Baptism By Fire

There is a gap in the research about the preparation of diversity staff and their multicultural competency. In this book, I address that void by examining the academic, personal, and professional experiences and multicultural competence of the people who work in diversity services in higher education. I examined the impact of their demographics and experiences on individual multicultural competence as measured by the Multicultural Competencies for Student Affairs-Preliminary Form (MCSA-P2) created and validated by Raechele Pope and John Mueller (2000). Data were collected from 182 respondents classified as diversity staff through a web based survey using the MCSA-P2 and a demographic information form. In order to gather feedback from a wide range of respondents working at a variety of institutional types, the survey instrument was sent to diversity staff around the USA who were eligible to be members of the Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education organization (NASPA). The survey responses were then analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods.