Curricular Working Group

In the Winter of 2021, The Dean of the Faculty formed a working group to explore a curricular requirement for all Bates students so that they substantially engage race, racism, power and privilege. The call, originally made in a speech at the February 1, 2021 faculty meeting, was for a group to work in the winter 2021 semester. The text of his remarks that day are on this page. Below is his update to the campus that provides more information about the group. Additionally, we provide the group’s charge as well as its membership.

The Announcement from the Dean

Dear Colleagues,

I write to share with you an update of the curricular work focused on equity and inclusion. The working group that I called for at the February faculty meeting to consider whether we should have a degree requirement focused on issues of race, racism, power and privilege has been constituted and work is underway. The working group includes five faculty members and five students. I would like to thank faculty members, Andrew Baker, Leslie Hill, Therí Pickens, Michael Rocque, and Adriana Salerno, and student members, Perla Figuereo, Zoe Gallate, Maya Karmaker, Lebanos Mengistu, and Aaliyah Moore for their willingness to serve. 

The working group is considering whether Bates should have a degree requirement, regardless of major, that substantively engages with scholarship and knowledge production centering race, white supremacy, and colonialism, and intersecting experiences of dominant power and privilege in the curriculum. If a requirement is deemed possible, how should it be structured? If such a requirement is deemed not necessary or desirable, what alternative strategies should be considered? We look forward to receiving recommendations from this group later in the semester about what next steps we might consider. 

We also continue our structural work on curricular and pedagogical transformation across academic units. Complementing the Mellon and HHMI grants that support equitable and inclusive curricular transformation, we have added a new initiative in the social sciences. Associate Dean Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir will be working with chairs in this division to develop opportunities for these academic units to engage in efforts to understand and remove barriers faced by students and colleagues. We anticipate a parallel effort in the interdisciplinary studies division soon. Finally, we are cataloguing some of our work in this area at the following web site: https://www.bates.edu/dof/equity-and-inclusion-work/. This resource will be updated frequently as we keep track of our progress.

I look forward to our continued engagement on these topics in the coming months.

All the best,

Malcolm

The Working Group

  • Andrew Baker, Assistant Professor of History
  • Perla Figuereo, Class of 2021
  • Zoe Gallate, Class of 2022
  • Leslie Hill, Professor Emerita of Politics
  • Maya Karmaker, Class of 2024
  • Lebanos Mengistu, Class of 2021
  • Aaliyah Moore, Class of 2024
  • Therí Pickens, Professor of English and Africana
  • Michael Rocque, Associate Professor of Sociology
  • Adriana Salerno, Professor of Mathematics

The Charge

The working group is charged with considering whether Bates should have a degree requirement, regardless of major, that all students be substantively engaged with scholarship and knowledge production centering race, white supremacy and colonialism, and intersecting experiences of dominant power and privilege in the curriculum. If the working group decides in favor of a requirement, how should it be structured? If the group decides that such a requirement is not necessary or desirable, what alternative strategies should be considered?

Timeline & Progress

  • Week of March 15: Revised the committee charge
  • Week of March 26: Examined Bates own data from
    • An audit of course descriptions to determine what percentage of course descriptions for the courses taken by the class of 2020 mentioned topics related to race, racism, power and privilege
    • An audit of the percentage of the class of 2020 took at least one of the courses identified as addressing race, racism, power and privilege
    • Longitudinal data from the senior survey
  • Weeks of April 1 and 9: Examined the requirements from peer and non peer colleges and universities
  • Weeks of April 12 and 19: Learning Outcomes – what do we want Bates students to engage? What do we want them to be able to do?
  • Week of April 26: Guidelines for curricular revisions
  • Week of May 3: Resources to support faculty preparation (options, initiatives and content, pedagogy)
  • Week of May 10: Accountability – structures and process
  • Week of May 16: Roll-Out with rationale and Best Practices for departments
  • Week of May 23: Finalization of Recommendations to be made to the faculty in the fall 

The items on the timeline are complete and the Dean of the Faculty has the curricular working group’s recommendation. A plan for the Bates community to engage with the recommendation is being developed and will be released before the start of the Fall 2021 semester.