Issued by: Laura Hunt
414-229-6447
llhunt@uwm.edu
Date: Feb 26, 2003
|
Issued by: Laura Hunt Date: Feb 26, 2003 |
 |
| Cultures & Communities assistant director Sandra Jones, UWM Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher, and Cultures & Communities director Gregory Jay. |
MILWAUKEE - Undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) can choose a new way to finish their General Education Requirement (GER) courses, a choice that puts more cultural diversity into their class work and helps them prepare for a more global workplace.
The Cultures and Communities certificate (CC) program, one of only a few such options in the nation for completing required college "core" courses, gives students a way to organize their introductory courses with a multicultural focus. It also allows them to earn credit while learning from service to community organizations rather than from note-taking in a lecture hall.
"We are providing the CC certificate to students to make their GER experience more meaningful," says English Professor Greg Jay, director of the CC program. "Those first two years tend to lack cohesion. The new certificate program gives them a chance to connect all these very different courses."
GER courses form a foundation of liberal arts studies that are taken primarily by freshmen and sophomores before they start their majors. By taking at least 15 credits in classes affiliated with the CC certificate, students can meet their requirements and also earn the certificate, which is presented at graduation.
"I think students are interested in classes that look at a number of cultural ethnic groups rather than just one," he says.
The ‘alternative GER' already seems to be an idea whose time has come. Students have expressed a great deal of interest, says Jay. This semester, 80 seats in the CC introductory course "Multicultural America" filled up "instantly," he says.
The program has been piloted for several semesters now, and some students already have taken advantage of the coursework.
The first student working toward a CC certificate is on track to graduate in May.
Jay predicts that the certificate will become even more popular because it helps graduates stand out in an economy that increasingly demands multicultural awareness. Careers in education, business, law, government, and health care are a few examples of disciplines where intercultural communication skills would be especially valuable, he says.
All UWM undergraduates must complete 21 credits of GER courses, but they can choose most of their GER, called distribution courses, as long as they are spread across the areas of the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and cultural diversity.
The CC-affiliated courses also must be distributed across the five study areas, but replace traditional courses with those that focus specifically on cultural diversity and learning through community service experiences.
The program also is marked by the use of other innovative approaches to learning.
For example, the CC course "Multicultural America" is a team-taught, interdisciplinary class that changes each semester. Currently it is taught by Will Jones, assistant professor of history, with CC assistant director Sandra Jones (no relation) teaching English. Last fall, the English portion was taught by Kim Blaeser, associate professor in the creative writing program whose own work centers on the Native American experience.
"We can imagine any number of interdepartmental combinations," says Jay. In fact, "Multicultural America" will be offered in three different incarnations in the fall:
one that mixes history and anthropology, another that features an English perspective, and a third that presents the topic as a sociology course.
The Cultures and Communities program, one of The Milwaukee Idea initiatives, continues to fund new courses and modify existing ones to offer as alternative GER classes, and also encourages faculty to create new courses around the diversity theme.
Undergraduates in the CC program can now pick and choose from a long list of GER courses designed for the CC certificate. For a complete list of CC courses go to www.uwm.edu/MilwaukeeIdea/CC/CoursesCurrent.htm. A list of standard GER distribution courses is online at www.uwm.edu/Dept/DES/Schedule/GER/ger.html. ###