The CU Denver Ethnic Studies Department empowers students to transform society and participate in real-world problem-solving through a vibrant engagement with the intersectional histories and contributions of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC). We are committed to the comparative, critical, and transnational study of race, ethnicity, and Indigeneity, especially as those formations intersect with others including gender, sexuality, class, religion, nation, and dis/ability.

Ethnic Studies develops innovative paths toward a better world. We are working to develop equitable, sustainable, and just approaches to societal problems through comparative, critical, and transnational examinations of the histories and contributions of African Americans, Arab Americans, American Indians and Pacific and Caribbean Indigenous peoples, Asian Americans, and Chicanx/Latinx peoples. In doing so, Ethnic Studies generates distinctive knowledges about history, society, literature, art, philosophy, religion, politics, health, and environment.

As part of a Liberal Arts education, robust knowledge of the United States and the broader world requires the study of race, ethnicity, and Indigeneity in their intersections with gender, sexuality, class, religion, nation, and dis/ability. We treat these issues not as many disciplines have done, as parochial or supplementary, but as crucial to any quality education. Of special importance to us is honoring the struggles and celebrating the achievements of our predecessors and contemporaries. Their wisdom is a wayfinder through a rapidly- changing, increasingly-complex world. We learn from the past to build futures in which all of us may truly flourish.

Through our curriculum and programming faculty, students, and community members build connections working in collaboration with student, Auraria campus, and community organizations; other CU Denver programs and offices; regional Ethnic Studies programs; and scholars, artists, activists, and teachers from both within and outside the U.S. Among our highest aspirations is to cultivate meaningful, lifelong relationships and to help students develop lifelong skills as local, national, global citizens and leaders to engage in real-world problem solving.

Students learn to acquire and produce knowledge in various ways, such as: oral history, literary and media analysis, and community-based participatory research. Through our program, students refine critical and creative thinking, research, and styles of communication. They become remarkably adept at engaging diverse, complex issues in society and the workplace.