Welcome and Introduction

In fall 2015, The UO Black Student Task Force released a list of demands meant to achieve greater faculty and student diversity and equity as a matter of urgency and improve the social and intellectual climate on campus for students and faculty of color. The group’s demands included making Ethnic Studies 101 a graduation requirement. Task Force members wrote that the course would ensure all students “learn about the importance of United States history in the context of social inequality and injustice, while emphasizing the often overlooked histories of African-American as well as the histories of other underrepresented sub-groups in the United States” and offer students “skills to navigate the diversifying world.”

This demand set in motion a re-examination of UO’s Multicultural Requirement, which had been in place since 1994 and required students take two courses select from any two of three categories— American Cultures; Identity, Pluralism, & Tolerance; and International Cultures. A Joint Committee of the University of Oregon Committee on Courses and Undergraduate Council recommended in 2016 that these categories be revised to reflect “current scholarship in the field of critical multicultural education” and  address an “imbalance in the categories” that means most UO students do not take American Cultures (AC) courses and, thus, “are not exposed to the critical conversations occurring in AC courses addressing a critical analysis of students’ cultural context and assumptions.” Similarly, a faculty, student, and administrative working group formed to consider the demand for Ethnic Studies 101 and recommended UO require a U.S. focused course on “difference, power, discrimination, and resistance” with teaching shared across the university’s schools and colleges.

Ultimately two faculty working groups—the Working Group on Intercultural and Inclusive Teaching and the Difference, Inequality, and Agency faculty learning and leadership community,  both organized through the Teaching Engagement Program—recommended a simplified cultural and equity literacy requirement including one United States: Difference, Inequality and Agency course and one Global Perspectives course, and articulated clear goals for student learning, including about listening, self-reflection, and ethical participation in cross-perspective dialogue. The faculty groups strongly endorsed ongoing faculty teaching development and leadership across disciplines. The University Senate passed this legislation in Spring 2019 and the US: DIA requirement has been in place for undergraduate since Fall 2019.

Faculty have continued to come together around this important teaching and learning, including through three UO Summer Teaching Institutes and other workshops and conversations. This guide and TEP’s ongoing work and support in this area are inspired by and dedicated to these faculty colleagues.