Responding to a Diverse Class: Insights from Seeing a Course as an Organization

Abstract

This article provides a new perspective to help public affairs faculty with diversity management. In the context of the need for faculty to consciously address diversity issues and develop methods for managing diversity, we consider courses as organizations that have social structures, technologies, goals, participants, and environmental contexts, and examine each organizational element in order to develop insights and diagnostic questions. The model of the course as an organization, insights for managing diversity, and questions for course design and delivery offer tools for faculty to deal with diversity while teaching a variety of public affairs courses.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary Tschirhart

Mary Tschirhart is an associate professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington. She received her Ph.D. in organizational behavior and human resource management from the University of Michigan. Her research interests are focused on stakeholder management issues within and across the public, nonprofit, and business sectors. She teaches courses on public and nonprofit management, organizational behavior, and organizational theory. Her publications include articles and book chapters on graduate and undergraduate management education and on diversity management. She has presented her research in these areas in both international and domestic forums and has helped private and public sector organizations in the United States and Sweden with diversity-related initiatives.

Lois R. Wise

Lois Recascino Wise is a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research and teaching interests center on the broad area of management policies and practices, with a special focus on the public sector. She has served as a consultant to public and private sector organizations in the United States and Europe. Her work may be found in numerous U.S. and international journals. In the area of managing for diversity, Wise has contributed to projects for public and private sector organizations independently and through Tessla, AB. She chairs the International Network of Diversity Researchers and Scholars. She has developed and taught courses on managing diversity for undergraduate, graduate, and executive education. Her research in the diversity field focuses on the quality of the body of knowledge and the consequences of human diversity for work organizations and individual performance.