. 1999) (e.g. "Individuals from different cultures, races, and/or ethnic groups can teach me things I could not learn elsewhere" Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) LIWC was designed to measure an array of social, emotional, cognitive, and psychological aspects by assigning each word in a sample of writing to one or more linguistic categories and then reporting word counts for each (Cohn, Mehl, Pennebaker, 2004) Participants were given two prompts to write upon, one pertaining specifically to racism and one to white privilege before and after the trip. Results from preand post trip prompts where then compared (e.g. "How much does privilege impact your life?" Intercultural competence refers to a process oriented model that combines attitudes of respect, openness, curiosity, and discovery; according to Deardorff 's Process Model of Intercultural Competence. This Model displays that the degree of intercultural competence is an ongoing process and requires individuals to assess their development over time (Deardorff, 2009) Postsecondary education has opportunities to increase and assess intercultural competence through the curriculum and co curricular activities, particularly infusing intercultural perspectives into the educational experience through incorporating multiple cultural perspectives, drawing from students' diverse backgrounds, or encouraging immersion experiences (Deardorff, 2009) The University of Wisconsin Eau Claire strives to provide an inclusive atmosphere for multicultural students, as well as to facilitate the cultural competence of all students enrolled at the University. Ninety three percent of the UW Eau Claire and Eau Claire population identify as White (Office of Institutional Research, 2011) while Wisconsin is eighty six percent White, according to 2010 census estimates. The national population, from the same census estimates, identifies as seventy two percent White (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010) UW Eau Claire's current enrollment of multicultural students is approximately seven percent, with the University defining multicultural students as those of African American, American Indian, Hispanic, and/or Southeast Asian ethnic origin. One percent of all university staff are classified as multicultural (Office of Institutional Research, 2011) Because of the homogeneous population of the campus and surrounding community, UW Eau Claire students have limited opportunities for direct contact with people of color that will encourage the development of multicultural competence. Student exit interviews, conducted by the University Assessment Office in 2002 and 2004, provide qualitative insight into the homogeneous nature of the campus. Narrative responses indicated that students involved in international education or National Student Exchange, were significantly more likely to report positive diversity experiences, which correlates with the development of multicultural competence. Such programs provide important opportunities for students to experience diversity that they may not otherwise have encountered. In addition, Plante, Lackey, and Hwang cite a marked increase in compassion and empathy among students who have participated in a week long immersion trip over participants in a comparison group (Plante, Lackey, and Hwang, 2009) UW Eau Claire students have also reported that while courses promoting diversity serve the purpose well, the lack of campus diversity makes it difficult for students to experience diversity first hand through contact with people of multicultural backgrounds. Allport's contact hypothesis states that, "actual faceto face interaction between members of clearly distinguishable and defined groups" in situations involving certain conditions will "improve people's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors toward diverse others" (Seaman, Beightol, Shirilla, and Crawford, 2009) The contact theory relates directly to the construction of intercultural immersion experiences and situations constructed to encourage students to become interculturally competent. In an effort to address the concern that students are not able to experience diversity directly at UW Eau Claire, the University established a ten day Civil Rights Pilgrimage in 2008. Students participating in the pilgrimage travel by bus to visit major sites of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s through 1970s. This pilot program merged service learning and experiential learning to increase the multicultural competence of student participants. The trip experience has since been expanded to include a three credit cultural diversity course that places emphasis on the role of women in the Civil Rights Movement. Student researchers further enhanced the knowledge gained through the Civil Rights Pilgrimage experience through measures of multicultural competence, White privilege awareness and attitudes, and sexism. A new component to this year's research is the addition of a qualitative analysis. Pennebaker (1997) states that when writing samples are analyzed