At the request of the Board of Regents, the University of Iowa put together a task force that assessed the Diversity and Inclusion General Education (GE) area by examining its breadth of course offerings, learning outcomes, efficacy in meeting those outcomes, transferable skills and career-relevant knowledge delivered, and student feedback. 

The task force found that: 

• UI students have a wide range of courses available to them in this category (66 at the time of their review), allowing students to find options that match their interests, areas of study, and professional goals.
• The courses in this area are meeting the learning outcomes for the GE area and the GE program overall.
• Students find the courses valuable. 

Additionally, the task force recommended renaming the requirement Understanding Cultural Perspectives to better represent the full range of courses available to students within the GE area.

This update will not affect the names, content, or inclusion of any courses currently offered within the requirement and will have no impact on the time to degree for any current student.

• Only the GE requirement name is changing. 
• The student learning outcomes for the requirement are not changing. 
• The courses included within the requirement area are not changing.
• Students who have already fulfilled Diversity and Inclusion have already fulfilled Understanding Cultural Perspectives.
• Students in CLAS are required to fulfill Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Iowa (not with transfer credit), and therefore Understanding Cultural Perspectives must be taken at the University of Iowa (not fulfilled with transfer credit). 
• Degree audits will be updated by the Registrar’s Office. Students will not need to take any actions to update their audits.

To address possible confusion that could arise from having three GE areas with the word “culture” in them (Understanding Cultural Perspectives, Values and Culture, and World Language and Cultural Exploration), CLAS decided to change the name of the Values and Culture area to Values and Society. 

These two GE areas have a history of changing names in tandem with one another to communicate what is distinct about them. Values and Society returns the area to something closer to its older name, while still signaling how it is distinct from the other area in question, which is more focused on diverse perspectives.

Courses in the Values and Society area:

• Focus on how cultural values shape the members of a particular society, influencing how they think and behave
• Include reflection on how cultural values impact how we think about what it means to be a person and to be part of a community
• Define “culture” as ideas, values, customs, arts, and symbols important to a group of people (or a society)

Courses in the Understanding Cultural Perspectives area:

• Focus on differences within cultures and between cultures
• Place emphasis on how we respond and adapt to differences among people, and ideally how we learn to live with our differences
• Focus on how sometimes differences among people are connected to inequalities, and on how inequalities can be addressed
• Encourage students to develop the ability to engage with people of different backgrounds and people who have different perspectives

Courses in the World Language and Cultural Exploration area: 

• Focus on language, as well as written and spoken word, as a way of expressing culture
• Explore how language can be an expression of a group’s cultural identity, or how speaking a language can become the basis of a group’s identity
• Are oriented toward building students’ knowledge of at least one non-English language
• Encourage development of intercultural competence with groups who speak a non-English language