A Latina/o Campus Community’s Readiness to Address Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Concerns Zully A. Rivera-Ramos, Ramona F. Oswald, and Lydia P. Buki University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign In response to the call for new and innovative methods of assessing campus climate (Worthington, 2008), the current study is the first to examine the readiness of a Latina/o campus community to address lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) concerns. Using the Community Readiness Model, data were collected through individual interviews with a total of 16 students, staff, and faculty from programs and organizations serving the Latina/o campus community. The 6 dimensions assessed included climate, knowledge of LGB concerns, knowledge of LGB efforts, leadership, resources, and efforts. Findings suggest that there is a mismatch between the current Latina/o LGB program- ming and the Latina/o campus community’s stage of readiness to address LGB issues. Despite the fact that Latina/o LGB efforts had been developed for about a decade, the community was assessed to be at a vague awareness stage of readiness with regard to the dimensions of climate, knowledge of LGB concerns and efforts, and leadership. The resources dimension was found to be at the preplanning stage of readiness, whereas the efforts dimension was reported to be at the preparation stage by staff and faculty and at the initiation stage by students. Given the stage variability across dimensions, programming has to focus on the lowest stage of readiness obtained, namely vague awareness. Culturally sensitive recommendations for programming strategies that match the community’s stage of readiness are presented. Keywords: campus climate, community readiness, Latinas/os, LGB Only about 4% of higher education institu- tions in the United States are currently making efforts to address lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) concerns at their campuses (LGBT Cam- pus.org, 2012). Even fewer efforts are directed toward improving campus climate for Lati- nas/os who self-identify as LGB. By not attend- ing to their needs, these students may be at higher risk for oppression based on both their sexual orientation and race/ethnicity (Evans & D’Augelli, 1996; González & Espín, 1996; Manalansan, 1996; Savin-Williams, 1996). Therefore, there is a great need to conduct em- pirical research in this area. By identifying the most effective way to provide relevant program- ming for diverse social identity groups, there is potential to improve campus climate (Rankin & Reason, 2008). In the current study, consistent with previous calls for a focus on empirical and valid measurement of campus climate (Wor- thington, 2008), we extend the extant research by showing how the Community Readiness Model (CRM; Edwards, Jumper-Thurman, Plested, Oetting, & Swanson, 2000; Plested, Edwards, & Jumper-Thurman, 2006) can be applied to this task. We first provide an over- view of the CRM, highlighting its strengths as a measurement tool for assessing campus climate. This article was published Online First December 22, 2014. Zully A. Rivera-Ramos, Department of Educational Psy- chology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Ra- mona F. Oswald, Department of Human and Community Development, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Lydia P. Buki, Department of Community Health, Univer- sity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Zully A. Rivera-Ramos is now at Counseling Center, University of North Florida. Lydia P. Buki is now at De- partment of Educational and Psychological Studies, Univer- sity of Miami. This article is based on Zully A. Rivera-Ramos’ disser- tation. We acknowledge Helen Neville & José Toro- Alfonso for their comments at various stages of the study. We are especially grateful to the participants of the study who entrusted us their experiences and recommendations. Correspondence concerning this article should be ad- dressed to Zully A. Rivera-Ramos, Counseling Center, Uni- versity of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL 32224. E-mail: z.rivera-ramos@unf.edu This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education © 2014 National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education 2015, Vol. 8, No. 2, 88 –103 1938-8926/15/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0038563 88