Attending: Gloria Bouis, Maurine Beasley, Tom Connons, Rhonda Malone, Seung Kyung Kim, Marvin Scott, Elaine Anderson, Bob Steel, Jeff Milem

I. Introductions

II. " Making an Impact " Flyer:

The Bulletin was developed to inform people about the programs of the Faculty Relations Committee including the Diversity Support Award recipients and their work. Please see enclosed.

III. The Faculty Relations Forum:

The 9th Annual Diversity Initiative Faculty Research forum is schedule for April 8th at the Special Events Room, 6th floor, Mckeldin Library from 12:30 to 3:15pm. The presenters are past awardees of the Faculty Support Award from 1998-2001. The program is sponsored by the University of Maryland Libraries this year.

Members present at the meeting volunteered to work on the following areas: Publicity, Welcome Committee, Refreshments, Program, Audio-visuals, Moderating and Introductions.

IV. Next Meeting

Gloria introduced an idea, which she feels the committee should address or begin to explore at the next committee meetings. The following is the idea and it's context.

Recently, Dr. Struna has assembled a committee to look at the Diversity CORE curriculum and proposed changes that would strengthen it along the lines suggested by Dr. Ronald Takaki in his keynote address at the recent Success 2002 Conference held on campus. That address reviewed the processes by which the University of California at Berkeley undertook their Diversity CORE curriculum called (the American Cultures Requirement) transformation process. It examine the process that led to this curriculum requirement with respect to the concept of diversity presented in courses that came to be qualified as Diversity CORE or American culture courses.

In contrast to the requirement at Maryland, Berkeley's requirement ensured that Diversity CORE or American Cultures courses had integrated multicultural content specific to the courses' academic discipline. To ensure that faculty understood what this meant and were skilled to undertake the development of courses in accordance with this requirement, an American Cultures Center was established to provide faculty professional development in multicultural curriculum transformation.

Given that Dr. Destler was in attendance at the Success 2002 Conference and heard Dr. Takaki's address on the Diversity CORE or American Cultures curriculum change undertakings, it seems that there is a window of opportunity with respect to making some serious changes to Maryland's rather weak Diversity Core requirement. Toward this end, Dr. Christine Clark approached Dr. Robert Waters, Dr. Robert Hampton, and Dr. Nancy Struna about what might be steps that could be taken to take advantage of this opportunity. Since the process at Berkeley had substantial student and faculty support, Dr. Hampton suggested vehicles through which support from these constituencies on our campus might be garnered. Dr. Clark suggested that one faculty vehicle might be the Faculty Relations Committee of the Diversity Initiative.

In the meantime, Dr. Clark is doing more in depth investigation of the change process at Berkeley and other universities. She is also having a preliminary meeting with Dr. Nancy Struna to look at strategies for combining what Dr. Struna is already doing with what else could be done. Following this meeting, Dr. Clark, Dr. Struna, Dr. Waters, and Dr. Hampton will be meeting to explore strategy options. Dr. Clark will be available to the Faculty of Relations Committee to discuss this in greater detail at the committee's convenience and based on it's continued interest in the idea.

Next Meeting: February 10th at 2:00pm in the Family Studies Conference Room