Peace Bridge, Buffalo, NY

Diversity Learning Requirement

Cultural competence is a foundational skill that every student should be able to demonstrate prior to graduation. As such, Diversity Learning courses serve to equip students with the cultural knowledge and awareness necessary to live, work and recreate with the diverse groups that characterize the United States.

Diversity Learning Across the Curriculum

Diversity Learning courses can be found in many places across the curriculum. The requirement may be satisfied through one of the UB Curriculum courses (such as a UB Seminar or Pathway courses), as a major requirement, or through elective coursework.

Having completed the Diversity Learning Requirement you will be able to:

  • Describe the challenges inherent in a diverse society.
  • Think critically, and with an open mind, about controversial contemporary and historical issues that stem from the gender, race, class, ethnic, and religious differences within American society and its common institutions.
  • Understand how categories of diversity create institutional inequities, intersect with each other, and may function differently in national and transnational contexts.
  • Understand the socially constructed nature of the categories of diversity covered in the course, the institutional inequalities they create, the intersections between them, and the values and practice needed for a more equitable society.
  • Understand how historical legacies such as colonialism and slavery have shaped contemporary global realities; how migration, immigration, and differential access to citizenship effect different populations; and how definitions of diversity differ among nation states.

Approved Diversity Learning Courses

Courses approved for this requirement explore the histories, cultures and experiences of people from diverse backgrounds in the U.S. Courses may examine the ways in which race, class, gender, indigeneity, disability and other categories of difference are socially constructed, flexible, intersecting, and overlapping; how identities and their representations change over time; and how they are shaped by power and privilege. Some approved courses investigate public policies that affect various groups of people in different ways, and developing conceptual tools for analyzing bias, prejudice and discrimination.

For an approved list of Diversity Learning courses visit the Undergraduate Catalog.