WALPOLE – Five years after the University of Maine System developed a “diversity action plan,” campuses have found a variety of ways to help students become more attuned to other cultures and points of view.

Universities have incorporated multicultural perspectives into many of their classes and added a diversity requirement to their general education programs.

They’ve invited multicultural scholars to give presentations on racial and ethnic diversity issues, expanded library resources to support multicultural learning and research, conducted training on how to prevent and respond to complaints about discrimination, and recruited students from racial and ethnic minority groups.

Diversity plans have brought about positive change, University of Maine at Farmington President Theodora Kalikow said Monday during the system’s board of trustees meeting at UM’s Darling Marine Center in Walpole.

“An astonishing amount of work has been done,” said Kalikow, who heads up the system’s diversity task force.

Updating trustees on the plans, Kalikow said the definition of diversity has been expanded to include gender, disability, sexual orientation and age, in addition to race and class.

Although it’s difficult to gauge whether people’s minds and behaviors actually have been changed, Kalikow contends there are “more conversations taking into account a variety of human experience,” and there is “more sensitivity about scheduling events and [not as many] automatic assumptions that everyone’s like me.”

Each campus has adopted a diversity plan that reflects its individual mission and unique location, the UMF president said.

For example, the University of Maine has developed a multicultural Web site and has pledged to hire two new tenure-eligible assistant professors with focuses on American Indian and black studies. The campus also aims to offer more classes in gerontology, expand its Mexican Cultural Exchange Program, and hold a variety of cultural celebrations.

The University of Maine at Fort Kent has conducted curriculum development workshops for kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers that explore the culture and history of American Indians in the St. John Valley, and has established a French children’s literature collection.

The University of Maine at Machias has introduced new courses in American Indian history, nonwestern philosophy and African-American literature.

The University of Maine at Presque Isle has participated in joint archaeological research with the Micmac and Maliseet tribes.

And the University of Maine at Farmington has created a diversity committee composed of faculty, staff, students and community members to bring in guest speakers and sponsor debates and conferences on multicultural issues.

UMF has developed a course in Franco-American culture and holds an annual international festival that acknowledges “all the people on campus who come from different places,” Kalikow said.

The work is self-perpetuating, she said. “The more you get involved, the more you find you have to do.”