Sai Samant

Curriculum Transformation Project: Final Report

Geography Department

This is a summary/evaluation/explanation of the tasks I completed this past quarter for the Geography department's participation in the Curriculum Transformation Project.

I have divided the report by the tasks, and included with each an explanation/evaluation, when I thought it was necessary.

1. Web research of other universities.

I was assigned to look at the websites of six universities, both at the university level and at the departmental level.Specifically, I was looking for ways in which the university or the department addressed diversity issues.I looked at the following schools: Ohio State University, University of British Columbia, University of Colorado - Boulder, University of Kentucky, University of Toronto, and University of Wisconsin - Madison.These schools were picked either for having nationally ranked geography programs, or because there some connection between the school and the University of Washington.

Ohio State, Boulder, Kentucky, and Madison all address diversity at the university level on their websites.They have various offices, initiatives and strategic plans on how to approach diversity issues.Diversity goals for these universities were often presented as attempts to diversify the color composition of the student, faculty, and staff bodies.Curriculum issues were not addressed, and none of these schools have a "diversity requirement" of any sort at the university level.

At the departmental level, none of the schools even mentioned diversity, neither as a major requirement, or as a general learning objective of the department.This does not mean, though, that the departments don't address issues of diversity (either explicitly in their curriculum or generally).What it does mean is that their websites do not mention it.If a department wants a student or prospective student to know that it addresses diversity, then it is important that it is mentioned or integrated into the website.An increase in web based information gathering means that competing universities can use their websites to their advantage.This of course, assumes that a department wants to address diversity in such a way that students know about it. 

2. Personal Statements

We were asked to write two statements, in hopes of a better understanding of what the goals and objectives ofa diversity-centered course or curriculum should be.

First Statement: Personal views on diversity

Having been dealt a life circumstance where I can't ignore my color, culture, or background, I have never been able to ignore diversity, or anything related to it.And having been forced to deal with it directly, I don't feel totally unjustified in being frustrated with the perceptions about diversity. 

I have led a double life thus far – half of me as a "normal American kid," and the other half as the daughter of immigrant parents.Take one look at me: I give myself away, all my cards are on the table.I am not white.But here is the thing: I am not Indian either.I am one of those weird (okay, not so weird), (no longer hyphenated) Americans, and the duality of my being is expressed in my categorization.So what does it mean to be "some other continent"-American?Mostly, when I engage in talks about my heritage, I end up explaining a lot more about what I am not than what I am.Probably because what I am is not that interesting.I am not in an arranged marriage, nor do I have any intention to be.My parents aren't hopelessly overbearing, and my career path doesn’t lead me to engineering or medicine.Until last year, I didn't even know my caste (shocking to most Indian Americans, puzzling to me that they do, or even weirder, that it carries import for them).Talking to me about myself reveals that I don't fit the stereotypes about my "kind."

So if the lesson of that paragraph is don't judge me because I am brown, the converse of that is that while you are not judging me for my color, don't discount the importance I attach to being brown.If people understand diversity, they understand that I am different, and they accept it, or at least take measures to understand it.Ignoring diversity doesn’t make it go away.It is by talking to others who are different from myself that I arrive at a better understanding about who I am, and what my background means in representing myself to others.

Second Statement: Diversity in a classroom and non-classroom setting

-- Course content that addresses diversity

The content that has been useful in showing me forms of diversity have been representations of the other (or of otherness).

The Honors Program requires its students to take 3 courses in World Civilization.Currently, I am taking a class on the history of relations between US and Latin America.While a lot of the class is events, people, and dates, part of the readings and discussion deal with the effects of US values on everyday people in other countries – realizing that capitalism in the US has historically led to mistreatment of people elsewhere.This is not a particularly new fact: most people are aware that Americans tend to dominate and exploit, but it is a good example of content explicitly addressing the repercussions of one’s actions on other people.

Another World Civilization class I took was about Tibet (survey of history and culture, along with present day status).This class conveyed some cultural differences, such as the presence of polyandry in the society.More interesting than the fact itself was student reaction the fact: many students seemed a little alarmed by it, and so tried to turn it into a joke.Though we all talk about celebrating differences, it is important to understand that some people’s prejudices (and I assume that everyone has some form or another of prejudice)can be debilitating to attempts at promoting cultural tolerance. 

