Standard 4

Diversity

The unit designs, implements, and evaluates curriculum and experiences for candidates to acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn. These experiences include working with diverse higher education and school faculty, diverse candidates, and diverse students in P-12 schools

Standard 4.1 Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of Curriculum and Experiences

Standard 4.2 Experiences Working With Diverse Faculty

Standard 4.3 Experiences Working With Diverse Candidates

Standard 4.4 Experiences Working With Diverse Students in P-12 Schools

Alabama State University's mission statement expresses a strong commitment to diversity. In carrying out its mission, the university recognizes the “diversity of its student body” and provides “an educational and intellectual environment in which all students may thrive, learn, and develop their highest potentialities for professional careers and leadership regardless of socio-economic status” and “without regard to age, sex, race, color, cultural background, national origin, or disability.” The university employs a diverse faculty throughout campus units. General university-sponsored programs and lyceum features offer a variety of opportunities for diversity contacts and experiences, as do the programs and activities sponsored by other colleges and units.

The College of Education (COE) is dedicated to uphold and to carry out the university's commitment to diversity. A particular focus of the unit's conceptual framework is the preparation of education professionals who respect and appreciate human differences, who believe in justice and fairness for all people, who support and advance learning for all students, and who are prepared to work with all students in an equitable and caring manner. The unit's guiding dispositions and expected candidate proficiencies as expressed in the conceptual framework underscore and integrate this important focus. For the College of Education, diversity ( all students) includes race, socio-economic status, gender, culture, ethnicity, ability/disability, learning styles, and other exceptionalities.

Goals, objectives, assignments, and activities to develop awareness and knowledge of the diversity of the world community, to inculcate skills for working in diverse settings, and to cultivate dispositions that respect and value human differences are evident throughout the unit's programs at both the initial and advanced levels. Diversity is directly addressed in the courses required of the candidates in the general and professional studies curricula, in the subject field areas, and in placements for field and clinical experiences. It is apparent as well in the composition of the faculty and in the research and professional development activities of faculty.