Ithaca College Quarterly, 2002/No. 1

Adding Color

Past Imperfect

The Climate Today

CRE and Curricular Initiatives

Student Recruitment

Affirmative Action

Office of Multicultural Affairs

What's Next

CRE and Curricular Initiatives

The Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity (CRE) evolved out the concern of President Peggy Ryan Williams and former provost Jim Malek, among others, that few existing courses were addressing issues of race, culture, or ethnicity in any systematic way --- and that those few were primarily in the sociology, anthropology, and politics departments. "We felt," says President Williams, "that there was a threefold need --- for broad campus education on culture, race, and ethnicity; for assisting faculty in incorporating aspects of diversity into their curricula; and for a home area to serve as a catalyst and resource for development of new programs in ethnic studies." In 1999 CRE was formed to pursue these three purposes.

The College secured a private donation of $400,000 to help establish the center. As a demonstration of the College’s commitment to its success and confidence in its future, the administration endowed a CRE fund of $1 million, naming Asma Barlas the center's interim director (she maintained her full-time duties as associate professor and chair of politics). During her tenure the center sponsored three yearlong series --- discussions on Islam, lectures and performances on "Music from the African Diaspora," and this year’s presentations on "Race and Its Meanings" --- as well as film screenings as part of the Cinema on the Edge series. Four proposed minors --- Native American studies, Latin American studies, African New World studies, and Asian American studies --- have emerged from the center, with Latin American studies being approved for fall 2002. However, although in its three years CRE has laid the foundation for curriculum development, things haven’t developed as quickly as some had hoped.

"In one of my classes we were talking about quotas, and some girl said that minorities are only on this campus to fill a quota. I explained to her that I worked very hard to get here, that they won't let just anyone in. But most of the time, I don't feel I need to prove that I deserve to be here. Being accepted into college, and staying in college, is proof enough."

--- Erika Sanchez '03

Part of the struggle, says Tanya Saunders, is that talking about diversity "makes a lot of people uncomfortable --- it’s like picking at a raw wound. I also think that some faculty members may feel unprepared to address these issues. I’m hoping to create a forum for faculty to comfortably raise concerns they may have about teaching certain issues. I hope that we can persuade the faculty of the importance of preparing our students to comfortably interact with people from a number of different social, economic, and racial backgrounds without causing a national or international incident."

There are already many faculty members, Saunders stresses, who participate in CRE initiatives. "Faculty have demonstrated strong support for CRE activities by working them into their syllabi," she says. "I am surprised by the number of faculty who want to be involved in spite of their many other responsibilities."

Another big part of the struggle, Saunders points out, is "competing for the additional institutional resources necessary to hire faculty who are experts in the curricular areas the center proposes to develop. Unfortunately, we do not have the faculty experts we need in order to move quickly."

Now CRE has a full-time director: Larry Hajime Shinagawa will take over the position this summer (see story, page 7). Longtime chair and associate professor in the Department of American Multicultural and Ethnic Studies at Sonoma State University in California, he has overseen the department’s growth into the largest ethnic studies program in the nation in terms of registered majors. "I am looking forward," Shinagawa says, "to working to enhance the multicultural curriculum development at Ithaca. I also aim to further minority faculty development and help engender public events related to diversity, multiculturalism, and interdisciplinary studies."

It may also bode well for CRE that issues of race and diversity have been a lifelong passion for newly appointed provost Peter Bardaglio (see story, page 3). In fact, his book Reconstructing the Household won the 1996 James Rawley Prize for the best book on the history of race relations in the United States, and he has participated in numerous faculty and curriculum diversification initiatives at Goucher College. One program that worked particularly well at Goucher, he says, was a curriculum-transformation workshop, which brought in experts on race, gender, and sexuality to help find ways to incorporate those subjects into the existing curriculum. Bardaglio feels that similar workshops might also be beneficial at Ithaca College --- adding, however, that there are many different approaches and that he is eager to sit down with the faculty to discuss strategies that will make the most sense for the College.

A. Ozolins, Ithaca College Office of Publications, 5 August, 2002