Sharing the Good News About Diversity
How to Organize Campus Diversity Communications Workshops

Diversity.
Good for Students.
Good for Colleges and Universities.
Good for American Society.

Campus Diversity Public Information Project
A Program of the Ford Foundation

Several colleges and universities involved in the Ford Foundation's Campus Diversity Public Information Project have organized workshops to help their administrators, faculty and staff members develop strategies to communicate better the positive impact of campus diversity.

These workshops have addressed both internally produced media (i.e. faculty newsletters, college brochures) and external media (i.e. newspapers, television and radio).

Often coordinated by the Public Information Offices, these Campus Diversity Communications Workshops have yielded positive results:

• helping institutions to develop and coordinate messages about diversity;
• helping Public Information Offices learn more about diversity programs and activities occurring on campuses;
• underscoring the value that colleges and universities place on diversity;
• improving participants' understanding of how the media operate;
• increasing communication among faculty, staff and administrators who have an interest in campus diversity and the public information office; and
• improving diversity coverage in college and university publications.

This guide will help you to organize and hold similar workshops. You will most likely want to have the office responsible for media relations organize (or help organize) the workshop(s), because they focus on media outreach to various communities.

Researching your institution's vision of and commitment to diversity
Meet with key individuals on campus who are responsible for and involved in diversity projects and programs to talk about what diversity means on your campus and how it is manifested in student life, the curriculum, the faculty, etc. Some of the individuals you might want to meet with include:

• the President;
• the Director of the Public Information Office;
• academic deans;
• key administrators;
• student leaders;
• faculty leaders; and
• anyone else responsible for diversity projects and programs.

Ask what they think the message your college or university should communicate about the benefits of diversity and the academic and social values you associate with it.

Locate messages about valuing diversity in the mission statement, faculty and student handbooks, internal publications and institutional planning documents. These will be useful to share later with workshop participants.

If your institution has conducted any climate studies, review the results for messages about the benefits of diversity.

Selecting participants
Choose participants based on their role in communicating your institution's diversity to various audiences including: the general public; media; students; prospective students; alumni; parents of current or prospective students; faculty; members of the institution's governing board; legislators and other policymakers (if appropriate).

At Community College of Philadelphia, the following "communicators" were invited to participate in the workshops:

• the President and divisional vice presidents;
• academic deans and faculty; and
• communications staff.
• Creating an invitation timeline

The academic calendar will probably dictate when you can hold a workshop or several workshops on one day.

3 months out Check the availability of key participants, coordinating calendars and possible dates. (The president's schedule will probably play an important role in determining when the workshop will be held.)

2 months out Select a date (or dates, if you will have workshops on more than one day) convenient for a critical mass of participants.

Send out invitation letters signed by a key administrator or your president to encourage attendance. The letter should briefly explain the purpose of the workshop, the types of people being invited to participate, and the time and date. Ask people to RSVP by a specific date, so that you will have a head count.

1 month out Make follow-up calls to everyone who has not responded, and reconfirm the date and time with everyone who has.

This timeline will give you some guidance on how much lead time you may need.

Structuring workshops
You may want to hold a series of workshops to address the needs and interests of the types of participants you have selected and the roles they play in communicating about your institution. For instance, you may want to have one session on internal communications and publications (faculty newsletters, photography, college catalogs, institutional videotapes, etc.) and another session on media outreach.

Community College of Philadelphia held workshops for three groups of "communicators":

one session on media outreach for the president and vice presidents, which included a discussion with local journalists;

one session on media outreach on diversity work for academic deans and faculty; and

one session for publications and audio-visual staff on communicating about the College's diversity through institutional publications and videotapes.

Each session addressed the roles participants play in promoting the image of Community College of Philadelphia as an institution that values diversity, and actively builds on that diversity.

Creating the agenda

Media Outreach
You will want to take this opportunity to educate participants on how the media works, to help them understand the ground rules for communicating with the media and the news values that shape the work of journalists. This session is also a good time to review any institutional policies on handling media inquiries and conducting media outreach.

• Possible Topics:
  types of media (daily newspapers, wire services, broadcast television, radio, cable television, community and ethnic newspapers, etc.);
• deadlines for different media;
• how the media determine what makes a story newsworthy (uniqueness, timeliness, etc.);
• the importance of and uses of sources and quotes;
• institutional media policy and protocol; and
• recent media coverage of your institution, including an explanation of why these particular stories were chosen for coverage (you might want to bring local newspaper clips from the last month).

As the purpose of this session is to encourage participants to think strategically about diversity work that may have media value, you should ask participants to bring materials about any possibly newsworthy diversity programs, courses or projects with which they are involved.

