The Integrations Curriculum confuses students, frustrates faculty and benefits few

This week, in a contested vote, the Joint Faculty Senate approved a change to the language requirements for nursing majors. Previously, like all majors, nursing majors were required to take the equivalent of three semesters of a language of their choice. Under the new plan, they’re only required to take one. Healthcare providers are required to work with every sect of a given population, regardless of age, socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity or primary language. Especially in a world, country and state that are becoming continuously more multicultural, language skills, cultural appreciation and mutual respect are as important as ever. In Minnesota, immigrant populations have nearly doubled since 2000 as the immigrant share of the total U.S population has surpassed 40 million people or one-fifth of the world’s migrants.

The U.S. already has some of the worst healthcare disparities among different races in the advanced industrialized world. Black individuals are 1.5 more likely to be uninsured than white people, and only 5.7% of American doctors and 11% of nurses are Black, with the disparities continuing among other BIPOC identities. CSB+SJU does a great job of preparing students to become nurses. They exceed national average pass rates on the NCLEX, the nursing national licensing exam, and have an excellent network of connections for job and internship placements. It is clear that nursing students are getting a quality scientific and clinical education. So, this decision from the JFS begs the question, why eliminate a series of classes that will undoubtably create more well-rounded and culturally competent nurses entering the workforce?

By eliminating language classes at primarily white institutions like CSB+SJU, an opportunity to inform a base of knowledgeable graduates is lost. In losing language requirements,students lose the chance to learn basic language skills, reduce or eliminate existing prejudices and gain valuable knowledge about being able to interact with those from other backgrounds effectively and professionally. This decision also shows a profound lack of dedication to providing multicultural education by the Joint Faculty Senate. In a majority white institution and profession, this decision disincentivizes students from diverse backgrounds from considering the major even further.

This presents particular challenges at an institution that values a liberal arts pedagogy. Perhaps this is even more worrisome when you consider that BIPOC patients have significantly better healthcare outcomes when providers share a common background with them, yet this policy is actively disincentivizing diversity in the profession. This column does not aim to fault the nursing department—in many ways, this decision makes CSB+SJU’s nursing major more competitive with other nursing programs around the state, who have minimal to no language requirements.

Rather, the fault lies with the development and implementation of the Integrations Curriculum (IC). The IC is too burdensome for larger academic programs and disincentivizes students to attend CSB and SJU, and, after all, the mandatory curriculum is not what students look forward to or what admissions touts on tours. The number of already-waived requirements has watered down the IC so significantly that its goals and intended effect have come short. For current juniors, the IC’s vision is now a skeleton of what it once was. When the curriculum was originally implemented, it was seen as something different than the set of checked boxes championed by most mandatory curriculums.

However, that was the wrong way to approach the curriculum now and it remains the wrong defense for keeping the IC around. Students will always think of any mandatory requirements as a set of boxes to check—even more so when the means for checking progress is Degree Works, where the boxes literally get crossed out when completed. It’s time to cut our losses and admit that the IC hasn’t worked the way it was intended. A mandatory curriculum chock-full of themes and ravens may have made sense in theory, but in practice, it is a complex mess that confuses students, leaves faculty members frustrated and benefits very few.