Diversity and Social Justice Requirement
Navigation
About the Diversity and Social Justice (DSJ) Requirement
In fall 2021, LWTech implemented a new academic requirement for all new students. This requirement focuses on diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice, with a special emphasis on antiracism, and it applies to all programs of the college.
The requirement reinforces the college's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion while aligning our standards with many other colleges in Washington State.
The LWTech Diversity and Social Justice (DSJ) requirement dives deeper into diversity and social justice in either an entire course dedicated to or contextualized around diversity and social justice. The DSJ content may be contextualized to Prof-Tech or General Education courses.
Every degree or certificate of proficiency-seeking student is expected to take, at least, one DSJ-designated course. This requirement doesn’t add costs to degree requirements and no additional time to meet required degree pathways.
Students taking DSJ classes, would be invited to choose from a variety of DSJ-designated classes. The entire course will be dedicated to or contextualized around diversity and social justice. Some of the DSJ designated classes are technical, program-specific classes, while others are General Education courses.
The goal of social justice education is full and equitable participation of all individuals and social groups. The process for social justice education should also be equitable, participatory, respectful, and inclusive.
As social justice educators, our goal is to affirm, model, and sustain socially just learning environments for all participants. So that what the participants are learning and how they are learning it are aligned.
The DSJ Learning Outcomes
To be approved and designated as a Diversity and Social Justice course, student learning outcomes and course content must satisfy 4 outcomes from the following three categories. DSJ Instructors choose the learning outcomes that align with their course contents:
- 2 outcomes from the Power, Privilege, Inequity category.
- One outcome from each of the other two categories (Difference and Communication).
Communication Outcomes
- Communicate one’s own intersecting identities of difference and how they position oneself in relation to power, privilege, and inequity.
- Engage in intentional communication with awareness of intent and impact.
- Apply the principles of effective and ethical intercultural communication and demonstrate how individuals and institutions could more effectively communicate across differences in human communities and cultures for the promotion of equity and social justice.
Difference Outcomes
- Discuss and analyze how categories of difference are or have been created, maintained, and experienced through power, privilege, and inequity.
- Describe and demonstrate how cultural differences and commonalities among people have been/are reflected in different time periods, institutions, and social systems.
Power, Privilege, and Inequity Outcomes
- Define and apply key terms and concepts of diversity and social justice.
- Identify how power, privilege, and inequity are or have been reinforced and challenged at individual, institutional, and systemic levels.
- Identify specific ways in which individuals and social and artistic movements attempted to disrupt systems of power, privilege, and inequity.
- Analyze and apply ethical practice in relation to diverse communities and cultures for the promotion of equity and social justice.
- Explain different types of knowledge and how knowledge construction maintains power, privilege, and inequity.
The LWTech Library has a DSJ collection that consists of books and movies that educate regarding oppression to support the campus-wide DSJ requirement. Categories of oppression include sexism, homophobia, social oppression, classism, religious oppression, ableism, ageism, environmental justice, racism, intersectionality, critical pedagogy, level of education, immigration status, and ethnicity. This collection is located on the main floor of the library, between the computer lab and the west windows.
All DSJ instructors are part of the LWTech DSJ faculty learning community. This is a community of educators, who learn together and develop their self-awareness to issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity.
Before teaching a DSJ-designated course, faculty are required to complete a quarter long in-house LWTech training that focuses on DSJ concepts and pedagogy. The Faculty Training sets the foundations of our learning community and provides knowledge, resources, and tools. Each new DSJ instructor is also assigned with a mentor.
In addition, all DSJ faculty participate in an ongoing collaborative DSJ Professional Learning Community that provides mentoring, support, and resources for DSJ courses.
The LWTech’s Diversity and Social Justice (DSJ) Requirement is in compliance with the Washington State legislation SB 5227 which requires diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism training and assessments at institutions of higher education. With this law, the legislature wanted to ensure that public institutions of higher education provide faculty and staff, as well as students, with training to give them tools to address matters related to antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Registering to DSJ Courses
To find a DSJ course, students can use the online class schedule and follow these instructions:
- Search for the course you want.
- Look for the D designation in the class Section.
Approved DSJ Courses 2024-2025
Approved DSJ courses can be found within the class schedule by using the Diversity and Social Justice course attribute value filter.
Key Contacts
