Graduate Certificate in Diversity

The Diversity Certificate Program seeks to teach workplace success by providing the multi-cultural knowledge and skills necessary to navigate among a diverse workforce. At the heart of this post-baccalaureate program is the demand that students learn and think critically about race, race relations, ethnicity, social class and inequality, religion, and gender. This requirement will produce employees who have the necessary sensitivity and understanding to accept important leadership challenges and to advance themselves and their workplace.
Its methods are straightforward. Each student seeking a certificate must take at least one of two courses from each of four distinct fields: History, Sociology, Gender Studies and African American Studies. Students are free to take more than the minimum number of courses, however, the program an intense immersion in one course from each area will enhance understanding sufficient for business persons to achieve objectives most sensibly and expeditiously.

The choice of these four fields is deliberate and precise. History will enable students to learn the various forces, activities and trends leading to the present day world, history grants perspective. Sociology will explore and explain the interactions among and between diverse peoples in the present day, it explores social dynamics. Both African American and Gender Studies offer a more multivariate approach. Borrowing from a number of disciplines and specialties, they offer an interdisciplinary, multicultural perspective, revealing numerous, tangible intersections among institutional sexism and racism, power relationships, economic allocation and self and group actualization.

Applicants must be graduates of accredited undergraduate institutions and be admitted by The Graduate School either as a degree-program or unclassified graduate student. Students wishing to apply for the certificate program must submit a writing sample explaining how they plan to use the Diversity Certificate in their careers. This document is required from degree-program and unclassified graduate students and must be submitted directly to Dr. Alan Marcus. International students must obtain a TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) score of 625 PBT (106 iBT) or an IELTS (International English Language Testing Systems) score of 8.0 or better.