Developing openness to diversity in living-learning program participants

The purpose of the current study was to address how college student openness to diversity is influenced by campus environments. The contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954) provided the theoretical frame for studying 2,074 living-learning program participants and their campus environments. Results revealed that college environments accounted for a significant amount of openness to diversity variability, R² = .32, F(2, 2027) = 20.39, p < .001. Implications for practice are to encourage peer interaction that meets contact hypothesis conditions in campus programming. Specific practice suggestions include living-learning and intensive curricular dialogue (Sáenz, Ngai, & Hurtado, 2007) programs.