Hey All,
At last night's forum, there was one issue that called for fact checking. A key point of one of Kyle Fuller's answers was about pushing for a Diversity Requirement for all students. Essentially requiring all students to take a class that teaches them about a culture, like a Women's studies course, or a Chicano studies course. Directly after presenting this idea, Madeleine McKenna spoke, saying that she had had a conversation with Dean Ed Taylor on that very idea, and that he said it was not feasible at this time.
I used to work for the Dean, so I thought it would be an easy thing to check, and it was.
Dean Taylor received my email late last night and responded within half an hour. He agreed that he did say that it was unfeasible at this time, noting that in years past a similar push was made but failed. That failed push did cause the creation of a Diversity Minor though. Dean Taylor goes on to say that he would suggest connecting with other key administrators if this idea is one that ASUW wishes to pursue. He said this might not be the right time or climate, but that it is a worthy concept for ASUW to pursue.
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The idea is not to create a class or add an additional 5 credit requirement. The idea is to reduce either Natural World or I&S requirements by 5 credits, and replacing it with 5 Diversity credits. This would be in pre-existing classes, such as Women's Studies, Queer Studies, Afro-American Studies, etc. It gives students freedom to choose what class they would like to take (just like our NW, VLPA, etc.), but just make it a requirement to graduate to take a course in this study classification.
ReplyDeleteThat's an important distinction that should be brought up to the administrators. If I recall correctly, the previous push was to add an additional requirement. By changing one req into another, this proposal wouldn't add any net credits to the average degree.
ReplyDeleteWere I Kyle, I would follow up with Dr. Edwards-Lange to see what she thought of the idea at the forum, and make sure she's aware of the distinction between this proposal and the one that failed in the past.
A slightly different idea would be to make it like the QSR requirement, where we could keep the Areas of Knowledge as is, but everyone would need to take a Diversity course (and if it fell under an Area of Knowledge, could also be counted towards AoK).
ReplyDeleteAn argument against it that I've heard is that over 80% of students already take classes that would fall under the diversity requirement.
ReplyDelete