This fall marks the second year Washington University has offered its pilot course, Identity Literacy: An Introduction to Cultural Competence in a Diverse World. The University is now aiming to make the course mandatory for all incoming freshman as soon as Fall 2018.

In 2014, a report on diversity in the classroom prompted a committee headed by Rebecca Wanzo, associate professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, to construct a one-credit diversity class for incoming students. She, along with committee members such as Dean of Arts and Sciences Jen Smith and LaTanya Buck, the previous director of the Center of Diversity and Inclusion who has since left for Princeton University, created the course to help students develop the skills needed to thrive socially and professionally in diverse communities.

The class of 2019 was the first to pilot the class with 150 students—about 10 percent of the class—enrolled.

Sophomore Andrew Wang was a part of that initial pilot his freshman year and felt that the class provided him an outlet to discuss topics he hadn’t yet.

“Back at home, we never talked about concepts like races, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status. The class was a nice way to have conversation about these topics in a small setting,” Wang said.

While he generally thought the class was worth the time commitment, Wang did have complaints about its structure.

“The schedule of the class was really confusing. Sometimes we met on weekday nights or on weekend mornings. It was really random,” Wang said. “For two of the sessions my art studio conflicted and I had to attend another lecture to make it up even though they said they eliminated schedule conflicts.”

For the class of 2020, the course was still restricted to about 10 percent of the incoming class. Jill Stratton, associate dean of undergraduate residential learning, explained that this was meant to ensure that the changes they made to the class were effective before it was expanded on a larger scale.

“We received advice that anytime we pilot a curriculum, we should go through two cycles to make sure each adjustment made really enhances the quality of the class before we expand it,” Stratton said.

One of the biggest obstacles that the planning committee tackled this summer was the class schedule.

Freshman Jonathan Smith, who is currently enrolled in class, doesn’t hold the same contention with the scheduling as past year students.

“We meet about every other Wednesday evening. It’s pretty regular and since it isn’t much of a time commitment, I think the class is worth it,” stated Smith.

While Smith noted that the class was a good learning opportunity, he also thought that some identities were emphasized more than others.

“At home, I was brought up in a very conservative environment. The class helped me learn specifically more about LGBTQ issues,” Smith stated. “But I kind of wish they spent more time on race. I feel like they are spending more time on some topics than others and that they were saying some were more important than others.”

Stratton noted that the class does have a time constraint and that the instructors tried to teach about each topic equally.

“It’s only a one-credit class. We try to cover every topic including domestic and social issues in the time we have; however, our main goal is to create curriculum that sticks with the course objectives,” Stratton said.

There are plans to expand the course to include a large percentage of the freshman class.

“Next year we plan on expanding the course to about 500 to 600 students,” Stratton said.

However, Stratton noted there are many missing pieces in the infrastructure of the class that must be fixed before the class becomes a mandatory course for the entire freshman class.

“Since this is an academic course, it has to come out of an academic unit. All four schools have to be invested in it and so the deans and faculty of all four schools have to vote on it,” Stratton said. “There is also still no concrete infrastructure for the class. Will there be an office? What is our budget? How do we sustain this? These are all questions we have to answer first before we expand.”