Both those classes deal diversity outside the United States.The course that best addressed diversity within the United States was English 370, Intro to the Study of the English language.(I have a feeling the issues raised had a lot more to do with the professor’s approach to the content than with the content itself.)The class used dialect variation in the US to look at some of the prejudices people had/have about people based on the languages they speak.This class was particularly effective because we first learned about systematic dialectal variation, which meant we learned that dialects are not incorrect/bad/wrong/sloppy English, and we then learned about/examined our own views toward nonstandard dialects.This of course simplifies the debate about nonstandard vs. standard dialects, but the main point is that the professor forced us to look at the otherness inherent in English, or the ways in which the English language is exploited so that groups can use it to represent themselves as “others.”

-- Course pedagogy/structure that addresses diversity

The most commonly cited structure/pedagogy for the best way to promote understanding of diversity is group activity.And this has been useful to an extent, but what made more of a difference for me was the instructor’s level of interest in promoting diversity (and I suppose we are still uncertain what it means)For example, in English 370, the instructor led a discussion of current views toward AAVE (African American Vernacular English, also known as Black English) and how they did not jive with current linguistic (and therefore scientific) views on dialects.The discussion revealed a lot of our own prejudices and misconceptions, but the sensitivity of the topic required mediation and moderation by the professor.BY contrast, in my English 131 class, we had online discussions of the poetry we were reading – supposedly student-led – and these always degenerated, especially when the discussions turned to ideas of otherness.when people are uncomfortable with an idea, they seem to deal with it by turning it into a joke, or downplaying its importance.Neither of these methods are effective for students who have any desire to be aware of multicultural issues, but professors need to help equip students with tools – throwing students into groups has, in my experience, not lent itself to sudden insight into diversity.

--Diversity experience beyond courses, within the University?

The most obvious, and most instructive experience I encountered as a student was my study abroad adventure to France.Living, breathing, seeing, feeling a different country through my own lens, not only exposed me to the stereotypes I had made about French culture and people, but also to the assumptions and ideals that I had as a result of my American upbringing.When forced to confront them because they conflicted with the way French society ran itself, I had to think long and hard about why I preferred the American way, and make sure that my sole reason wasn’t that it was just what I was used to.

Everyone should study abroad.It equips students to deal with all sorts of problems that they aren’t exposed to in a normal university experience.And it makes cultural differences seem a lot easier to deal with.

For example, there has been a recent movement on campus involving Lynette and Joe and a bunch of yellow t-shirts.Informal investigation reveals that this is an effort on behalf of Christian groups on campus to “get the word out” on Christ and his teachings (I think that’s the goal anyway).While I have never been a big fan of proselytizing (out of a belief that it takes away a very personal aspect of faith, but not in such a way that community is emphasized) I am positive that my experiences abroad have assisted in my new found live-and-let-live policy.So while I am not ready to convert, I am certainly not as likely to shut the group out as I would have done two or three years ago. 

--What does it mean to teach diversity?

-- Respect

-- Awareness

-- Curiosity

I think the goal of diversity education is to come to some sort of process by which students aren’t afraid of or uncomfortable with differences, and they begin to look at what sort of judgements, evaluations, and assumptions they attach to various types of difference.Teaching about diversity should also say something about the benefits of diversity – that an ability to work and interact with diverse groups leads to better/bigger/more innovative ideas.And I guess, practically speaking, it has to be made clear that even if you don’t like diversity (and I am not entirely sure what it means not to like diversity), you are still going to have to learn to live and function with it.

3. Alumni Panels

We listened to former UW geography students talk about representing themselves in the work place.These panels were part of a course which was designed to prepare students for their future careers.There were two panels, one of private sector employees and one of public sector employees.After discussing techniques and interests, and what it is like to be a geographer, they were then posed the question: "What could or should happen at the University of Washington to better prepare students for a diverse worksetting?" 

