Social Justice and Peace—Interdisciplinary Concentration

Total credit hours required for concentration: 18

Drawing from a variety of disciplines, the concentration in Social Justice and Peace allows students to identify, explore, and envision means of diminishing the manifold threats to social justice and peace that exist in our world. In this concentration, students develop ethical decision-making skills to evaluate the consequences of their personal behavior as well as the policies and practices of groups and systems of power. With an emphasis on the Judeo-Christian tradition and Catholic Social Teaching and an openness to other faith traditions, students will come to understand the sacredness of human life and human rights and the value of all life on earth. As a consequence, this concentration allows students to recognize and to respond sensitively and critically to all forms of discrimination and oppression and injustice that plague our communities, our societies, and our world, and it will thereby contribute significantly to their local and global citizenship education. This concentration is specifically designed so that students can integrate multiple courses that satisfy Core curriculum requirements as well as the requirements of this concentration. That allows students to integrate several core courses with this unifying theme of Social Justice, and to enjoy some efficiency in their degree planning.

The Social Justice and Peace Concentration requires 18 credit hours, including a minimum of 9 upper-division hours, with courses that include a social justice component, from a minimum of 3 disciplines. There are two required courses: Human Rights (POLS 1391) and Introduction to Social Justice and Peace (JUSP 2310). Both of these courses focus on social justice, but do so from different perspectives. The Human Rights course is a social science course (focusing on social science methodologies) that explores ideas of what social justice is and how these fundamental concepts can lead to other ways to examine social justice. This is a first-year course and has an international/global focus. In contrast, the Introduction to Social Justice and Peace course is a second-year course that has a more local focus with more practical applications to social justice. The readings in both courses will be different. Importantly and significantly, both courses will include a service learning component. Thus we are assured that students who pursue the concentration in Social Justice and Peace have the opportunity to experience service learning in at least two of their courses.

Total Credit Hours: 18