A proposal to include a general education diversity requirement was recently submitted to the Foundations of Society and Culture General Education Review Committee for review by the undergraduate student government.
Rather than requiring additional units beyond the existing General Education requirements, the proposal would modify one of the three course requirement sections currently under the Foundations of Society and Culture.
The Foundations of Society and Culture category currently has two subgroups, Historical Analysis and Social Analysis, and would still require a total of 15 units. Three five-unit courses are required, one from each subgroup and one from either subgroup.
While the final five units are currently taken from either Historical Analysis or Social Analysis, the proposal would instead require the final five units to fall under a new requirement, Contemporary Diversity and Identity Analysis.
The Academic Affairs Committee began formulating the proposal with Homaira Hosseini, the current undergraduate student government president. The requirement would be renamed Foundations of Society, Culture and Diversity, said Jeremiah Garcia, the academic affairs commissioner for the Undergraduate Students Association Council.
“Realistically we’re just trying to get people to start to try to understand other perspectives,” Garcia said.
The process of review will probably take a few months because it has to go through various levels of approval, Garcia said.
But Dean Judi Smith, the provost for undergraduate education who recently referred the proposal to be examined by the GE Governance Committee, predicted that it will take at least a year to resolve various logistical issues.
Beyond that, the diversity requirement couldn’t be implemented until at least another year after its final approval, Garcia said.
The proposal for a diversity requirement at UCLA began about 20 years ago, and despite past friction, most of the students and faculty now recognize the need for a diversity requirement at UCLA, Hosseini said.
In fact, UCLA is the only UC which does not have a diversity requirement, Hosseini said.
Some past proposals were rejected because the proposed diversity requirement was either too vague and broad, or too specific and restrictive.
“The proposal is much more narrow than that which was narrowly defeated by a faculty vote in 2004,” Smith said.
The current proposal attempts to mediate issues of clarity by merging the diversity requirement with the Foundations of Society and Culture in a hybrid effort, which has thus far met with much support, Garcia said.
“Instead of suggesting a new GE, this would be an adaptation of an existing requirement, which has never been done before,” Garcia said. “It’s an easy solution for both sides.”
Students have a narrower definition of diversity than the faculty, and the broadness of the diversity requirement currently held by the School of Arts & Architecture might be preferable to some faculty, Smith said.
“This is an issue that has never fully been worked out and will continue to be discussed in future meetings,” Garcia said.
“It’s an important issue,” Smith said. “It continues to be raised, but it will take time to craft a requirement that satisfies all parties.”