2012 NASPA Annual Conference s Phoenix, Arizona s March 10–14, 2012

AAPI Student Leadership for Social Change

Jude Paul Matias Dizon, University of Vermont

Welcome!

• Name, institution, role.

• One word to describe observations of AAPI student leadership on your campus.

Current Knowledge

• AAPI college students least likely to consider themselves leaders (Balón, 2005).

• Compared to other racial groups, AAPIs scored the lowest measures of socially responsible leadership (Dugan, Komives, & Segar, 2008; Dugan & Komives, 2007).

“Blame the Asians”

• How are AAPIs depicted in this article?

• What are the implications for race relations from this article?

“Count Me In!” Campaign

• Goals: 1. Enhance UC admission policy to include data

collection on students of Bangladeshi, Cambodian, Hmong, Indonesian, Laotian, Malaysian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Taiwanese, and Thai backgrounds.

2. Separate Pacific Islander into a new racial category within admissions.

3. Provide financial support for outreach projects that specifically target AAPI groups facing severe educational inequity.

“Count Me In!” Campaign

• Spring 2007: UCLA, Asian Pacific Council– Pan-AAPI coalition advocating for inclusion of 15

sub-populations on the UC application– Expanded across the UC system

• Target: UC Office of the President• Tactics: postcard campaign, media releases,

public demonstrations, conferences• Disaggregation announced on 16 Nov. 2007

Social Change Model of Leadership Development

• Designed in 1996, funded by HERI• “guide the design of a leadership

development program that emphasizes clarification of values, development of self-awareness, ability to build trust, capacity to listen and serve others, collaborative work, and change for the common good” (Astin, 1996, p. 4).

Social Change Model of Leadership Development

Social Change Model of Leadership Development: Individual

• Consciousness of self– Awareness of values, emotions, attitudes and

beliefs that motivate one to take action • Congruence– thinking, feeling and behaving with consistency

and genuineness towards others • Commitment– directs consciousness of self and congruence to

the group effort

Social Change Model of Leadership Development: Group

• Collaboration– how people value and relate to each other across

differences in values, ideas, affiliations, visions and identities

• Common Purpose– Shared aims and values

• Civility with Controversy– open dialogue with a commitment to find

common solutions to conflict.

Social Change Model of Leadership Development: Community

• Citizenship– process whereby the self is responsibly connected

to the environment and community – Interdependence

• Change– Central organizing principle– A move, a transformation to something else

Research Findings• Consciousness of self

– “Another reason why I've also gotten into those volunteering type of groups. When I was young, my mom used to tell me during the war, during the refugee camps, there were a lot of people who helped out my family. She would mention that people from the UN, Red Cross, all those humanitarian orgs. I always had a deep respect for people who did all that stuff.”

– “Growing up, it's easy for people to say, yeah it's cultural pride. But for me personally I didn't really feel this until college, until it solidified. Like oh man, this is who I am. That kinda steered me to take more interest into my own culture.”

Research Findings

• Congruence– “I spent a lot of time talking to my parents about

why I was making the choices I was making. That in order to validate their sacrifice in coming to America, it wasn't enough for me to make a lot of money. It had to be something more to validate all that they sacrificed for me. They understood that eventually.”

Research Findings

• Commitment– “We run an outreach program for the high school.

When we first came here it was hard to adjust to college life so we thought we should set it in their minds now to take school seriously. Some of the kids graduated and some of them go here now. If we can inspire one kid to go to college, then the program is worth it.”

Research Findings

• Collaboration– “Any time of cross-community organizing or coalition-

building requires a higher sense of understanding that the struggle of one community is the struggle of another community of another community. That takes work to get to that point of understanding that your struggles are connected to another community. That's a process in and of itself. We can't automatically expect the data is gonna help improve cross-community/pan-ethnic mobilizing. That's not necessarily true, but it's a good tool to help communities see each other.”

Research Findings

• Common Purpose– “No one likes the idea of getting lost in this huge

number. It made the case for so many organizations so difficult to do. We're different, we're different, we're different. You saw this kind of sentiment across campus about why do these orgs want separate funding, why do they put all these different types of shows. Because people didn't quite understand there's a huge difference between these ethnic identities.”

Research Findings

• Controversy with Civility– “I think a big plus was that we could talk out the

negative things that came our way. Because we had talked about this campaign so much and talked it through so much, there not that much backlash. Maybe some people wouldn’t understand why we need so many check boxes, but we could always back up our reasoning for this campaign. There is a need.”

Research Findings

• Citizenship– “Just from talking to other students and other

people, just great people who could give us advice on something like this, that the discussion started around, well you know there’s this great bill going through the state legislature, AB 295. What they’re trying to do is with California collection data, include more Asian categories. That just translated on the UC campus and turned into the CMI campaign.”

Questions?

Thank you!

• Contact:– Jude Paul Dizon– jdizon@uvm.edu

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