Vice Provost for Educational Equity Terrell Jones conducted a round table with members of the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) Academic Assembly Monday night, addressing ways to promote inter-group relations at Penn State.

Jones said the campus climate is shaped by interactions between people of different races, genders and sexual orientations. Students should try to step out of their comfort-zones and interact with different types of people, he said.

"One of the things that happens at the university-level is that students feel comfortable in the kind of environment they grew up in," he said. "They try to recreate those kind of environments."

Jones told members of the assembly that the university could help foster diversity by making changes in its curricula, policies and procedures.

Assembly President Mark Levin said Jones' discussion connected diversity to academics in a meaningful way.

"I think it's important for the assembly to look into all aspects of academics," he said. "Academics doesn't just mean books and grades, so I think that having Dr. Jones at our meeting was a great way to let the assembly members know where improvements need to be made in terms of diversity, international students and in terms of curricular issues."

Tammy Rishel, vice president of programming for the assembly, said she agreed, adding that Jones' speech made her think about diversity differently.

"I thought he had some interesting things to say," she said. "He brought up a lot of good points we wouldn't have understood otherwise."

Levin said Jones' discussion about the relationship between faculty and students brought up particularly important points that affect diversity education.

In his discussion, Jones said that some students are not interested in learning ways to improve diversity because they do not feel it is important or relevant to their lives. Other students tune it out when they discover the material will not appear on an exam.

Jones said it is important for students to understand that people of diverse backgrounds hold different worldviews.

"They put two and two together and get a different reason for their four," he said.