RUNNING HEAD: Final 1

Zach Weyher

May 2, 2016

Final

Georgia Southern University

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Final

Introduction

Higher education is a field that is constantly evolving. It always has been and it always

will be. It is the responsibility of each school to keep up with the changes that are happening. It

is a very diverse world and universities work to reflect that diversity at their institution. With

growing diversity, changes are made to various programs to accommodate a growth to the

campus. These changes are unique to every campus and cannot be compared to what other

campuses are doing.

Characteristics of Georgia College

The institution that will be focused on in this paper is Georgia College and State

University. This institution is a public liberal arts university in the small city of Milledgeville.

With just over 6,600 students, Georgia College focuses on having smaller learning environments

for the people who chose to attend. The school have four colleges, those being the College of

Arts and Sciences, the College of Education, the College of Health Sciences, and the College of

Business. The school opened in 1891 as a two-year institution until 1917 when they became a

four-year school. The demographics are roughly 85% white, and 60% female. Based off of

demographics alone, Georgia College needs to work on having a more diverse campus. This is

something that they are actively pursuing. Creating programming as well as making some

changes to several functional areas will increase the diversity on this campus.

Campus Recreation

Campus recreation provides services to students, faculty, and staff by providing them

programming for physical activity and wellness. This can either be through competitive sports
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like intramurals or non-competitive avenues like group fitness classes. Campus recreation is a

good place to implement changes. This area is usually on the forefront of hot topics and issues

facing universities due to the governing body over campus recreation making this a priority.

Two of this issues that are prevalent today include sexual orientation and gender.

The first thing that can be done by the campus recreation program at Georgia College is

to make available an all gender or gender neutral restroom. This is currently not offered by the

campus recreation department and would be an extremely inclusive change. By not having a

gender neutral restroom it gives off the appearance that you only want males and females to use

your facility, and if you do not identify with one of those you cannot enjoy the facility.

Currently, Georgia College offers intramural sport leagues which are Mens, Womens, or

Coed, which is a mix of males and females. The change that can be made is to offer sport

leagues which are Open, which does not have a restriction on gender. This again offers more

inclusion and does not have the perception that those who do not identify with a specific gender

still can participate in the structured, competitive programming that intramural sports offers.

To provide more inclusion, you can focus on the way that you market your program.

Males are the dominating participants in campus recreation programs, but especially in

intramural and club sports. When marketing for the sports, Georgia College mainly uses males

on their flyers and promotional material. By starting to show more females on promotional

material, this will increase the participation by females.

Financial Aid

Providing students with financial aid is the best way to recruit students to the university.

When you control the funding and have the privilege of allocating that to who you want, you
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have the power to recruit whatever students you would like. Georgia College needs to tackle the

problem of having a primarily white university. The financial aid office should make it a priority

to make more funds available to students of color. Making it a priority to create scholarships for

those students will help increase the diversity on campus. If a priority is not made, increases in

diversity will be difficult to see. It is possible to see changes without increasing funding but the

creation of scholarships is one of the easiest ways.

Curriculum

Curriculum, like higher education as a whole, is always evolving. The changing

curriculum reflects the nature of higher education, and is necessary to keep up with the

constantly evolving country. Curriculum will not necessarily get the students to come to the

school, but it will be what keeps them there. If the curriculum is not something that is reflective

of the students, this will cause many to transfer out to other schools where the curriculum is

reflective. However, the curriculum needs to reflect the interests of every student if possible.

Surveys should be conducted to the students to see their thought on the classes being

offered. If the classes that they want are offered, they are less likely to transfer. Instead of

offering the classes that the professors want to teach, challenge the professors to teach something

different, outside of their comfort zone that the students want to take. This will be a benefit to

both the professors and the students allowing them to grow and learn.

Georgia College does a great job of having curriculum that appeals to all walks of life.

They require students to take several cultural appreciation classes that are not part of a students

major. By requiring students to take these classes it promotes a sense of inclusion and diversity

across the campus. Freshman orientation classes are also required for all undergraduate students.
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These classes follow Chickerings Theory of Identity. Each week the class progresses through a

vector until they are all completed. This is a very good idea to help integrate the freshman

students with the college life. There is one problem with the way that this class is set up. Each

student progresses through the vectors at a different rate. The freshman orientation classes have

a set rate to progress through the vectors, so students who take longer to advance through a

vector will get forced on to the next vector.

Conclusion

Having a multicultural campus at Georgia College and State University should be made

the top priority for administrators. Attending a school with a diverse campus provides many

benefits to students that extend well outside the classroom and sets them up for success after they

graduate. Diversity is not limited to race, it extends far beyond that. Implementing these

changes will allow for a much more inclusive campus at Georgia College. These changes would

make Georgia College at the forefront of inclusion programs in higher education, giving the

university recognition across the country.