Proposal
for Revised University Multicultural Studies Requirement
Kenneth
Koford
Chairperson
Undergraduate
Studies Committee of the Faculty Senate
**DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION**
Given
our discussions, and particularly Doug Buttrey’s ideas, I propose the following
new Policy.
Requirement
for all global/multicultural courses.
All
students in the university are required to take 6 credits (two 3 credit
courses) from two lists:
1)
Global Perspectives
2)
Multicultural
Students
must take one course from list 1, Global Perspectives. They have the choice of taking the second
course from either list.
Requirement
for a course to be on either list:
All
multicultural/globalization courses MUST
1)
Show awareness and understanding of a non-dominant and widely known culture,
and
2)
Show how learning about that culture increases the students’ awareness of how
other cultures see us, and vice versa.
3)
Increase student awareness of cultures outside of the dominant one and
commonly-known ones, and show how it is important to understand their values,
and show students that it is important to take into account the view and
value of non-dominent and well-known cultures.
Courses
must include a multicultural perspective as their primary goal; to satisfy this
requirement, the bulk of the content must introduce students to the perspective
or experience of non-dominant western cultures or peoples (so, including
non-western, non-white, and gender-sensitive content).
A
mere bare majority of material satisfying the requirement will not be
sufficient. The esssence of thecourse
must be strongly oriented to the goals of a multilcalual/globalization set of
goals.
Definition:
Globalization
course (?)
Multicultural
course (roughly lie current defition?)
Rationale:
We believe that recent events
and the passage of 16 years imply a different focus: closer to Global
Perspectives: understanding the world, and also having a sense of the world
perspective, how the world sees us.
(We
need more support here)
Programs abroad may be valuable,
but these must have a really strong global and multicultural focus. A class visiting Australia, or London, might
not satisfy the overall goal as well as courses in Ghana or South Africa where
students see and understand a truly different environment.
The current wording and
understanding of “multicultural” probably needs change, as a more global focus
plays importance. Also, requires some
de-emphasis on race, ethnicity and gender.
Most committee members think that the “available sphere” of student
knowledge and understanding on these points has changed in 16 years, so that a
novel non-dominant idea from the mid-1980s would seem rather standard in
today’s world.
Procedure: We when we have a
clear proposal, we shall it to the Coordinating Committee, and then to the
Faculty Senate. Our hope is to have a
resolution,this spring, before the Faculty Senate. An open hearing may be appropriate if there is widespread debate.
The
Committee will be delighted to hear thoughts and comments on all of these
points. You can contact me at
KofordK@lerner.udel.edu or the committee via Karren@udel.edu
With
the new wording requirement and emphasis, teachers of appropriate courses are
required to provide new requests and supporting material to include their
courses in the Multicultural Course list as of Fall 2004.