U10A1-12 - GLOBAL ISSUE – ANALYSIS (PHASE 3) - SEE DETAILS.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Why Study Multiculturalism? Host: We are talking with Dr. Yvone Kochanowski who is one of the designers of the DPA program at Capella University. Dr. Kochanowski, why were multiculturalism and diversity deemed important enough to warrant an entire course on the program?

Dr. Yvonne Kochanowski: Thanks for asking that question. We live in a society that is increasingly diverse. We represent more ethnic and cultural groups in our workforce and in the public we serve as well.

Understand that the impact of workplace and service multiculturalism helps us to be more effective public administrators as we learned in this course. Among some of the critical concepts that we discussed in this course, we noted that there are cultural boundaries that define us based on our race, ethnicity, gender, religion and other characteristics; either by choice or by birth, that makes each of us unique!

Coupled with this, our life experiences further mold our uniqueness and yet, we face a dichotomy in so many parts of the US. In some places, our community or city is homogeneous with everyone for the most part, looking like us. It can be comfortable because we feel we can make assumptions about how our neighbors think and what they feel. They are like us! In other areas of the country though, such as many urban areas, so many cultures are represented that it seems things change from block to block.

The Public Administrator's Role Host: What do those two ideas mean for us as public administrators?

Dr. Yvonne Kochanowski: Well, as public administrators, we are responsible for guarding the public. We protect the public's rights and we need to be sensitive to all of the factors of multiculturalism and diversity that impacts the public. There are many specific aspects to protecting the public that we need to be sensitive to, such as ensuring citizen's rights, no matter which group they might self-identify with; and in that unique protection process, we have to guard against any appearance of favoring one group over another.

This occurs not only in the way that we provide services, but in the community participation that we gather to solve our public problems and in any aspects that we have as public administrators relating with the society that we serve.

False Assumptions and Diversity Host: You mentioned earlier that some communities appear to be very homogeneous, how does that affect the public administrator in their work and their decisions?

Dr. Yvonne Kochanowski: While communities may appear to be homogeneous, often times, they really are not. We could make an assumption for example about a rural county that is 90% white—Caucasian—and make assumptions that everyone in that county thinks the same, approaches problems in the same way, has the same attitudes and has the same worries and the same approaches to their value system, but in fact, even within that particular ethnic group or any particular label within society, people are very different.

So, we always have to be conscious as public administrators that we cannot make the assumption just based on the way someone looks or the way someone defines themselves on paper that they fit neatly into a particular category. We have to embrace the uniqueness of every public citizen, every person that we serve as public administrators.

The Global Perspective Host: You have spoken a lot about the specific communities to which we belong, how does Public Administration fit in a global perspective?

Dr. Yvonne Kochanowski: I am glad you asked that as well. We need to recognize that we are citizens ourselves of a global world—large and varied even outside of our own front doors—and that world is getting smaller and smaller as we see today with our links through technology and our links through common public problems. Global warming is an ideal example of that, perhaps not ideal, but something that definitely illustrates the point.

What happens around the world impacts everyone else in the world; so as we have this collective identity, it spans cultures and it spans diversity no matter what our background is or what our life choices are. So we are working across cultures and we need to modulate our power and work together to develop solutions to public problems and to add public value to our society, and again, that collective society is worldwide.

We are the solutions, each one of us, but we need to represent our cultures from their best perspectives.

Host: Dr. Kochanowski, thank you very much for your time.

Dr. Yvone Kochanowski: Thank you.

CREDITS Subject Matter Expert: Interactive Design:

Instructional Design:

Project Management:

Dr. Yvonne Kochanowski

Patrick Lapinski, Marc Ashmore

Felicity Pearson

Andy Johnson-Knapp

L i c e n s e d u n d e r a C r e a t i v e C o m m o n s A t t r i b u t i o n 3 . 0 L i c e n s e .