The New CSU Ethnic Studies Requirement, General Education, Category F

The California State University System is now requiring that students take an Ethnic Studies course as part of their General Education requirements to graduate from the CSU. This is required of incoming freshman and transfer students beginning this Fall 2021 semester.  To meet the demand for new courses that meet this requirement at CSULB, we have been busy this past year and over the summer developing two courses being offered this semester. 

The lower division course is AIS 119 – Introduction to Racial and Ethnic Studies and the upper division course is AIS 319 – Racial and Ethnic Studies in the United States. Both courses are comparative ethnic studies courses where students learn about the four racialized groups in the United States as defined in California Law AB-1460, American Indian, African American, Asian American and Chicano(a)/Latinx.  The goal at CSULB is to provide instruction about all four of these racialized groups in the United States in each of the courses we teach to meet the new requirement.

These courses are offered by all the four Ethic Studies disciplines at CSULB which are among the oldest Ethnic Studies departments and programs in the CSU. Founded in response to student demand, the California State University System created the first Ethnic Studies courses, programs, departments and a College of Ethnic Studies in the late 1960s and is now the first major university system to develop an Ethnic Studies graduation requirement. The American Indian Studies Program at CSULB is fifty-three years old, the oldest American Indian Studies Program in the CSU System.