Introduction: Rethinking Practices for Enhancing Diversity in the Discipline*

摘要

When students consider higher education, they often ask, "Where should I go to college?" Meanwhile departments ask, "Where do we find a more diverse faculty and student body?" These questions hint at how the nature of participation in higher education is fundamentally spatial and geographic. Where universities are, from where and how far their underrepresented students or faculty come, and the complex dynamics of their geographic context matter considerably. A predominant habit of thinking and speaking about "diversity" persists, however, and might be limiting our opportunities to increase the participation of underrepresented groups and promote greater inclusion in geography as well as higher education more broadly. The so-called pipeline principle-that is, building relationships among educational institutions serving students at different stages from grade school, middle school, secondary school, community colleges, undergraduate programs, and graduate programs to faculty-is fairly well understood as a framework for recruitment efforts. It continues to serve as the underlying metaphor characterizing the way we conceive broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in higher education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, health sciences, geosciences, law, biosciences, and education, as well as in private-sector professions (Thomson and Denk 1999; Tienda 2001; Chang 2002; Jackson 2003; Alfred et al. 2005; Mc-Carty et al. 2005; Calleros 2007; Levine et al. 2007; Cullinane 2009; Hinton et al. 2010; Subotnik et al. 2010).