This digest examines ways in which learning and educational objectives can be maximized to achieve diversity while improving social and learning environments for students from different racial/ethnic backgrounds. The digest examines the literature on campus climate for racial/ethnic diversity, looks at the impact on student diversity of the campus climate, and examines institutional changes necessary to improve the racial/ethnic diversity and enhance the learning environment. These issues are examined within a framework that encompasses theories of race relations and racial attitudes, historical legacies of exclusion, and campus behaviors both inside and outside the classroom, as well as changes in government and policy and forces of sociohistorical changes in U.S. society. The needed fundamental institutional changes would include a conceptual shift in thinking about diversity and about an institution's overall teaching and learning priorities, in addition to structural changes that would allow for increased interaction and involvement among students from diverse backgrounds. (CH)