Promising Practices A Vicarious Learning Activity for University Sophomores in a Multiculturalism Course

How can one teach a course about multiculturalism to a broad spectrum of university sophomores in a way that is re-search-based, pedagogically sound, and ap-pealing—all in ten weeks? That is the situ-ation I faced during the first quarter of my new job as an assistant professor. I felt that I had the academic preparation and teach-ing skills to lead the course, but the special population of students and the specific course requirements presented a new challenge. Fortunately for me (and for the students), I have had a few opportunities since then to improve upon my initial efforts. I am not the first person to struggle with this kind of challenge, of course. Dur-ing the past three and a half decades, and especially during the past 10 years, multicultural education or multicultural-ism courses in various forms have been established and developed on college and university campuses. These courses, which, generally speaking, explore the existence of cultural diversity in our society, are often labeled “multiculturalism ” courses, al-though the courses may go by several other titles such as “multicultural education,” “cultural diversity, ” and “cross-cultural understanding.” This is not to mention the plethora of other courses that deal with race, ethnicity, nationality, and other categories of cultural difference that may not even be groupe