AA 2021-02

1.0 Policy Purpose

1.1 The University Ethnic Studies Implementation Committee (UESIC) will implement Phase I of the new General Education Breadth Requirement Area F Ethnic Studies to meet AB 1460 legally mandated fall 2021 deadline for course offerings to incoming first-time first-year students.

2.0 Values & Guiding Principles for Decision-Making

2.1 Equity;

2.2 Student needs, voices, and perspectives shall be incorporated;

2.3 Disciplinary expertise shall be respected*, but coherence and intentionality shall also be maintained;

2.4 Academic freedom shall be respected;

2.5 The Ethnic Studies Committee and ethnic studies designated courses shall reflect students’ identities, strengths, and values;

2.6 All curricula that is approved shall integrate the Ethnic Studies Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs) at all levels and across the curriculum.

3.0 University Ethnic Studies Implementation Committee Charge

3.1 The University Ethnic Studies Implementation Committee is charged with developing and evaluating the criteria for the implementation of the GE Area F Ethnic Studies requirement including, but not limited to:

3.1.1 Working with Ethnic Studies departments (Africana Studies, Asian Pacific Studies and Chicana/o Studies) and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas minor to select lower-division Ethnic Studies prefix courses and approved Indigenous Peoples of the Americas courses to cross-list for Phase I inclusion in the new General Education Area F Ethnic Studies requirement to meet the legally mandated Fall 2021 deadline;

3.1.2 Reviewing and approving upper-division courses to fulfill the General Education Area F Ethnic Studies requirement from Africana Studies, Asian Pacific Studies, Chicana/o Studies, and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas minor in the event that students did not fulfill this requirement with an approved lower-division Ethnic Studies course;

3.1.3 Utilizing the approved list of core competencies/student learning outcomes developed by the CSU Ethnic Studies Council and listed in the CSU General Education Breadth Requirements Area F and any criteria established by the University Ethnic Studies Committee (UESC) to approve the aforementioned qualifying courses.

3.1.4 Determining the mode for cross-listed course prefixes.

4.0 Functions & Responsibilities within the University Curriculum Process

4.1 The UESIC shall be integrated and function as an integral part of the university curriculum review process. The specific ordering of submitting proposed Ethnic Studies courses shall be delineated by the Ethnic Studies Implementation Committee Policy Passed 01/27/2021 by the ASCSUDH Page 4 of 8 University Curriculum Committee in consultation with college curriculum committees, the General Education Committee (if appropriate), and the Dean of Undergraduate Studies.

4.1.1 Courses selected for Phase I inclusion must have been approved through both the General Education Committee and the University Curriculum Committee.

5.0 Chair Designation & Committee Membership

5.1 The UESIC shall be chaired by a faculty member with a terminal degree whose appointment is in one of the following Ethnic Studies departments: Africana Studies, Asian Pacific Studies, or Chicana/o Studies. The chair shall be a voting member of the committee and may also represent their department as one of the members designated below.

5.1 The chair will be elected by the UESIC.

5.2 The UESIC Membership shall be as follows:

5.2.1 Voting Members [selection process – voting at department/program level].

5.2.1.1 Departments will elect one tenure-track or tenured faculty member from each of the following departments: Africana Studies, Asian Pacific Studies, Chicana/o Studies, and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas interdepartmental minor.

5.2.1.2 Departments will elect one non-tenure-track faculty member from each of the following departments: Africana Studies, Asian Pacific Studies, Chicana/o Studies, and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas interdepartmental minor.

5.2.1.3 One student designated by Associated Students Incorporated.

5.2.2 Faculty voting members shall serve for two years.

5.2.3 Ex-Officio Non-Voting Members shall be as follows and serve annually:

5.2.3.1 Director of the Faculty Development Center [or designee],

5.2.3.2 Dean of Undergraduate Studies, and

5.2.3.3 Administrative Analyst Specialist Office of Academic Programs.

*Disciplinary Expertise in Ethnic Studies (adapted from the CSU Task Force Report on the Advancement of Ethnic Studies, 2016: http://www2.calstate.edu/impact-of-the-csu/diversity/advancement-of-ethnic-studies/Documents/ethnicstudiesreport.pdf.

First, ethnic studies, as a single discipline or the four core group disciplines conceptually engage as a combined and interrelated field of study, is defined by its primary focus on race and ethnicity, as distinct from other disciplines that engage this as one among many subjects. Secondly, its scholarship and teaching are grounded and centered in the cultures, concrete-lived conditions, and living histories of peoples of color. Thus, thirdly, it has an explicit commitment to linking scholarship, teaching and learning to social engagement (service and struggle), social change, and social justice. In this process, it advocates and generates cooperative and collaborative initiatives between campus and community, i.e., between the university and the core group communities, and the larger society. Ethnic studies’ methodologies place strong emphases on the critical study and support of the agency of peoples of color, and thus is concerned with how they conceive, construct and develop themselves, create and sustain culture Ethnic Studies Implementation Committee Policy Passed 01/27/2021 by the ASCSUDH Page 5 of 8 and meaning and engage in self-affirmation and opposition in resistance to societal oppressions of varied forms. It, thus, is also concerned with a critical understanding of the impact of the continuing histories and current conditions of oppression and resistance to conquest, colonialism, physical and cultural genocide, enslavement, segregation, lynching, racism, and various racial and racialized forms of social and structural violence, domination, degradation and destructive practices.

Drawing from historically rooted and constantly developing intellectual traditions of each core group and engaging bodies of relevant knowledge across disciplines, ethnic studies is committed to methodological practice that is interdisciplinary, comparative, intersectional, international and transnational. It therefore explores the interrelatedness and intersection of race and ethnicity with class, gender and sexuality and other forms of difference, hierarchy and oppression. And it also engages transnational and global issues, appreciating the four core groups’ identities, cultures, histories and socio-political contexts as diasporic communities that represent the demographic majority on the planet, and as members of American society which has shaped and continues to shape world history, producing scholarship of national and global importance that impacts the various interrelated realities that impinge the development of civil society both domestically and throughout the world. Finally, ethnic studies is defined by its initial and continuing commitment

to create intellectual and institutional space for the unstudied, understudied, marginalized and misrepresented peoples of color, spaces in which their lives and struggles are the subject of rigorous, original and generative scholarship, their voice and systems of knowledge are given due recognition and respect, and they are supported intellectually and practically in their struggles to push their lives forward and cooperate in building a truly just, equitable, democratic and multicultural society.