A Sustainable Campus-wide Program
for Diversity
Curriculum Infusion
By Omiunota Nelly Ukpokodu, founder and facilitator
of the Diversity Curriculum Infusion Program and associate
professor in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction
in the School of Education at the University of Missouri–Kansas
City
Inclusive teaching does not come easily to faculty
members who were themselves taught from monocultural
perspectives and with limited knowledge of diversity.
Often the requirement to incorporate diversity generates
fear and resistance. As a result, many faculty and college
instructors continue to be complacent about monocultural
curricula, even as they increasingly interact with students
from diverse racial, ethnic, gender, and linguistic
backgrounds. It is critical that we provide structure
for such faculty members to ease the process of incorporating
diversity. The University of Missouri–Kansas City
(UMKC) has responded to this challenge by instituting
a campus-wide program that empowers its faculty to successfully
engage in curricular and pedagogical transformation
in a non-threatening, synergetic, collegial, and collaborative
environment.
When UMKC conducted a series of campus–community
conversations in 2000 concerned with making the university
more inclusive, diversity emerged as a core value. Several
diversity “breakthrough projects” evolved,
including the curriculum transformation project and
its Diversity Curriculum Infusion Program (DCIP), established
in 2003. The aim of the DCIP was to provide a forum
where faculty from across campus, in various disciplines,
would come together in dialogue to collaborate and learn,
developing the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed
to successfully infuse critical diversity into coursework
for more inclusive teaching.
With the support of the provost’s office and
the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Access, select
faculty members participate in the DCIP, a yearlong
institute with four daylong workshops. Guided by workshop
curricula, participants revise an existing course by
infusing the curriculum with diversity and social justice,
implement the course the following semester, and make
a presentation about the experience at the campus-wide
culminating celebration held in April. The first workshop
serves as orientation; participants focus on community
building, collectively define critical diversity, and
examine their teaching using the rubric of the six areas
of potential diversity curriculum infusion (see sidebar).
The second workshop focuses on self-transformation by
encouraging participants to examine their biases and
their commitment to diversity. The third workshop provides
an opportunity for participants to present preliminary
drafts of their course revisions and receive constructive
feedback from the group. The fourth and final workshop
is a celebratory experience: participants present the
pre- and post-syllabi and discuss the implementation
experience.
The outcomes of the DCIP, now in the planning stages
of its fourth year, have been very encouraging. Faculty
members have not only revised existing courses, but
also created new courses to enhance their programs.
Further, the program has aroused faculty interest in
the scholarship of diversity. Participants have expressed
appreciation for the opportunity to be empowered and
challenged; for the chance to discuss diversity and
curriculum infusion; for their raised consciousness
of diversity and its enrichment in the curriculum; for
their newly energized teaching; for their increased
knowledge of diversity; for the new teaching strategies
they have learned; and for their heightened sensitivity
and responsiveness to diverse groups of students.
| Six
Areas of Diversity Curriculum Infusion: Workshop
Questions |
- Course description and objectives that reflect
diversity—How does my discipline help
prepare students to live and work in today’s
multicultural democracy and interdependent world?
- Content integration that includes multiculturalism—What
issues of diversity, social justice, and civic
engagement are infused in my course curriculum
and how?
- Instructional resources and materials—How
inclusive are my selected materials?
- Faculty and student worldviews and learning
styles—How do student and faculty worldviews,
learning styles, and teaching strategies match,
and how are my students’ learning styles
accommodated?
- Instructional strategies—How diversified
are my strategies for facilitating instruction
and classroom dynamics?
- Assessment diversification—How do assessment
activities accommodate my students’ learning
styles?
|
