A new ISU faculty committee has formed on campus to provide a focus on the academic study of multicultural and international education.

The Multicultural and International Curriculum Studies team, started in 1993, is a group made up of nine ISU professors.

“We provide services to the department, college, university and the greater community of local, state, national and international audiences on diversity education,” said Theresa McCormick, professor of curriculum and instruction, and MICS team leader. “In the early 1990s, the curriculum and instruction department decided to organize ourselves into teams according to faculty interest expertise.”

Member Carlie Tartakov said MICS takes an introspective look inside the university to see how to better education.

“Things that we do are strengthen understanding in terms of our research, and we draw from this information to learn more about our areas,” said Tartakov, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction.

McCormick said the group’s goals are accomplished through various workshops, educational programs, seminars, cooperative projects and different professional research presentations.

“The team wrote a proposal for an institute for ‘Multicultural and International Education’ and submitted it to the administration in 2000,” she said.

Individual members also take part by working on projects on their own in addition to projects the group completes together, McCormick said.

Tartakov said she coordinates the university studies course entitled “Dialogues on Diversity,” and serves as project leader for a study abroad program in India.

“Most of the projects are individual, but a lot of the projects we do couple with each other, and we pass information along to each other,” she said.

During the summer, McCormick said there will be workshops on subjects such as curriculum development, the research of educational programs for women’s transition from welfare to being self-sufficient and the use of WebCT and ClassNet in the classroom.

“Courses on multicultural gender fair education have been a part of the curriculum and instruction department since the state mandate for multicultural education for teachers became a law in 1980,” McCormick said.