This published version is made available on Dickinson Scholar with the permission of the publisher. For more information on the published version, visit UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center's Website.

Rose, Susan D. 'It Wasn't a Sweet Life: Engaging Students in Oral History Interviewing Across Race, Class, and Generations." In Oral History and Communities of Color, edited by Teresa Barnett and Chon A. Noriega, 76-97. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2013.

Dickinson College is a small, predominantly white liberal arts college located in Carlisle, a small town in south-central Pennsylvania. Like many historically white American colleges and universities, Dickinson faces the challenge of how to engage its primarily white students- and an increasing number of African, Latino, Asian, and Native American (ALANA) students- in meaningful dialogues about diversity.The college is known for encouraging its students to study abroad, and it has worked actively over the past decade to diversify its faculty and student body. The percentage of students of color has risen from 5 percent to 16 percent. The college continues to search for effective ways to create an intellectual community that prepares all of its members to live creatively, productively, and harmoniously in a multicultural society and world. This cannot be done simply by making the campus demographically more diverse or by sending students to foreign countries. Rather, the institution must intentionally engage diversity in ways that create greater understanding and empathy and thereby enrich the entire campus and its surrounding community.

Susan Rose is a professor of Sociology at Dickinson College.