Contemporary management issues and challenges institutions need to integrate truly diverse and inclusive subject matter into surveys and required courses

INTRODUCTION 3● First Generation Students in international universities 5 A curriculum that is integrated with diverse cultures and peoples 7 Institutions need to integrate truly diverse

Contemporary Management:

Issues and Challenges

Course code: BUSM4557

RMIT University Strategy Report

Topic: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Submitted by:

Thieu Le Thao Nguyen - s3697405

Nguyen Son Minh - s3672207

Nguyen Thi Xuan Mai - s3634738

Nguyen Hao Kiet - s3695570

Vu Ngoc Hoang Linh -s3740795

1 INTRODUCTION 3

● First Generation Students in international universities 5

A curriculum that is integrated with diverse cultures and peoples 7

Institutions need to integrate truly diverse and inclusive subject matter into surveys

Panel Discussion Sharing for psychological preparation 8

Living - Learning Program to support finding a community having the same

Connected Scholars Program for cultivating social capital 10

1 INTRODUCTION

RMIT University was opened in 2000, situated at 702 Nguyen Van Linh street in district 7,

Ho Chi Minh city RMIT Melbourne is well known as the main campus of RMIT Vietnam and has been divided into three main workplace areas including RMIT Saigon South

campus, RMIT Hanoi, and the foreign language center in Danang After two decades of operation, RMIT university is remembered as one of the leading campuses with various teaching fields that are consistent with the trend of the global digital economy In addition, business courses, management courses, fashion, design, and IT courses are the most

attractive majors that many families are concerned about The school also delivers the world-class teaching method from RMIT Melbourne with full English course education Those opportunities not only help students to improve their English skills which are known

as the Vietnamese’s weaknesses but also help them outperform their careers

As an international university, the school contains diverse backgrounds geographically such as Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Chineses, etc Therefore, diversity and equity are

becoming a priority in RMIT University Vietnam Although it provides many benefits for the school environment, it also creates a complication and dissent from students as well as staff In this report, we analyze the realistic case by using the RMIT Saigon South campus

as an example Firstly, the literature review on diversity is demonstrated, then we conduct

to examine the existing issues of diversity in the school environment Specifically, the report will use the case of RMIT Saigon South campus as an example to figure out the problem of nationality diversity and first-generation student issues Lastly, some possible solutions will be discussed to help RMIT campus to overcome the situation and other survey results that collected some students’ ideas about their feelings when studying in RMIT based on the diversity topic (Appendix 1)

2 MARKET ANALYSIS

In the current situation where globalization is the hot trend that has been adopted by almost every country in the world, multiculturalism is the priority topic that many organizations are concerned about (DeLancy, 2013) Thus, RMIT with various types of students that come from different countries is evaluated as a multinational diverse environment Multi-nationality brings a variety of school environments and increases the performance of group projects (Hofstede, 2008) Gurin (2004) demonstrated that cooperation between students from different cultures would enhance their knowledge, improve their personal growth in communication and contact in a complex environment

Despite those advantages of multiculturalism, the lack of cultural diversity awareness will lead to misunderstandings and behave unbiased or racist to people from different cultural backgrounds According to Wren (2001), the term ‘race’ divides people into different skin colors and judges them based on their nationality Thus, cultural racism demonstrated the ideas of closedism, where the cooperation between those nations are unnecessary Next, in terms of cultural racism, "It stereotypes ethnic groups, regarding culture as fixed and bounded in a permanent way, thus denying the

permeability of borders and the possibility of adaptation strategies and cultural hybridity” (Wren, 2001) When we adopt the theory of cultural racism into the case of RMIT university - the school follows the term of globalization that connects various students from different cultural backgrounds together Consequently, those actions will not only influence the result of group project

performance but also negatively abuse the student’s psychology Richards (2007) states that

students will be directly influenced by the unfair treatment of discrimination Specifically, anger, unworthiness, or frustration will be those negative feelings that will prevent foreign students from expressing their ideas.

