In Fall 2021, the University of Texas at Dallas added two new undergraduate minors to its course offerings as part of its Strategic Plan.
Adding the two new minors was also among the recommendations of the UT Dallas Living Our Values Task Force and was supported by the Black student body and the Black Faculty and Staff Alliance.
The School of Arts and Humanities offers a minor in African American and African diaspora studies (AAADS) that entails 18 credit hours and includes courses on African-American history and African-American and African diaspora literatures.
Dr. Anne Gray Fischer, assistant professor of arts and humanities, helped structure the new minor and said the program will be beneficial in multiple ways.
“This minor is a first step to build an AAADS program that will bring UT Dallas in line with the work already established at UTD’s peer institutions,” she said. “In addition, this program sustains a schoolwide agenda to deepen our commitment to the study of AAADS, to support Black students and to build our faculty research in this area.”
The School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication offers a new minor in ethnic studies, with the core class — introduction to ethnic studies — becoming available in the spring 2022 semester.
“This minor is a first step to build an AAADS program that will bring UT Dallas in line with the work already established at UTD’s peer institutions. In addition, this program sustains a schoolwide agenda to deepen our commitment to the study of AAADS, to support Black students and to build our faculty research in this area.”
Dr. Anne Gray Fischer, assistant professor of arts and humanities, who helped structure the new minor in African American and African diaspora studies.
Dr. Olivia Banner, associate professor of arts, technology, and emerging communication, said the ethnic studies minor reflects and advances the University’s ideals of promoting democratic citizens able to appreciate and navigate differences and diversity.
“Ethnic studies strengthens students’ capacity to communicate and work in culturally diverse settings,” she said. “This new minor will ready students — and, more broadly, The University of Texas at Dallas — for the rapid cultural transformations altering our expectations for engaged citizenship and civic practices.”
Fischer and Banner both said the new minors will add to the University’s ability to deliver curriculum of interest to students, deepen its commitment to diversity and heighten the visibility of the University’s faculty research in these areas.