Projects / The University of Alabama at Birmingham,
Integrating Difficult Dialogues into the Core Curriculum: Race, Ethics, and Religious Values
PI: Marilyn Kurata, Interim Associate Provost for Undergraduate Programs.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham is rapidly changing from a largely commuter campus with a significant number of working adults and part-time students into an urban, residential campus with younger, more traditional students attending full-time. Furthermore, the university has the most diverse student body in the state, with 30 percent of students classified as minority. The university has developed a Core Curriculum Enhancement Plan for instruction in three competencies--writing, quantitative literacy, and ethics and civic responsibility--through newly developed freshman learning communities, mid-curricular enhancement courses, and capstone experiences for all majors.
The project will build on this plan to integrate into the undergraduate curriculum two anchor courses that address students’ competency in ethics and civic-responsibility through a focus on race, ethnicity, religious values and place. It will also develop educational modules for use in upper-level courses and support two public forums with local civil rights and other organizations to bring guest speakers of national and international prominence. Faculty development workshops will provide case-based models for facilitating difficult dialogues in the classroom. Outcomes of the project will be evaluated to ensure that the program reaches the appropriate target populations, measuring differences in racial attitudes and in engagement with difference.
See the project's site here.