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Title
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Interview Clip: Grad to undergrad minority peer support program
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Description
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Recorded in Studio 2 (The Berg) in the Dance Building at the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre, and Dance.
[00:00:00] TOPPIN:
One of the programs, and I'd like you to talk about some of the initiatives, but one of the initiatives that you and I have talked about in the past was the Minority Peer Advisor Program, which as you and I talked about, I was one of them in 1988, I think 1988 and 89, and 90 when I was there. I was that for a couple of years.
[00:00:22] And it was a brilliant program, I thought, because it placed doctoral students with the rest of the student population as an advisor and really to be a peer-to-peer ear to help and sort of circumvent any issues that a student was having with classes or personal or faculty. It was just a buffer of another person, but a person who was a peer, but old enough to have some experience. Because, I came into Michigan after having been a K through 12 teacher, so I was used to dealing with students.
[00:01:00] And so you picked very judiciously who was paid to do this. And you were telling me that there was an unofficial program. I know Greg Broughton was right before me and Rachel Williams, but then you said there was an unofficial program for years before.
[00:01:15] Can you talk about how that came, the whole program? How did this come into being and why you felt it necessary?
PATTERSON:
For a single faculty member, though devoted and committed, it became a burden the size of which could not properly be maintained.
[00:01:43] TOPPIN:
You didn't have that many African American faculty.
PATTERSON:
No, I was only by myself. And I was intended, or, or, determined to maintain the performance expectation of new faculty members. I was determined to maintain the other areas of product and evaluation, because it was at the time, on the executive committee, and I knew how faculty were evaluated.
[00:02:31] And I didn't want any of these tendencies upon my time, my energies and time, to cause a diminution of my productive value as a member of the faculty.
TOPPIN:
Okay.
PATTERSON:
I performed every year. I performed on concert, on campus, and off campus with my contacts with a manager. I came with a manager, uh, and I responded to those commitments.
[00:03:14] It became then necessary to develop, particularly graduate students, who had had some elements of graduates, graduates as minority students in integrated settings, to become convinced that they would lend their expertise and experience to the benefit of undergraduate students. So it was a natural combination of need responding to availability.
[00:04:08] And so I, uh, recommended that these students be compensated, in a minute fashion, most often with the diminution of their tuition, and subsequently to the value of remuneration, to give them teaching assignments. And this proved a very effective way of, a need answering, uh, being responded to.
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Identifier
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PattersonToppininterviewclip8
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Creator
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Louise Toppin; Willis Patterson
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Date
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07/25/24
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Subject
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supporting students; administration
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Type
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moving image
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Format
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mp4
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Relation
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—
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Source
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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Office at the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre, & Dance
