By Sana Cole
The Scene staff
Corporations spend millions of dollars on multicultural training for employees. Candidates who have already received that training are more attractive to potential employers.
At least that’s the theory of Forest Park associate history professor Deborah Henry.
This fall, the Forest Park and Meramec campuses of St. Louis Community College will offer a new humanities course called “Global Dimensions of Race, Gender and Religion.”
“We’ll be taking a global look at issues and concerns,” said Henry, one of two faculty members who will teach the course. “For example, we’ll be examining, ‘What does it mean to be a black American in the 21st century?’”
The course is part of a pilot project of the National Endowment for the Humanities. It gave a total of $360,000 to the Community College Humanities Association to create a two-year, nationwide, multi-disciplinary mentoring program called “Advancing the Humanities at Community Colleges: An NEH Bridging Cultures Projects.”
St. Louis Community College was one of 18 colleges selected to participate. It has leeway in developing and implementing humanities courses, modules or programs in one of five disciplines:
literature, history, philosophy, religion or civic engagement.
“We decided to focus on race, religion and gender,” said Yvonne Johnson, dean of humanities and social sciences at Meramec. “We talked about what different people have brought to our country through race, religion and gender. We want to talk about bridging cultures.”
Henry, Johnson and Meramec history instructor Steve Collins make up the project’s planning team at St. Louis Community College. Johnson also will teach the new course.
It will consist of two units: The global dimensions of diversity in black America and the global dimensions of religious diversity in the United States. Topics will range from how American-born blacks interact with black immigrants to race and religion in America.
Henry believes such areas of study are important for students about to enter a diverse workforce, and that the course will fit perfectly on the Forest Park campus because of its diversity.
“(The training) will be good if it’s one less thing to do to get a job,” said Rose Jacob, 33, a student in the college’s MoHealth Wins program. “It’s definitely worth it.”
Tyral Thompson, 45, another MoHealth Wins student, believes the course sounds interesting but questions its practicality.
“I don’t know if enough people will pay to get that type of information,” he said. “If they offered (the course) free to people who are immigrants coming into the community or people who will be opening a business dealing with diverse cultures, then I could see them being interested in it.”
Student feedback will help the planning team fine-tune the course before they share their results with the National Endowment for the Humanities. Eventually, it could be offered at colleges and universities across the country.
Johnson believes the course would be valuable to students in all fields of study.
“All educated people need to understand race, religion and gender,” she said. “It benefits people no matter what career you’re going into.”
The course will be offered from 9:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays in the fall.
“Global Dimensions of Race, Gender and Religion.” can be found on the college’s Banner Self-Service web system under HUM: 208 401 (CRN 36182).