Running head: MCOD AT ROWAN COLLEGE AT BURLINGTON COUNTRY 1

Multicultural Organizational Development at

Rowan College at Burlington County’s

Tutoring and Testing Center from 2014-2016

Randall Cloke

Salem State University

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Definition of Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism does not mean the same thing everywhere to everyone. Indeed, from

organization to organization, from office to office, and from person to person, that term can

include many identities and exclude many identities, whether intentionally or unwittingly. And at

Rowan College at Burlington County’s Tutoring and Testing Centers, no such definition exists.

It was not explicitly stated on either office’s website, part of the job description for positions in

either office, nor did the office promote or include text that one should reference the college’s

definition of the term. Moreover, there was little discussion of the term informally from the

departmental leadership in a top-down perspective, nor discussion from the lower-level staff

amongst themselves.

As the offices neither explicitly stated formally in writing or casually in conversation

what multicultural meant in regard to the work done in both Tutoring and Testing, it is clear that

the organization lacked a comprehensive definition. This is problematic as it can present an

image to students that the office is not inclusive to the populations it aims to serve.

Though the college itself has a mission statement, at no point does it include—nor

included anywhere else—an encompassing, detailed definition of what multiculturalism or

diversity is (Rowan College at Burlington County, n.d.). At no point does the college’s written

definition of diversity actually delineate what groups are included with such a term; the webpage

devoted to the college’s commitment to diversity only speaks to the institution’s commitment to

diversity, whatever that might mean. Unfortunately, the officially-published statements of the

college never explicitly state the inclusion of underserved or minoritized groups in the work it

does (Rowan College at Burlington County, n.d.).

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Certainly, the department specifically and the college generally would have been best

served to include a broad, sweeping definition of multiculturalism and diversity. To do so would

have allowed for not only greater multicultural competence on the part of the either the smaller

or broader organization, but would have been a specific phrase and language that could have

been included in the development of multicultural competence in other areas. Given the seeming

emphasis placed on the definition of multiculturalism in the MCOD, it is logical to think that

crafting such a definition could well permeate into the other areas included within the template.

Mission Statement

Mission statements provide an organization to detail what exactly the organization aims

to do, how it plans to carry out completing those aims, and the people it expects to be included in

accomplishing the stated goals. While institutions of higher learning almost universally have

explicitly stated, often continuously developed mission statements, it is increasingly less

common for individual divisions and offices within those institutions to have their own mission

statements specific to the nature of the work that they do.

While Rowan College at Burlington County does have a clearly stated mission statement,

many of the departments that are part of the college do not. One combined office in particular,

Tutoring and Testing, is among these offices without a self-developed mission statement that

describes the work that they do, how they do it, and who is included in the process of

successfully completing that work (Rowan College at Burlington County, n.d.). Given the nature

of the college’s location and student populations, it seems like it would have been helpful to

include a mission statement that has details.

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As the office lacked a mission statement, the many postings it had around campus

regarding the services it offered did not include it, and thus lacked the promotion of defining

values that were central to the work it aimed to do in the college’s student affairs programming.

The offices of Tutoring and Testing might have been well served to create and include on

their website and published documents a mission statement that included the use of words like

multiculturalism or diversity. Given the nature of the work done at the two respective offices,

describing the important nature of the work they did and how they served all of the students of

the diverse study body could create a more welcoming environment when students came to the

offices for assistance.

Leadership and Advocacy

One of the driving forces in multicultural competence in an organization comes from the

leadership of that organization. Given the positional power they almost universally have over

other levels of staff, they can often create and implement strategies or initiatives in the

organization’s short-term future, long-term future, or both.

At Rowan College at Burlington County’s Tutoring and Testing Centers, leadership did

not have such drive or impetus to implement multicultural competency goals for their sphere of

oversight. While the leadership staff was small, none were agents of change in establishing and

expecting there to be greater multicultural competence at any level of the office, whether in

formal written words, in published documents, or in daily practice.

