The College of New Jersey Case Study
Rutgers University Case Study

Bloomfield College
Bloomfield, New Jersey
Case Study
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Bloomfield College has distinguished itself through its longstanding investment in diversity. The institution’s commitment has multiple dimensions: to diversify the college community, to focus on multicultural and global perspectives in the curriculum and co-curriculum, to shape the College to be a successful multicultural workplace, and to be a resource for the town of Bloomfield and the communities from which the college’s students come. Bloomfield’s commitment to the educational value and societal benefits of diversity are historically rooted in its founding over 135 years ago as a seminary for immigrants, and is expressed in the institution’s mission statement, which reads in part, “One of the strengths of the College is the rich diversity of its students. The College is committed to this richness because it provides an ideal context for personal growth and a basis for a better society.”

Bloomfield’s investment in diversity has been bolstered by sustained presidential leadership for nearly a quarter-century and has led to a campus population that includes the rich diversity of northern New Jersey and an increasing international population. Bloomfield has taken advantage of its small-college ability to shape its mission and goals with its philosophical commitment to access and equity, to connect from-the-top and grass-roots leadership, to plan flexibly and coherently, and to communicate among and engage all constituencies.

The 2,000 students at Bloomfield come from more than 50 countries. Two thirds of the students are from minority racial/ethnic groups, half are over 25 years old, and 67% are women. In addition to a diverse student body, Bloomfield has been successful in diversifying its faculty. The number of fulltime faculty members of color has been about 25% for the last ten years (27.2% as of 2004). Minority representation in the administrator and non-service staff ranks is 47%. This remarkable structural diversity at Bloomfield has set the stage for an impressive array of curricula, programs, and events. The College taps diversity as an educational resource, integral to the Bloomfield experience, which leads to educated citizens and inspires the community to embrace difference. It is poised to sustain a learning community that thrives on diverse and innovative programming, pedagogies, and modes of interactions.

As part of the institution’s most recent diversity work, Bloomfield received a grant from the Bildner Family Foundation in 2002 to participate in the New Jersey Campus Diversity Initiative (NJCDI), which seeks to diminish prejudice, increase intercultural communication, and promote learning for all community members.. Bloomfield’s NJCDI strategy was to invest in professional development for program development. As a teaching-centered college, faculty and professionals in academic and student affairs work in a culture of reflective practice. Understanding that people enter institutional change from different portals, grounded in their experiences and disciplinary training, Bloomfield supports individuals’ pursuit of diversity work as appropriate to their established and developing expertise, and in the context of their institutional responsibilities. In its NJCDI work, Bloomfield has relied on two key mechanisms to advance diversity: investing in faculty, staff, and program development through semester-long seminars, and establishing a Center for Cultures and Communication (CCC).

Embracing the perspective that “you can’t give what you don’t have,” the Seminars for Professional and Program Development focused on developing faculty and staff expertise, while engaging participants’ intellectual and vocational interests and lived experience in the service of diversity. The seminars increased the capacity of faculty and staff to be more effective educators in and outside the classroom by expanding their own diversity knowledge and their repertoire of engaged pedagogies. In the seminars, faculty and staff used texts and media, participated in consultant-led workshops centered around pedagogy, and examined their positionality drawing on their own life experiences -- creating more connections and community, a greater sense of inclusion, and working toward the full enfranchisement of the faculty, staff, and students.

Many outcomes are programmatic: an implementation of the mission’s focus on multicultural and global education, community with new programs in International Business, Latino/Latin American/Caribbean Studies, and innovative links among courses, most intensely in a Learning Community Block (freshman seminar, history, and writing), and in revised, enriched courses across the disciplines. Student activities and support programs are strengthened and made more cohesive, with studies of the cultures and heritages Bloomfield students bring, including a Diversity All Year Program in which faculty, staff ,and students create two to four events weekly, on a culture from which College community members come.

Beyond faculty members’ and administrators’ seminar semesters, they continue to use their knowledge and connections in “second-level growth” activities -- not directly part of their NJCDI work, but proof of the truly transformative nature of the project. Faculty and staff have begun workshops to study Créole language and culture to better understand Bloomfield’s Haitian population. They created Bloomfield’s semester-long commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Freedom Summer in Fall of 2004. Through cross-campus collaboration, the commemoration evolved into a coherent and pervasive learning experience for students. Freedom Summer became a theme in courses and in co-curricular programming. The Freshman Core Program was redesigned around “Freedom and Citizenship;; a course on the History of Freedom Summer was created; students hosted an opening event at the art gallery; an original play with cross-cultural casting was written and preformed ; the art gallery exhibited From No House to the White House: Jazz Photographs of Milton Hinton. The College Convocation speaker was Pulitzer Prize-winning author of I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, Charles Payne, and founder of the Freedom Schools in Mississippi, Charles Cobb, lectured and visited with students in and out of class.

The second NJCDI mechanism, Bloomfield’s new Center for Cultures and Communication, creates an inclusive educational climate that supports intercultural teaching and learning, respectful dialogue, scholarly research and writing, and personal/cultural growth in order to develop informed, engaged, and responsible graduates. The CCC offers a certificate in diversity training, seminars for professional development, and opportunities to learn from the community in which Bloomfield is situated. The CCC has also offered workshops off-campus. Diversity Training Certificate interns work with residential advisors and study groups on understanding implicit culture and developing cross-cultural communication skills. The CCC coordinator works with faculty, staff, and students to welcome and learn from international students.

In the professional and program development seminars and through the work of the CCC, Bloomfield also emphasizes the value of students’ lives as texts, in and outside the classroom. Some faculty and staff develop pedagogies that engage students to tell and learn from their own stories, preparing students for a multicultural and global society through exposure to powerful stories from diverse backgrounds. Discovering and respecting differences and commonalities helps create a community of learners, and the literature suggests that such recognition and connectedness promotes retention and achievement.

Drawing on its holistic, highly integrated approach to teaching and learning, Bloomfield seeks to deepen and evolve its conscious commitment to diversity, and launch students to take their place as responsible citizens of a diverse democracy and increasingly interconnected globe. The focus is on students’ learning, on their achievements as the evidence of the success of the programs and the mission.

Bloomfield College has created a vibrant coalition to reduce the impacts of prejudice through a liberal arts-based education that is both traditional and innovative. The College seeks to continue its history of honoring diversity in the natural evolution and realization of its mission. Its ability to sustain strong leadership from the top, cultivate leadership and learning in collaborative partnerships among faculty and staff, and develop special expertise in multicultural communication both within the College and its surrounding community, is both work-in-progress and a balanced institutional portfolio that positions Bloomfield College as an exemplary campus in diversity work.