INS-301S Integrative Studies: Social Justice in a Multicultural World † *

A writing-intensive capstone course for the General Education curriculum that provides students with guidance in their application of interdisciplinary knowledge to problem solving. Students are challenged to practice critical and creative thinking skills, and they are expected to demonstrate competence in oral, written, and other creative modes of expression. This course is open to all majors. Students will be presented with diverse and evolving understandings of culture (as are represented in various disciplines/ways of knowing, ranging from those that are traditional and anthropologically sourced, to those that are emerging and based within post-modern theory) and, using these, will examine knowledge of themselves as individual culture beings. Students will explore how multiply - held societal and personal culture lenses influence the valuing and hierarchal determinations of culturally related elements. Students will be expected to demonstrate an understanding of ethical decision-making processes as they explore various modern social justice issues and the possible resulting effects of cultural determinations. Students will apply new understandings of culture and social justice to an exploration of present, ethical, social justice issues and determinations within their chosen disciplinary field.