And this extended beyond the intra-office staff, too, as leadership did not leverage their

connections on campus and within the higher reaches of the organization to lobby for

multicultural training at the college or for a formal office committed to seeing that multicultural

competence and development be available for staff and students alike.

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Leadership would have set an example for their staff if they had, at their directive, held

the staff and offices to the expectation of meeting outlined goals in the area of multicultural

competence. The office directors could have leveraged their powerful positions to invite

multiculturally-competent staff to the office to help implement these strategies and goals.

Perhaps more personally, the leadership could have discussed with staff, individually, the

importance of being multiculturally competent their student affairs practice, and offered any

assistance that could help the staff member develop their multicultural competencies.

Policy Review

Policy allows for organizations to formalize their processes and procedures for how daily

work is carried out both generally and specifically. At the Tutoring and Testing Centers,

however, few policies were clearly outlined, written down, and explicitly detailed anywhere in

an employee’s training or within the spaces in which student affairs work was done. As such, it

would be difficult for one to even analyze how such policies could either promote or inhibit the

office’s and the staff’s practice of multicultural competence.

Starting first by actually formalizing the policies of the office, instead of having it be

assumed, one can begin to explore how the processes in place can, potentially, affect more

students other than others. While such formal policies were few and far between, one such

example is the hours of the tutoring office, which were often 9:30AM to 7:30PM and frequent

weekend morning hours. While the office could have increased the hours it was open to allow for

more students to take advantage of the services available, including those students who may be

“non-traditional” and have availability outside of the hours available. While itself not necessarily

multicultural in nature, a review of formal policies like the office’s hours could reveal potential

issues with developing multicultural competence at the organizational level.

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Staff Recruitment and Retention

One area where an organization can develop its multicultural competence is through its

hiring processes and the working environments it creates. For the offices of Tutoring and Testing

at Rowan College at Burlington County, there was little in these areas that would lead to such

development. The job listings for the two offices did not include any mentions of

multiculturalism or diversity, and thus lacked the outward expression of the department’s belief

in the importance of competence in these areas. That said, the office did have a fairly diverse

staff, at least compared to those housed in other areas of the college in terms of gender, race, age,

etc. Whether that was intentional or not, it is something that seemed to be a potential place to

cultivate for developing multicultural competence. However, including specific language about

potential applicants’ expected commitment to these ideas could help to improve the diversity of

the staff and hiring staff with a development in multicultural competence that is further along

than without including these position expectations.

Even with that diverse staff, there was no effort made to understand whether there was a

working environment that was inclusive to those varying identities in as equal measures as could

be possible. There was not, at least formally, any type of assessment of the working culture in the

office to determine, on something like a survey basis or by semi-structured interviews, whether

the structure of the office was or could lead to possible issues in retaining staff of different

identities. To look at the culture of the working environment to see if they disproportionately

affect the retention of employees in any way would be helpful to assessing, later in an

organization’s multicultural development, whether the office is inviting and welcoming to a

diverse staff.

Staff Expectations and Training

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As there was a lack of overall multicultural competence from the structure to the

leadership of the offices of Tutoring and Testing, there was little effort made to develop such

competence in the wide staff ranks. Professional development was hardly available for any topic

or interest area, and so it goes without saying that formal professional development in diversity

or multiculturalism was also not available. The college should have offered such development to

all staff, and leadership of the department should have promoted such opportunities that might

have been available off campus to help the staff develop its multicultural competence.

Similarly, training was often light for a lot of staff in the respective offices. Staff

frequently learned new things on the job that similar positions at other institutions might have

likely covered in a training or onboarding program. Given the leadership’s own lack of training

in multicultural competence, it prevented the possibility for them to supervise the staff on their

own development. If one were to make suggestions to improve this, first improving leadership’s

own commitment to this development would spur the possibility for training other staff in

developing, too.

