The Curriculum Committee of the College of Professional Studies supports the mission of Humboldt State University to provide an environment where learning is the highest priority and where the challenges and opportunities of a diverse and rapidly changing society are acknowledged and affirmed. The primary curricular goals for offering courses with multicultural content and methodologies are to foster students' regard for the dignity, worth, and equality of all human beings and to prepare them to interact respectfully with people of cultural backgrounds different from their own. Diversity and Common Ground courses may be any combination of general education, major, or elective courses and may be used to satisfy more than one graduation requirement. The Curriculum Committee of the College of Professional Studies has created a set of guidelines to facilitate development of Di versity and Common Ground courses. Proposed courses must fulfill each of the following four criteria.
Items preceded by an asterisk are examples of how the criteria can be met.
The course content includes information about the strengths and weaknesses of the disciplinary heritage in relation to the cultural groups selected. The course content provides students with opportunities to explore the effects of negative consequences such as discrimination, underrepresentation, and oppression as related to the discipline. For example, in a discipline in which women are underrepresented, a study of the historical, cultural, and social reasons for the underrepresentation might be undertaken. The course provides opportunities for students to explore their own beliefs, attitudes, and values about cultural differences as related to the discipline. The course curriculum provides students with the requisite knowledge base to enable them to recognize human similarities and differences and to seek areas of common ground across the diverse groups they are studying.