For the first time in its history, Loyola University New Orleans is currently offering its students two weeks of accelerated learning during the month of January. All of the 3-credit courses offered during the “J-Term” are free and relate to topics tied specifically to race, equity and inclusion.
“As a Jesuit institution, it is essential to our mission to teach students to grapple with fundamental issues of justice and inequality,” said university president Tania Tetlow. “We help them gain context, question assumptions, and grow in empathy and understanding.”
The J-Term—already popular at many colleges and universities—is providing Loyola students and faculty the opportunity to engage in robust conversations inside of the classroom, particularly in the wake of the police killings last year of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others.
Nearly 300 students have taken advantage of the 10 undergraduate courses that focuses on a wide range of topics from race and mass incarceration, to representation of people of color in the media, to health disparities and diversity in science, said Dr. Carol Ann MacGregor, vice provost and associate professor of sociology at Loyola.
MacGregor said that there had recently been institutional interest in creating a J-Term, and she was given the task of planning the two weeks of instruction that started on January 4 and will continue through January 15. The process included putting out a call to faculty across the university to submit proposals on courses that they wanted to offer and assembling a committee that included student representation to evaluate the proposals and determine what courses to offer.
“Summer 2020 was just a time in America’s history where we’re really grappling with issues of race, inclusion and justice and our students, like students around the country, were vocalizing their desire for more diversity in the curriculum, more faculty hiring of diverse people, sharing in some cases, experiences of micro-aggression that are common on university campuses around the country,” MacGregor said, adding that “it occurred to me that maybe we had the opportunity to use this J-Term to respond to some of that student and faculty interest while using our institution to advance the cause of racial justice.”
The classes are offered in different modalities, with some online, some hybrid and some in person.
