HUMAN DIVERSITY REQUIREMENT

Rationale

The diversity work-group on curricular/co-curricular integration and diversity training decided in spring 2006 that it should make an effort to assess the effectiveness of the undergraduate core curriculum diversity requirement because this requirement is the most extensive academic effort in the university to enrich the diversity of the curriculum. It became apparent that a serious assessment of the effectiveness of the diversity requirement would provide important information to the diversity work group and to the diversity review committee, and would also constitute the first attempt to assess this particular portion of the core curriculum. The diversity work group consulted with the undergraduate review committee that oversees this requirement to develop a survey form to be used for assessment of student learning in this area.

The survey is designed to assess the degree to which students reports having learned the approaches and concepts that form the basis of the diversity requirement. The questions in the survey are drawn from the established criteria for the core curriculum diversity requirement. These are the same criteria that faculty would have consulted when proposing to the diversity review committee that the course should be accepted as fulfilling the diversity requirement. Results of the survey will be studied by members of the diversity work group and no information that is identifiable by section or instructor will be published. We will make available the cumulative results of the survey when it has been tabulated.

The survey asks students about the full range of issues that are identified in the criteria for the diversity requirement, even through we recognize that few courses, if any, were designed to address the full range of possible diversity issues delineated in the criteria.