College Course Aims to Gauge Diversity of NWA Leadership

The University of Arkansas in Fayetteville has partnered with the Cisneros Center for New Americans to offer a course that will research the cultural makeup of business leadership in the region, in order to prove whether it is on pace with the growing diversity of the population.

Research Davis conducted in 2012 shows the Northwest Arkansas immigration population grew 850 percent between 1990 and 2010.

If the cultural makeup of the leadership was distributed in proportion with the population, Springdale leadership, for example, would be 40 percent Hispanic and 8 percent Marshallese, Davis said.

Undergraduate students enrolled in the UA class this spring are surveying local boards, commissions and committees to learn the composition of the groups. The students will also make note of vacancies within those groups and identify which ones are interested in becoming more diverse.

The project is the first part of a larger initiative, which aims to create a pipeline that matches leaders of diverse cultural backgrounds to open leadership positions.

The students’ findings will directly inform the efforts of EngageNWA, a coalition focused on immigration integration.

Seven students make up the class, and it meets each Wednesday.

If there is a follow-up course, it will likely be in spring 2017, Davis said.

The Northwest Arkansas branch of the Cisneros Center is in Springdale. There are also branches in San Antonio and Washington, D.C.