The Center

The Center promotes cutting-edge applied programmatic research related to the cultural competency of those who work with issues regarding mental/behavioral health of diverse populations. The Center espouses research as an integral part of developing, enhancing, and evaluating quality and the impact of our services to the community. Hence, there are two main research goals: (a) to evaluate the effectiveness of multicultural competence across professions and (b) to promote quality multicultural research and productivity at the MU.
 
To promote research development, the Center provides travel awards for students to attend the Winter Roundtable Cross-Cultural Conference at Teachers College, Columbia University, and offers Multicultural Thesis and Dissertation Awards for MU students. The Center is currently involved in the construction and evaluation of the Missouri Multicultural Teaching Competency Scale, and another study of the effectiveness of the Theater of the Oppressed techniques with educators in higher education.

The Center also collaborates with the Cambio Center at MU to generate knowledge that can have practical applications for teacher training and school administration in working with Latino students in Missouri.

We believe it is our ethical obligation to train future professionals to serve an increasingly diverse population. Therefore, a primary training goal of the Center is to prepare graduate students to be the next generation of multiculturally competent psychologists, educators, and professionals in their respective fields.
 
To increase the multicultural competencies of our staff members, we offer a Practicum in Multicultural Counseling Interventions, offer a wide array of graduate assistantships, and provide leadership for the Multicultural Teaching Scholars program.

The primary service goal is to provide consultation services, which focus on multicultural concerns and issues, to the MU campus, the Columbia community and public schools, as well as across the U.S. and beyond. We have established liaison relationships with : (1) Columbia Public Schools' teachers and administrators, (2) MU's Teacher Development Program (TDP) which trains pre-service educators, (3) MU Multicultural Affair Office, (4) Vice Provost for Minority Affairs, (5) MU's Assessment and Consultation Clinic, (6) MU’s Asian Affairs Center, (7) building relationships with the student organizations and local churches and community organizations (e.g., PRISM) in an effort to extend diversity services through other groups, (8) other universities in the U.S., and (9) corporations in other countries.

The Center organizes and promotes outreach activities to interface with the Columbia community. Among the most successful events of the Center has been the Helen A. Neville Multicultural Lecture Series named in recognition of the many and varied outstanding multicultural contributions to the Center, MU, and Columbia community. The invited speaker is a nationally recognized multicultural expert who not only provides a multicultural lecture for the Columbia public schools, MU, and Columbia community, but also interacts with MU students, faculty, and administrators in a wide range of professional and social contexts. In the past 6 years we have invited Dr. Rosie Bingham, Dr. Manuel Casas, Dr. Robert L. Williams, Dr. Derald Wing Sue, Dr. Helen A. Neville, Dr. James Croteau, Dr. William Liu, and Dr. Melba J. T. Vasquez. The titles of the multicultural speeches delivered in the Columbia Public Schools are listed below. To check out the audio or video tapes of the talks, please contact the CMRTC.