Overview

Ethnic Studies is an established undergraduate degree program that provides students with the conceptual and methodological tools to analyze the historical, political, social, and cultural forces that have shaped the development of America's diverse racial and ethnic peoples.

Completion of the program leads to a B.A. in Ethnic Studies. As an Ethnic Studies major, a student chooses an area of concentration in one of the four specific racial-ethnic fields: African American studies, American Indian studies, Asian American studies, or Chicana/o studies, and will gain familiarity in at least one of the other areas not chosen as the primary focus. In addition, emphasis is given to developing skills in oral and written expression, in research design, and in critical thinking.

In 2002, the department was given the responsibility of administering the American Studies Program, and to assure that the necessary courses would be available for those students who had declared the American Studies major prior to spring 2002 so that they could complete the degree. All students with this major have now met those requirements, so the faculty discussions currently underway will focus as to how American Studies, as a content area, can be best incorporated into the ethnic studies curriculum. Even though it is no longer a major, there is a high demand for American Studies courses, so the question must be addressed as to how it can effectively and soundly be placed as an important content area within the context of an Ethnic Studies major.

The Department of Ethnic Studies encourages participatory, experiential, student-centered learning and empowers students to move beyond existing social, cultural, and political paradigms to more inclusive paradigms in which they are the subjects of their own reality. Consequently, all students are encouraged to examine and analyze their own inherited political/economic and social/cultural background and identities.

A principal focus of our curriculum is the recognition and incorporation of multicultural definitions and values that can become part of the University's mission. We encourage students to understand the extensive histories, cultures, and knowledge bases developed by historically underrepresented racial and ethnic communities by focusing on one of four specific fields, exposing them to the thinking styles and operational methods of a multidisciplinary faculty, and by extension, among the many ethnic communities represented by our faculty.

We stress critical thinking, the construction of grounded social theory, data gathering and comparative analysis. We foster developmental, experiential learning of appropriate skills in research design and implementation. These frameworks are part of a rapidly evolving Ethnic Studies perspective in the United States. We engage emergent epistemologies of racial/ethnic communities to critically question established disciplinary canons by encouraging our students to move beyond being objects of study toward being subjects of their own research.

In essence, the ten goals of the Ethnic Studies curriculum are as follows:

1. To allow students to think comparatively and cross-culturally about the relationship within and across racially defined communities, and to the dominant society.
2. To allow students to gain a considerable level of knowledge and expertise in one of the four specific racial-ethnic fields, plus American Studies, and familiarity with at least a second racial ethnic field.
3. To reinforce students' acquisition of critical approach to knowledge.
4. To involve learning and thinking within interdisciplinary frameworks.
5. To encourage participatory, experiential, diverse, and student-centered learning.
6. To develop skills in oral and written communication.
7. To develop appropriate skills in research design, information retrieval, and utilization from an ethnic studies perspective.
8. To empower students to move beyond being objects of study towards being subjects of their own social realities, with a voice of their own.
9. To motivate all students to examine and interrogate their inherited political/economic and social/cultural positions.
10. To prepare all students to live and contribute to an increasingly diverse America, in an ever inter-dependent world.

The Ethnic Studies major provides a broad liberal arts education with skills in critical thinking, comparative analysis, social theory, data gathering and analysis, and oral and written expression. These skills, coupled with its emphasis on diversity make the Ethnic Studies degree particularly useful for the coming century. It provides students with appropriate training for fields such as law, education, medicine, public health, social work, journalism, business, urban planning, politics, counseling, international relations, and creative writing, as well as university teaching and research.

Perhaps the most outstanding record shown by our graduating undergraduates is their pursuit of higher education in other university graduate programs of Ethnic Studies as well as related fields of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Political Science, Social Work, Education, Medicine, and other fields. Our graduates have tended to be very capable in such graduate work and we are frequently informed that they have performed exceptionally well in acquiring Masters and Doctorate degrees. We believe that with a graduate program in our department many of these very talented students would choose to pursue graduate work here at the University of Colorado.