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Primary Mission

The Chicana/o Studies Department was established in 1969 in response to the educational needs of Chicana/o students. It was designed to provide students with an awareness of the social, political, economic, historical, and cultural realities in our society. It was structured as an interdisciplinary department in order to offer a Chicana/o perspective within the traditional disciplines. Initially the mission of the department was first and foremost to meet the needs of the Chicana/o student. In the intervening years that mission was broadened to also meet the needs of other students. These include: credential students who need to be prepared to teach in our schools, Central American students who now make up a significant part of the student population at CSUN and who have their own particular needs, and the CSUN student in general, to provide them an opportunity for a multicultural and enriching experience as part of their studies while at the university. As an interdisciplinary department Chicana/o Studies offers courses in every academic discipline except mathematics and science. While its mission is multi-dimensional there is a basic and primary purpose for the establishment of the department. This primary mission is to provide a curriculum of studies and support programs that will help Chicana/o students to: Educational institutions historically presented ideas from a Eurocentric perspective. To a great extent they ignored or rejected the role and the contributions of any people that was not considered part of that perspective and tradition. Minorities in the U.S., Mexico, Latin America, Pre-Columbian Meso- America had not been included as part of the course of studies in traditional American institutions of higher learning. The Social Sciences, the Humanities, the Arts, and Education had been taught and studied from only one perspective. The social and cultural experiences in higher education were exclusionary. Minorities, since they were not recruited, were not part of the culture of the institution. As an academic department Chicano Studies seeks to offer a multidisciplinary curriculum which will present the Chicana/o perspective in each discipline. Specific curricular areas in the department are: Early in the history of the department there was the recognition of the seriousness of the situation of our schools and their failure to meet the needs of the youth in our communities. Our young people were rapidly becoming the majority population in the schools but they were also failing or dropping out in very significant numbers. There was the realization that teachers were not being adequately trained to teach those who were culturally, linguistically, socially, and educationally different from them. The Department of Chicano/a Studies made a commitment to exert pressure on the university, on Colleges of Education, and on Educational Programs to adequately prepare teachers for the schools in our communities. Pressure was brought to bear on the teacher preparation programs to establish a multicultural requirement for all credential candidates. The department developed courses to be included as part of that requirement such as: