DIVERSITY AND THE
DIVISION OF INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Introduction
The advent of the 21st Century and the institutional planning process afforded the College an opportunity to weigh its past accomplishments and to chart a course in keeping with the new expectations and new challenges of the future. As a result, the College mission emphasizes the necessity to prepare students for the responsibilities of citizenship and service in a global community. This preparation entails an understanding of the continuum along which domestic multicultural concerns, migration, international relations, and globalization all lie. To prepare our students to better understand this continuum and to facilitate their interaction with the critical points along the continuum, overseas travel must be tied to the on-campus curriculum and the overseas experience must consider issues of social justice, sustainability in keeping with the UNESCO definition, and the economic connections that tie us to the rest of the world. Few societies today can be defined in culturally monolithic terms. No matter where we may turn, we encounter the tensions created by difference, migration, race, and the increasing divide between the haves and the have-nots in the local, national, and international spheres.
The Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies (DIIS) helps the College to fulfill its mission by offering students the opportunity to see themselves as actors both in local and world communities and by offering them preparation for competition in a global economy. All of us now think about how to handle the encounter with difference, whether at home or abroad, how to accommodate rapid change, and how to acquire new knowledge and new skills when we need them. We now fully understand the importance of speaking more than one language and the difficulty of communicating across our differences in search of common ground. According to Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, “China and India will challenge the role of the United States as a super power.” Daniel Pink, the author of A Whole New Mind, says the future will belong to those who create content, not to those who place emphasis on technology alone. Richard Florida, author of The Flight of the Creative Class, asserts that the winners in the global competition will be those population centers that offer a tolerant environment for diverse talent from across the globe with the technology necessary to communicate and distribute new ideas, services, and products. The combination of creative talent, technology, and tolerance of difference, he asserts, is essential to effective competition in a global economy. This is the world in which Ithaca College seeks to make a difference for its students.
Making a difference means forging connections between the curriculum and experiential learning, between the campus and world events, and between the privilege of opportunity and the responsibility of service. Therefore, diversity means on-campus study, study abroad, internships and service at home and abroad. The DIIS is at the center of combining curriculum and experience to foster the journey along the continuum of difference.
Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity (CSCRE)
To ensure that Ithaca students are prepared to meet the increasingly complex demands of a multicultural, multiracial, and multiethnic society and global community. Ithaca College established the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity in 1999. Through course work and an annual lecture series, the Center enables students and members of the campus community to engage their own identities as well as those of people different from themselves and to understand how we define ourselves in relationship to others. Courses offered by the Center focus primarily on the experiences of groups traditionally marginalized, underrepresented, or misrepresented in our society as well as in the curriculum. At the same time, CSCRE courses provide an opportunity to explore and analyze the nature of the interconnections between the United States and the rest of the world.
CSCRE Lecture and Discussion Series
1999 Discussion Series on Islam
2000-01 Reverberations: Music of the African Diaspora
2001-02 Race and its Meanings
2002-03 Religions, Ethnicities, Identities
2005-06 The Caribbean: Race and Migration
2006-07 Global Fury/Global Fear: Engaging Muslims
2007-08 The Prison Machine: Race, Torture, and the State
CSCRE Curriculum
In 2006-07, the Academic Policies Committee approved two new minors developed by the CSCRE; the African Diaspora Minor and the Latino/a Studies Minor are now available to students. The CSCRE also offers the required academic seminars for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholars Program which bridges a consideration of social justice from domestic and international perspectives.
Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF)
By engaging the UNESCO definition of sustainability, the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival makes evident the connections between the local and the international. Diversity provides a frame in which to consider the environment, the distribution of resources, and the impact of globalization at home and abroad. A global economy means migration: the migration of resources, the migration of jobs, and the migration of peoples – along with their culture, their concerns, and their dreams – across national borders around the world. The FLEFF speakers, multi-media presentations, and discussions all bring to the forefront the relationship between the domestic, the multicultural, the international, and the global in addressing the environmental and sustainability challenges we all share.
International Programs and Diversity
To prepare our students to understand the continuum along which ethnic concerns, migration, international affairs, and globalization connect, the College especially encourages study abroad and short-term faculty-led travel programs tied to on-campus courses. Each year, more and more Ithaca College faculty offer travel opportunities. As a result, our students consider additional overseas destinations, our faculty devise new courses incorporating international issues, and most importantly, our students and faculty together experience the challenges of making connections across cultures in the classroom and in the overseas environment. Just last summer, faculty from across the College took students to Antigua, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, England, Scotland, Ghana, Italy, Korea, and Turkey where the encounter with difference could not be avoided. The next institutional step is to develop internship opportunities that will give our students a taste of the overseas workplace and an introduction to global competition. The mix of faculty-led programs tied to on-campus courses, a semester overseas in a study abroad program (whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or Latin America), and a summer internship in an overseas workplace together provide the best comprehensive opportunity for our students to understand, experience, and compete in a world that is diverse, different, and dynamic.
Other DIIS Initiatives
A proposal for a new minor in Muslim Cultures has been submitted to APC for review and approval. We plan to develop a major and minor in Global Studies.
The First-Year Reading Initiative has also provided opportunities to connect the domestic and the international by raising questions of concern to all and by emphasizing the diversity of perspectives necessary to approximating a full understanding of any text.
2003 The Color of Water by James McBride
2004 Living Downstream by Sandra Steingraber
2005 The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
2006 The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
2007 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
