Diversity is our reality at Klein College, evident through our student body and by the city we call our classroom. Equity and inclusion are ultimately what we want to accomplish as a college. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is an ongoing conversation among and between our students, faculty, alumni and staff.
We are committed to staying connected to the rich multicultural tapestry that is Philadelphia and using communication and media as a bridge to a more equitable and inclusive world. We recognize we have much more work to do.
After receiving the Equity & Diversity Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in 2018, we appointed David W. Brown as the college's first diversity advisor to the Office of the Dean. This appointment helps provide the proper structure to our fundamental values so that we can ensure DEI is the foundation of everything we do.
Our diversity council focuses on the following four areas.
Klein College is proud of its renowned faculty. Some of our outstanding scholars and practitioners in the field include Marc Lamont Hill and Clemencia Rodríguez.
Hill is an activist, author, scholar and television news broadcaster. He is the Steve Charles Chair in Media, Cities and Solutions which focuses on addressing the most challenging problems in urban areas and on the emerging discipline of “solutions journalism.”
Rodríguez is an author and scholar. She created the term "citizens' media" and developed the theory around its approach to understanding the role of community/alternative media in our societies. Her research projects are based in Philadelphia as well as in Columbia, South America.
Our faculty’s research illustrates a steadfast commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Nearly half of our full-time faculty are experts in international, intercultural or development communication, and many frequently address issues of class, gender, race and sexuality in their scholarship and teaching.
Learn more about some of the most current research tied to diversity and inclusion.
Fernback’s research examines the impact of information and communication technologies in urban revitalization efforts, the institutional uses of ICTs, issues of privacy and surveillance online and in mobile technologies, and the meaning of virtual communities in contemporary culture.
She recently co-authored a report that examines the intersection between emerging forms of digital inequity and long-standing socioeconomic injustices about people who rely on mobile phones for internet access.
Kitch co-edited Front Pages, Front Lines: Media and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage from the University of Illinois Press. This book presents research on media related to the women’s suffrage movement in recognition of its centennial.
Osman is an affiliate faculty member in Temple’s gender, sexuality and women’s studies program and her research focuses on the political economy of global media industries and the regimes of representation and visual culture they produce.
She is one of three inaugural Jack G. Shaheen Research Grant awardees, from the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University. This award grants her the ability to perform research in NYU’s Jack G. Shaheen Collection.
Shaw is an affiliate faculty member in Temple’s gender, sexuality and women’s studies program and her research focuses on the LGBTQ experience and representation in gaming.
She authored Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (which won the 2016 International Communication Association’s Popular Communications Division’s Book Award) and created of the LGBTQ Game Archive.
Turner is the director of the Temple Academic Center on Research in Diversity (ACCORD) and her research focuses on issues of race in news media coverage.
She authored “Advancing the Discourse: Confronting Issues of Race and Class Online” found in the publication Teaching with Multimedia: Pedagogy in the Websphere Vol. 1 & 2.
Klein College is proud of its diverse student body which includes a wide variety of backgrounds, identities and experience. This uniqueness is reflected in their extracurricular activities and research interests. While we strive to make the college inclusive and welcoming to all people, we recognize the importance of having opportunities for students with common identities to have their own spaces to network, share and grow within their professional fields. The following organizations are some examples of these spaces within the college and the university.
Because our students come from such diverse backgrounds, they are often hyper aware of the lack of representation in their chosen field as well as the exclusion of people who look like them from mainstream media. Klein College works to provide career-building opportunities that center the experiences and voices of marginalized groups.