Scholarly Activities

Given the limitations of the staffing in the offices, which consisted mostly of part-time

employees who held jobs, the availability for scholarly research or conference presentations were

limited. Full time staff, however, may have a greater ability and latitude to conduct research that

could have furthered their own, and by extension the department’s, development of multicultural

competence.

Departmental and/or Divisional Programs

The office did not utilize many forms or programs during the course of their student

affairs practice outside of their daily work. However, one such example of a “form” was the
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TutorTrac system that logged student appointments and employee working hours. This system

was very detailed and could hold lots of information, but often when new students would come

to the Tutoring Center, specifically, they would have to have an account created for them. The

system would require the staff member to select the students’ gender—itself a problem—but

only had a binary option available. Leadership could lobby the creator of TutorTrac to

implement a greater diversity of options in something like this, or possibly look at other vendors

for similar software.

Physical Environment

The physical environment of the two offices were on second floor of a three-story

building. Due to limited physical space, being housed in a different area often proved difficult

despite leadership’s entreaties to be placed elsewhere. Though accessible by an elevator, the

equipment did not always work, and thus would prevent issues for students with physical

disabilities to come to the offices for support services. As an institution, the college should have

done whatever it could to ensure a better physical position in the college’s buildings so that both

Tutoring and Testing could be accessed by all without issue.

The offices had a distinct lack of any materials on any surfaces, and so there was limited

opportunity for items of an insensitive nature to be posted or displayed. So while the offices lack

offensive material, they also lacked images or other media that could have been welcoming to

students of diverse backgrounds. The offices certainly could have made an effort to do this and

would have helped develop multicultural competence.

Assessment

One important aspect of an organization’s effectiveness in its work is an honest, earnest

nature of assessing the work it does. For the department that housed the offices of both Tutoring
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and Testing, a culture of assessment was lacking. Had it existed, modes of assessment could have

been implemented that would have helped leadership and staff understand their collective and

individual competence as well as promote continued development that could be applied in

practice.

If such a culture existed, both management and lower levels of staff could assess their

practices by surveying students about how they felt the office’s multicultural competence was.

Employees could also consider if their strategies for outreaching the programming they produced

were as inviting to all students as it could be, and then determining strategies that could help

increase outreach to potentially under-targeted groups.

Discussion

I spent nearly two years working in the department that housed these two offices. While

following the Multicultural Organizational Development Template, I was able to formalize my

experience there. And I must say that I learned a lot there. As I reflect on my time spent there

and the areas of the template that focused my writing on specific areas, it is only further evident

about the near fact that the entire organization in which I was a part, including the institution

overall, had an incredible lack of understanding of or desire to improve its multicultural

competence. At no point in the organization’s structure that I experienced was there a belief in

the need for recognizing multiculturalism or diversity, let alone implementing any such

understanding of it into practice. It’s almost difficult to have a real discussion of what should

have been done to improve the organization’s multicultural competence, as, quite honestly, doing

anything in any way in any aspect of the organization’s structure would have been an

improvement.
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I remember being somewhat surprised by the college’s lack of an encompassing mission

statement, and found it somewhat milquetoast. Perhaps that’s a reflection of an institution that is

finding itself or wishes to serve as broad an audience of constituents as it can, but I was even

more surprised by the college feeling it absolutely necessary to include a dedicated page to

diversity when the college’s rebranding and website was completed in late 2015. The much

lobbied for page would end up including, and still does, the least explicitly inclusive and

amorphous definition of diversity as one might possibly create. Maybe I could have taken it to

mean that at least they would play homage to the idea, but the almost willful ignorance of the

concepts included within multicultural competence—whether big picture ideas like

microaggressions, intersectionality, or implicit biases—at every other level outside of the

singular webpage leads me to be even more cynical than that. I personally saw examples of the

three previous concepts in my time there, and all could have been better understood and

addressed if the institution had, in my opinion, had any desire to do exactly that. I will recall a

few examples below, but they are by no means the only instances of multicultural incompetence

I experienced during my time there.

