The Impact of a University Approved Diversity Course on Undergraduate Students’ Multicultural Awareness

Incorporating diversity within general education requirements has become the norm within higher education. In a world becoming more and more diverse, multicultural education can better prepare students as culturally competent citizens in a pluralistic world. This paper describes a research study based on a standardized diversity curriculum. This curriculum is divided into seven sections that occurred over a 16-week semester. Thirty-one Undergraduate students at a large southern university participated in this study. Study participants were involved in one of seven standardized sections of diversity courses offered through the leisure studies program. The 18-item Munroe Multicultural Attitude Scale Questionnaire (MASQUE) was administered as a pre-post-test to assess attitudes toward multicultural changes. Using the overall MASQUE score, the results demonstrated a statistically significant difference between the pre- and post-test scores, while only the caring subset demonstrated statistically significant differences. This study supports the notion that multicultural education should increase a student’s level of knowledge toward different cultures.