Response to the Report of the Committee to Advance our Common Purposes Curriculum Task Force

Vice President Seneca initiated a committee chaired by Susan Forman to examine the curriculum at the various schools and colleges at Rutgers specifically in relation to how the curriculum addressed the matter of multiculturalism at the university. The task force examined the curriculum at Rutgers in this light, and found that the issue of multiculturalism was not a part of many of the schools' curriculums, and where it was for example in the area distribution requirements of the colleges it was structured in such a way that it was a sampling of one other culture rather than an integration or interaction of cultures.

The teaching subcommittee of the Faculty Council supports the recommendations of the Task Force. Specifically, it supports the idea that the Vice President for Undergraduate Education should invite departments, schools and colleges to consider the issue of multicultural education and find ways to make it a part of their curricular requirements, either by directly developing courses within their disciplines or by requiring courses outside the discipline/college/school.

One suggestion of the teaching subcommittee of the Faculty Council is that the office of the Vice President for Undergraduate Education could invite and support with grant money a multicultural group of faculty to design some model courses that colleges, schools and departments could look to and/or utilize. One observation from the Faculty Council is that the teaching of foreign languages could well be a part of any multicultural curriculum effort.