Follow the discussion about the media with a facilitated brainstorming session. Participants can talk about diversity at the institution and how the projects or programs about which they have brought materials fit into the institution's commitment to and vision of diversity. This discussion also offers an opportunity to talk to key people about the ways in which they describe their work.

Discuss the importance of using powerful, but simple language in promoting diversity stories (avoiding academic jargon or complicated explanations of issues) to help journalists understand the important work happening at your institution.

Sample exercise
Following the brainstorming session, ask each participant to choose a diversity project, program or course which they think has news value and to write a headline and lead paragraph about it. Remind them to use simple, powerful language and avoid academic jargon.

Afterwards, have each participant read what s/he has written and talk a little bit about the project, program or course s/he is involved in. In addition to giving people an opportunity to think about the news value of their work, this exercise also gives the public information officers an opportunity to learn more about ongoing diversity work on campus.

Discussion with journalists
If possible, invite one or two local journalists to attend part of the media workshop. Select individuals whom you know to be supportive of diversity issues and who are willing to be forthcoming about their work and how the media function. Since some faculty, staff and administrators may have negative feelings about the press, you will want to plan this discussion carefully to ensure that no one decides to use it as an opportunity to take the media to task for "always being negative," "always getting the story wrong" or "deliberately misquoting sources."

Have the journalists first talk about how they personally select stories for coverage, how they work with their editors, and how they cover stories. They should also describe "an average day" to give participants an understanding of the time pressures they face and the best times to reach journalists. They can also talk about the right ways to approach a journalist about a story. (For example, following a reporter's articles to figure out which issues s/he is interested in and tailoring a story idea to those interests.) Allow some time for retreat participants to ask questions.

Workshop for publications and audio-visual staff
Some of the audiences for your messages about diversity get much or all of their information from publications produced by the institution. You may want to schedule a workshop for the publications and audio-visual production staffs to talk about how their work helps both internal and external audiences understand diversity at your institution. This session offers an opportunity to talk about how events and activities on your campus reflect the value your institution places on diversity.

Begin with a facilitated discussion about your institution's vision of and commitment to diversity. If your mission statement includes diversity, have copies on-hand for all the participants. Once people have had an opportunity to talk about institutional diversity, you can discuss how that vision and commitment can be conveyed through your internal and external publications using words, artwork and photography. Have on-hand samples of your institution's publications, with good and bad examples of photographs, artwork and language. If this is a particularly sensitive area, you might use examples from other colleges or universities.

Some topics to discuss in this workshop are:

• including diverse students, faculty, administrators and speakers in college or university publications and videos;
• ensuring that photographs, videotapes and written pieces about college or university events show the full diversity of the student body, as well as the faculty, staff and administration;
• covering events, workshops, courses and programs that explore or celebrate diversity;
• covering events or stories that illustrate the institution's diversity (including commonly held events such as annual art exhibits, weekly poetry readings, or academic courses that explore diversity); and
• ways the Public Information Office can assist publications and audio-visual staff in finding out about events, classes, etc. to cover.

Putting it into practice
Have someone assigned to take notes at your Campus Diversity Communications Workshop(s) who will write or assist in writing a report, including any suggestions or proposals put forth by retreat participants. You may want to draft a series of goals for each set of participants, with a timeline. The report should be distributed to all the participants, so that they can keep track of their own and each other's progress.

Goals might include:

• a system for alerting the Public Information Office to events celebrating or exploring diversity that might be newsworthy;
• a system for alerting videotaping or photography staff to events celebrating or exploring diversity which might generate good photos or videotape footage;
• a series of media trainings for potential spokespeople on diversity-related issues;
• a protocol for press inquiries, which includes a briefing with the Public Information Office prior to media interviews; and
• a notebook of good diversity media clips.

Six months after the Campus Diversity Communications Workshop, schedule a small follow-up meeting to revisit the issues and assess participant progress. This is a good opportunity to find out "what works" and adjust goals accordingly.

Sample Agenda for Campus Diversity Communications Workshop

9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.: Deans and Administrators

Introductions

Goal of the session

Discussion of media values

Review of stories in the local news

What do media want? What makes a good story?

Promoting the positives of diversity and multicultural education

Identifying possible diversity stories and ideas at the College/University

The power of language and words in releases and stories

Media policy at the College/University

12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.: Photographers, Audio-visual Staff,

Student Newspaper Staff

Introductions

Goal of the session

Getting the best/most diverse pictures

Examples, exercises, plan of action

Putting our best foot forward with every external publication

2:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.: President and Cabinet Members

Introductions

Framework for the session

Media/communications tips

Discussion of media values

Review of stories in the local news

Journalists' Session:

What do the media want? How can we target the right people/outlets?

How can we develop the media relationships that can best suit our needs?

Wrap-Up/Final Thoughts

Campus Diversity Public Information Project
A Program of the Ford Foundation