Intellectual Foundations

Students will demonstrate the ability to:

1. Critically examine the past, current or prospective influences of diverse groups on American society.
    
2. Analyze the ways in which social and institutional structures can contribute to privilege and injustice through stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination.
    
3. Explore systematically the importance of understanding, respecting, and valuing diverse people or cultures.
    
4. Critically reflect on how their values, attitudes, and beliefs have developed and affect their perceptions of, and relations with others.
    
5. Assess the ways in which individuals, acting alone and in groups, can contribute to social justice.

The term "diverse groups" shall be defined to require the course to focus on one or more of the following key aspects of who we are as Americans: class, race, religion, ethnicity, gender/sexual orientation, and disability.
 

The goal of the diversity requirement is to prepare students to live and work in a multicultural society through an academic experience in which students can

• increase their knowledge related to one or more diverse groups;
• develop their inter-cultural cognizance, sensitivity, and commitment to social justice;
• examine their personal perceptions, preconceptions and values and understand their sources and how they affect their relationships with others;

with the ultimate goal of expanding their reference group membership to include others who they perceive as being different from themselves.