Perhaps the question was posed too open-endedly, making it easier for the panelists to skirt the question.The public sector emphasized group work, that it working with different people helped prepare them for the workplace.The private sector people had similar responses, focusing mostly on group work, but mostly they skirted the question.None of the panelists from either of the sessions made any mention of specific course content or of a specific course that had been useful to them in promoting/addressing diversity.

4. Faculty Interviews.

We interviewed faculty and staff members who were selected for their previously demonstrated interest in diversity.We interviewed 6 members of the 22 members of the faculty and advising staff.

We asked them about the feasibility/effectiveness of a diversity requirement within the major, and how their courses would fulfil that requirement.There was a generally positive response to the possibility of a requirement, though one faculty member did not think it should be labeled as a "diversity" requirement, the argument being that this would turn students away from.One interviewee noted that there were 30 - 35 courses within the department that address diversity, and that perhaps requiring that students take one or two of these would be an easy way to implement a diversity requirement for the major.It was also noted that the majority of students (except perhaps the GIS students), most likely take one of these courses anyway, so there wouldn't be a great added burden.

There was little discussion about improvements/changes to make to the curriculum.I am not sure why -- it might have been because we did not ask directly enough, or perhaps because it was deemed out of our jurisdiction as undergraduate short-term researchers.One faculty member, however, noted that they would like to see an increase in the diversification of the students, and faculty, by which she meant an increase in underrepresented minority groups (Native Americans and African Americans were the two groups that were specifically mentioned).While this concern is outside the scope of the CTP, it is important to note that both ways of dealing with diversity are equally essential to preparing students for the increasing diverse world that exists off campus.

5.Conclusions

From my experiences, it seems there are students (for example, maybe those of us involved with CTP) who seek out experiences, including classes, that expose them to “diversity,” either as a topic of study, or as an environmental state. There are other students, however, who see diversity as something they have to put up with, or something that shouldn’t even be considered an issue. It is this latter group of students that is far and away the hardest to reach, and if the department should decide to add some sort of diversity/enrichment requirement to their existing requirements, they must decide how to approach the requirement in such a way that students who don’t see diversity as a relevant or important topic will not resist the requirement, or try to get around it. In a worst-case scenario then, the purpose of a diversity requirement is lost: the students who are interested are already taking diversity-type courses and the requirement is then redundant, and the students who don’t care about it are probably not going to take much away from the courses. This is exaggeratedly pessimistic, but I think the selling point (i.e., that there will be students who are not immediately responsive to a diversity requirement and thus will need to be sold the virtues of such a requirement) is an important one that the department should not ignore. Also, I don’t want it thought that I agree with the idea that diversity (in all its diverse forms) is unimportant, or that these hypothetical students are right to think that issues of diversity are irrelevant. But as long as there is a possibility of “resistance,” then it must be addressed (though I am hesitant to say respected).

The two-sided coin of diversity in the curriculum and diversity in the student/faculty/staff body doesn’t seem to go away.It is easier to teach about diversity when the people being taught are themselves a diverse group.But there are many classes here which have a non-diverse composition (though that would also depend on what constitutes a diverse classroom – I noted in one interview that I found a class to be ethnically/racially diverse when I didn’t feel like I stood out among my peers). I think a question that educators should be able to answer or at least think about is how do professors address diversity issues in a non-diverse setting?For the University of Washington (more so, I would guess, than Berkeley or UCLA, for example), the ability to do this seems to be a necessary skill.

My final suggestion would be to talk to students to get an idea about what classes have addressed diversity issues.This seems to be a necessary component if the department is looking to change its curriculum to better serve the students.Student focus groups, e-mail surveys, and interviews can serve to determine what courses students have found useful.An interviewee brought up an interesting hypothesis: that for those classes which students think are classes everyone should take (those classes which students have found pivotal, life-altering, etc.), it is likely that those classes addressed diversity in some way.It would be interesting to find out if the hypothesis is at all correct.I noticed that in the faculty interviews there was not much discussion of what changes needed to be made to the curriculum. The instructor might be less able to note their own shortcomings, and students should be well-equipped to note which courses address diversity issues, and the degree to which it is handled effectively by the instructor. 

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