Running head: MULTICULTURAL COMPETENCY
Multicultural Competency
Adele Christensen
Oregon State University
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MULTICULTURAL COMPETENCY
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Multicultural Competency
As student affairs professionals it is important to be self-aware and intelligent within a
multicultural setting since we work with a variety of students every day. This essay will address
my thoughts and feelings about the Multicultural Counseling Competencies framework, examine
challenges for my personal growth in this area, and explore a scenario with multicultural
implications in higher education including my experiences with such situations.
I really appreciated reading the Multicultural Counseling Competencies framework
because it was able to put into words specific goals counselors strive towards in order to best
understand their cognitive bias and how it relates to others. The framework also addresses
aspects of the ethical guidelines as discussed earlier in the term such as continuous education and
training on subjects that require constant revisiting. I valued that the competencies were very
explicit and detailed since the topic of multiculturalism can sometimes be described very
vaguely; therefore making it difficult for professionals to grasp.
An example of a statement that I found to be very helpful was, “Culturally skilled
counselors are aware of their stereotypes and preconceived notions that they may hold towards
other racial and ethnic minority groups” (Arredondo, P., Toporek, M. S., Brown, S., Jones, J.,
Locke, D. C., Sanchez, J. & Stadler, H., 1996). This statement helped me to validate that all
people hold preconceived notions about groups but that it is important for the professional to put
aside their thoughts and think about the personal holistically.
While reading through the first two sections of the document I thought that parts of the
framework were repetitive as there was a lot of mention of how different aspects of the
counselors’ cognitive bias affect the client. While I understood the need for the competencies to
be explicit, I thought that aspects were repeated many times. I do, however, see the value in
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repetition so as to emphasize the importance of a particular topic but I thought it was a little too
much.
The biggest challenges of my growth in multicultural competence are self-education and
a lack of understanding of the full potential of multicultural competency. At this point, I have
just started to understand the concepts of cognitive bias and the privileges I possess. After
starting to scratch the surface of multicultural competence, I feel like I do not know where to go
from here. I am looking forward to having a class solely devoted to this subject next term so I
can learn more about how I can improve myself. One thing I have learned about this area is that
it is something I must do in self-reflection. I also know that education regarding multicultural
competence is never-ending even though that is an unsettling feeling for me. I am looking
forward to learning more about how I can improve myself and sensitivity towards multicultural
issues.
In residence life, my area of specialty within student affairs, I know that I will constantly
need to be educating myself on the ever-changing student population since the majority of my
work is with first year students. For example, there is a student who currently lives in my
residence hall who identifies as an animal. My supervisor had attended a session at a conference
last year that talked about students who may identify this way and they were named “furries”.
Had my supervisor not heard about this before we would not have known that the student who
walked around in an animal costume everyday was doing so as a way to demonstrate their
identity. With new generations coming to college and living in residence halls, it is especially
important for professionals in my functional area to be conscious of the nuances students bring
each year.
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A scenario which I could imagine encountering in higher education, particularly within
residence life, would be related to students who have limited knowledge of people who are
different from themselves. This is something that I worked through while attending college in
Wisconsin. I had to work a lot with students who were naïve about the concept of people having
different worldviews or cultural backgrounds than themselves. While not related to race or
ethnicity, there were a lot of students I worked with as a Resident Assistant who had little
tolerance for people who identified as LGBTQ. This atmosphere led to an unsafe campus and
residence hall climate. Students who identified as LGBTQ did not feel safe being out or talking
about coming out at my undergraduate campus. Something that added fuel to the fire was that
some residence life staff (mostly undergraduate RAs) were not capable of offering support to
these students when they wanted someone to talk with about coming out or other LGBTQ
resources. These staff members would blatantly refuse to talk with students who had those
issues thus making the student feel even more marginalized and unsafe in the community. It is a
result of those experiences as well as others that have inspired me to focus my area of
specialization for the program on effective ways to education students about social justice issues
even if the concepts are against the students’ values.
Multicultural competency is something with which I thought I was very familiar until I
came to graduate school and learned that I have a long way to go. After understanding that one
cannot “master” multicultural competence and that it is a continuous learning effort, I became
more motivated to work on improving myself in that area. By being conscious of my own
personal bias and current skills, I am able to understand the importance of the Multicultural
Counseling Competencies framework as its relevance to my future in higher education.
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Reference
Arredondo, P., Toporek, M. S., Brown, S., Jones, J., Locke, D. C., Sanchez, J. and Stadler, H.
(1996) Operationalization of the Multicultural Counseling Competencies. AMCD:
Alexandria, VA.