About 100 Graduate School of Education (GSE) students and faculty met yesterday to advise GSE policy in the Standing Committee on Diversity's working session on diversity.

The session brought together interested students, faculty and staff, who then split up into eight groups to pitch recommendations for GSE diversity.

After the meetings, GSE Dean Jerome T. Murphy presented the recommendations to the GSE senior faculty, terming their suggestions "reasonable."

"It's not as if they wanted us to move the moon," he said. "We were talking about how to operationalize it, figure out what makes sense in terms of action."

Each student-faculty group debated one of four topics related to diversity--faculty recruitment and retention; curriculum, pedagogy and advising; student services and quality of life issues; and admissions and student aid.

"I wanted to be in each and every group," said GSE student Linda Prieto, who joined one of the two groups discussing admissions and financial aid.

Students and faculty said they were pleased with the turnout.

Prieto said the room was so full that people were standing in the back of the room and filling the doorway. Elvira Prieto, a GSE student and Linda Prieto's sister said the majority of participants were students, but that there were high numbers of faculty and staff in attendance as well.

Students said the system of small groups worked well.

"Having two groups [for each topic] is better because more people had a chance to talk," Linda Prieto said.

She added that having two different groups of people brainstorm helped the groups come up with diverse ideas.

Elvira Prieto, who participated in the faculty recruitment and retention group, said the other students and faculty in her group came up with original proposals.

"One suggestion was to develop some kind of mechanism for investigating the experience of faculty," Elvira Prieto said. "There was an agreement that the experience had not been a good one."

She said the group also discussed giving students, especially masters' candidates, a greater role in the faculty selection process.

"We felt it was important to have a voice, but the faculty are still resisting this change," Elvira Prieto said. "It provided for a lively discussion."