After conducting our survey based on the diversity topic, the outcome recorded more than 40 candidates involved in the survey Individually, 26.4% of the respondents disagree, or neutral disagree on the strong commitment of RMIT on diversity, equity and inclusion (Appendix 2) Moreover, approximately 34.2% of the candidates believe that they have experienced discrimination and stereotyping during their study process in RMIT (Appendix 3) As a result, the treatment unfair can lead to several types of discrimination in the school environment such as direct discrimination, harassment, indirect discrimination, etc (Citizens advice, n.d) Indeed, teachers not only express the theoretically cultural lecture but also apply those theories into realistic practice to enhance the involvement of students (Brief, n.d).

● First Generation Students in international universities

With the tendency of global development, education has affirmed its importance to the future of young generations, especially international education This has created a novel term which is “First Generation Student” (FGS) It is defined as students whose parents do not go to college (Spiegler & Bednarek 2013) In the RMIT University context, it refers to the circumstances in which parents do not experience international education It is collected that 53.8% of students who did the survey are first generation students (Appendix 4) This leads to several disadvantages for this generation compared to continuing generations

Initially, FGSs are recorded to be short of academic preparation According to Coffman (2011), insufficient preparation in academics diminishes the successful proportion of FGSs The thought of FGSs’ parents is to support their children avoiding the “don’t become like us” effect (Spiegler & Bednarek 2013) It is known as the regret of parents for missing certain skills or knowledge making them unable to achieve their goals Therefore, they want to provide their children with a high and up-to-date education such as RMIT university allowing them to get used to the international

working environment However, because of the

inexperience in a new environment such as an international university, FGSs have not received inadequate advice from their parents about university life or either what they need

to prepare or deal with Moreover, the transition between traditional high school and

international universities causes a shortage of critical thinking appraisal (Balemian & Feng, 2013; Inkelas et al 2007) It is the consequence of the differences in teaching methods In high school, students learn only what is taught meanwhile in RMIT, students are required

to do more research, make more critical arguments, and relate theory to real-life cases As a result, it causes confidence lacking in terms of academic capabilities and they tend to compare their performance with other continuing students

Next, it is difficult for FGSs to integrate well with society Studies proved that FGSs are hesitant to participate in social activities in university (Aruguete 2017) Moreover, they are rarely approaching and developing relationships with lecturers and staff (Adam,

Meyers & Beidas 2016) Those are the advantages provided for students to help them not only improve themselves but also prepare for future careers Reflected RMIT, it can be seen that few students have a meeting with their faculty or utilize academic supporting resources such as Student Academic Success (SAS) for assignment advice Mostly, they will depend on teammates to do it Furthermore, FGSs find there is a barrier preventing them from blending in to make friends (Inkelas et al 2007), especially in terms of

financial background The majority of FGSs are usually in lower class compared to

continuing students making them feel like they are not qualified to be their friends It illustrates that FGSs possess the low capability of peer connection Consequently, they cannot feel the belonging causing the tendency to be stressed and depressed

3 RESOURCE ANALYSIS

There will always be ways to solve any given problems Even for the issue dealing with nationality as mentioned above For many years, RMIT has been known for having such a diverse people of both students and lecturers coming from all around the world to study and teach at the university Everyone comes to schools and universities to learn many skills and about the real-world experiences (The Wallace Foundation 2008) Because of this, students should not be concerned about getting hatred, being discriminated against by anyone nor be treated inequality because of being different from other students Hence thus far, RMIT has the use of the online portal called the Safer Community This has helped the university to deal with any unfair bias against nationality There are two recommendations for RMIT to overcome the problem of nationality as below

A curriculum that is integrated with diverse cultures and peoples

According to Harper and Davis III (2016), the students of color were tiresome in only reading the materials that are one-dimensional literatures As they were doing this, the students felt excluded from their very own cultural histories and the college had failed to acknowledge their humanity without realizing this These students of color felt in need of having authors and texts that are from a wide variety of perspectives within the syllabi and

to be “substantively” engaged within the classroom At the same time, the reason for the one-dimensional literatures was because many of the teachers were only used to the