In my own office, there was a woman who had worked there for nearly a decade. She was

usually decent at the work and did not generally cause too many disruptions in completing that

work. Her outlandishly explicit biases and prejudices never failed to shock me, no matter how

frequently they were put on display. Due to her comfort with me as a white counterpart, she

never failed to mutter under her breath just loudly enough for me, and only me, to hear her usage

of truly disgusting terms to multiple identities of people. Whether they were hate-charged

epithets regarding Black colleagues, students of Asian descent, or those identified as transgender,

she left few identities excluded from the words leaving her scornful tongue. Clearly using such
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terms is just blatant and outright hate, but when interacting with people whose identities she

disparaged, she instead used any number of microaggressions to leave anyone involved fairly

certain of her thoughts about such groups of people. Thanks to examples developed by Sue et. al

(2007), I have been able to better understand Whether explaining that she was colorblind (I, of

course, knew better), informing Asian students they would do extra well on their math tests she

handed them, or referring to a group of students she believed to be of the same race as “you

people,” she was a master of the microaggression. She was not the only one, however, as

employees’ lack of multicultural competence extended beyond her.

A considerably older gentleman was a volunteer tutor in our office would often talk

politics with other volunteer tutors, and as I much as I tried to tamper the discussion, it often

carried on at will. I often felt it was not helpful for the work we did in the tutoring center, nor did

it leave a particularly positive impression with students who would come in for math help and

would give me looks that would ask “is there anyone else to help me?” This would have been left

at annoying, if not for when a highly-achieving black student, who would come in to do

homework—not even ask for help—would hear from this volunteer tutor that he was “surprised”

the student could be doing high level math work. It happened nearly every time the student came

into the office, and the student always brushed it off. The tutor knew nothing of the student, and

so I as always amazed by the outright bias he could show as consistently as he did. His implicit

biases were quite evident, and made the term much realer for me to understand, even though I

experienced this as a third party.

But unlike those two staff members, I had a colleague whom I was fortunate to befriend.

She was a black woman whose family was from Haiti, and she and I got to talk often. She helped

me develop my own multicultural competence and I thank her for helping me to do so in addition
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to being my friend. She and I discussed the treatment she experienced in the culture at the

institution at which we both worked, and she would talk about how some things were specific to

being black, some specific to being a woman, and then how there were numerous examples of

how those two identities coincided in these experiences. While I had understood, conceptually,

the idea of intersectionality at that point in my life, she helped to give a face, along with a unique

experience specific to her identities in that environmental context, to what intersectionality

means. How, for her, being a black woman presented unique challenges in her position in

working with students, with colleagues, and with superiors. While I know my understanding of

this concept, along with my own experience of it, is not done developing, I know that my former

colleague helped me through some formative development in my time in the office in which we

worked.

While I did not work there exceptionally long, I know I learned a lot during the time I

did. I also found the MCOD template developed by Pope, Reynolds, and Mueller (2003) to be

helpful in formally assessing the structural aspects of the student affairs practice that I personally

did there as part of a larger organization. It also helped me place my experiences of colleagues

and superiors into tool of assessment, and allowed me to more thoughtfully consider how those

experiences developed my own multicultural competence that has influenced my current, and

future, practice.
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References

Pope, R. L., Reynolds, A. L., & Mueller, J. A. (2004). Multicultural competence in student

affairs. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Rowan College at Burlington County. (n.d.). Diversity. Retrieved from http://rcbc.edu/diversity

Rowan College at Burlington County. (n.d.). Tutoring Center. Retrieved from

http://rcbc.edu/tutoring

Rowan College at Burlington County. (n.d.). Mission and goals. Retrieved from

http://rcbc.edu/mission

Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, A. M., Nadal, K. L., &

Esquilin, M. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical

practice. American Psychologist, 62(4), 271-286. doi:10.1037/0003-066x.62.4.271