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Persistent disparities in doctoral degree completion have led many institutions to hire graduate diversity officers (GDOs) to increase the presence of underrepresented minorities in graduate programs. This qualitative study of 14 GDOs considers how the dimensions of campus racial climate (CRC) influence the ability of GDOs to carry out this work. Findings suggest CRC can be applied to understanding institutional processes that affect diversity, and that internal and external climate-related forces affect the GDO’s recruitment and retention efforts. Thus, universities must go beyond demonstrating institutional commitment by creating GDO positions and attending to CRC to increase graduate diversity.

From Latinas' locations in the margins of academe and society emerges a unique set of challenges complicated by racism, sexism, and classism. One form of resistance to these multiple marginalities involves drawing upon and (re)telling one's lived experience to expose oppression and systemic violence. Testimonio is a conceptual and methodological tool that transforms personal narrative into this type of resistance. In this article, the authors employ testimonio to document, from an intergenerational perspective, critical consequences and benefits of the academic socialization process for Latina academics. In examining the exchange between and among four established and four emerging Latina scholars, the authors uncovered an innovative methodological technique for bridging testimonios across lived experience; this technique is referred to as reflexión and enhances the level of knowledge construction that testimonio offers in formulating a collective consciousness across generations and social identities, crafting theories about Latina scholars in academe, and demonstrating that lived experience is integral to knowledge creation.If we are to create a critical framework to analyze systemic inequity and injustice; if we are to actualize a form of authentic justice, we must act to (re)appropriate and exercise our right to be This manuscript is based on a symposium presented at the 2009 Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) conference. The authors thank Estela Mara Bensimon, Sylvia Hurtado, Anna Ortiz, and Laura I. Rendón for granting permission to use their transcribed remarks from the ASHE symposium and for providing helpful feedback during the preparation of this article.

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While researchers, institutional leaders, and policymakers have made significant progress towards increasing undergraduate student diversity in the United States, diversity in graduate education has been less often studied and a more challenging goal on which to make progress. This qualitative study explores the roles and work of graduate diversity officers (GDOs) in student recruitment activities with a focus on how race and issues of diversity manifest and influence this process. Interviews with fourteen GDOs at 11 different research universities in the United States highlight the phases in the graduate recruitment process, the manner in which diversity is considered at each stage, and GDOs’ perceptions of their ability to shape this process. Findings suggest that GDOs are important institutional agents in diversification efforts; however, faculty engagement and broad institutional commitment are required to increase diversity in graduate education due to GDOs’ often limited involvement in the admissions stage of the recruitment process, where race becomes the most salient in decision making.