“racially exclusive scholarship” that was introduced to them in their doctoral studies Also, most of the white scholars have their privilege fields and are celebrated as experts Hence why the teachers only teach those in that particular way

Institutions need to integrate truly diverse and inclusive subject matter into surveys and required courses

Warren (2020) wrote that many people had voiced their concerns to have different approaches in education They felt that schools and universities need to have conversations that are “raw and honest” on the topic of race Already, most of the higher education institutions have had a variety of

courses and programs with the aim to represent “the experiences and goals of long-marginalized

groups” In society today, students of undergraduate and graduate from the community colleges to Ivy League universities have an equal opportunity in taking many courses like Black History, Latinx Literature, Sociology of Power and Privilege, and/or Queer Studies Only in recent years that programs like criminal justice, education/teacher preparation, and public administration have increasingly been updated to have courses teaching about multiculturalism, race relations, privilege, and diverse identity experiences Though this idea is within the scope of only American colleges and universities, RMIT can take this into account as an example and model to lean into.

● First Generation Students

Panel Discussion Sharing for psychological preparation

Stephens, Markus & Fryberg (2012) proposed that first generation college students need many psychological supports including the belief that people who have the same background with them can attend and succeed in college Stephens, Hamedani, and Destin (2013) applied an intervention manipulation in which two discussion panels with the same demographically diverse group of college seniors (three first generation, five continuing generations) with the only difference is difference education panel involves the emphasis of the background of the panelist, and the 1-hour difference education was found to help first generation students to have much better academic performance in the first year and smooth their transition to

college As a university that has many welcoming programs for new students, RMIT can include this 1-hour difference education on its Orientation Day and invite successful first generation students to share their stories during the session as mental support and

preparation for newbies

Living - Learning Program to support finding a community having the same background

Shapiro and Levine (1999) proposed that living-learning (L/L) programs are residential

communities with a shared academic or thematic focus that promote greater faculty and peer

interaction, social and academic support Inkelas, Daver, Vogt, and Leonard (2007) and Flynn, Everett, and Whittinghill (2016) found that students participating in L/L programs have a more successful academic and social transition to college, and they also have a much more positive answer to questions regarding social support, academic support, connectedness to campus, and satisfaction Although RMIT has a number of supporting activities including mentoring programs, program tutor activities, student clubs, the majority of them require the initiative of students seeking help Consequently, these supports might not be well exploited by the first generation students who have a tendency to be shy and feel not welcome at universities Therefore, RMIT should take advantage of the geographical distribution of students to facilitate living-learning programs

Particularly, a large proportion of far from home students rent a room in District 7, so what RMIT University can do is to have matching programs that facilitate the process of finding peers studying

in the same major and living in the same district so that first generation students find a community having the same background with them to receive help, feel welcome and belonged at RMIT.

Connected Scholars Program for cultivating social capital

After successfully building relationships with peers, first generation students also need to develop other social capital as Inc (2016) did a survey and found that a third of students obtained an

internship or job related to their major through a professor Schwartz et al (2018) developed a Connected Scholars Program model of change (CSP, Appendix 5) aiming to encourage first

generation students to develop more social capital with the following elements: discussing the role

of social capital, social support, mentors in college, discussing challenges to networking and how

to manage perceived rejection or unavailability, creating graphical representations of students’ support networks including strong and weak ties, role-playing how to reach out to connections, and discussing strategies to maintain sources of support off-campus and develop sources of support on-campus during the transition to college Results were that participants have a closer relationship with instructors, increased intention to recruit support and network orientation, decreased help-seeking avoidance With all the proved positive effects, it is suggested that RMIT Wellbeing

Department run a similar social capital workshop aiming at not only its first generation students but all the students in general at the beginning of each semester, which can be also considered as a psychological encouragement for students to make good use of all the available resources

including staffs, lecturers of the university.

4 CONCLUSION

To conclude, while it cannot be denied that RMIT University Saigon South is an institution

committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, certain forms of discrimination still exist that need to

be addressed These include nationality difference issues – where our survey revealed a quarter of respondents have experienced some form of discrimination, and first-generation