Diversity Defined: What Does Diversity Mean for the Purposes of the Requirement?

The diversity course requirement focuses undergraduate study on three aspects of human diversity.  Stated briefly, they are:

• Global Awareness: Courses related to this aspect of diversity seek to increase students’ awareness and understanding of cultures and nations that are often excluded in a traditional liberal arts education.  The current core curriculum requires students to acquire knowledge about the worldviews, social practices, social structures, history, spiritual practices, and arts of Western cultures past and present including cultures and nations outside of the United States. Global awareness courses would foster in students the globally comprehensive perspective that is described as a characteristic of excellence in the Loyola Core Values Statement.  These courses will focus on cultures that fall outside of the boundaries of a liberal arts education in the Western intellectual tradition, including, but not limited to, those in Asia, Pacific Islands, Africa, Central/Latin America, and Australia/New Zealand.  Global awareness courses can also focus on the interaction between these cultures and Western cultures. 
  
  
• Justice Awareness:  Courses related to this aspect of human diversity seek to increase students’ awareness and understanding of justice and injustice. Justice awareness courses would serve the cause of justice by fostering in students the ability to think in a sophisticated manner about the distinctive life and thought of those subject to injustice, and/or by addressing issues of injustice through the examination of oppression, discrimination, prejudice, stigmatization, and privilege.  These courses can explore themes of justice and injustice from any number of perspectives, including, but not limited to, historical, philosophical, theological, literary, psychological, sociological, political, economic, and legal.  Such courses can focus on diverse areas of inquiry, including investigation of the meaning of justice and injustice, the effects of justice and injustice, processes through which justice and injustice are maintained, and factors related to past and present social change efforts.
  
  
• Domestic Diversity Awareness: Courses related to this aspect of human diversity seek to increase students’ cultural awareness and/or competency in relation to the experiences of minority groups in the United States.  Courses fulfilling this requirement will consider the political, cultural, economic, and social significance of class, gender, sexuality, religion, disability, age, or race, or ethnicity, and will explore the process by which distinctive American cultures have been created and either are or are not sustained.