Latin America and the Caribbean are extraordinarily diverse areas, encompassing a wide variety of cultures, political units, economies, languages and environments. The goals of the Latin American and Caribbean (LACS) studies minor are to foster greater knowledge about Latin America and the Caribbean and to explore the cultural contributions of these areas to the global community. The minor aims to expand students' views concerning the multicultural nature of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean and to emphasize the interactions between indigenous and introduced cultures in this region, both past and present.
The LACS minor will be useful to students envisioning careers in government, business, commerce, communication, or teaching. Students interested in pursuing graduate work in any field related to Latin America and the Caribbean will also find such a minor to be important.
Students will achieve the goals of the minor by taking a set of courses on Latin America and the Caribbean in at least two different departments, or, for more breadth, by choosing courses in several departments. The specific courses are selected according to the interests of the student from the list approved by the LACS faculty and updated each semester. Prior to enrolling for the next semester, a student must get her/his minor courses approved on the form kept by her/his advisor. The minor in LACS will require 18 credit hours of work, including language proficiency through the intermediate (202) level or via a placement test. The 202 language course may count toward the minor, but 101, 102, and 201 may not. Only three credits are allowed from a student's major department. No more than nine credits from any single department and no more than three credits of independent study may count toward the minor.
The coordinators of the LACS minor are Jonathan Ablard (Department of History) and Enrique Gonazlez-Conty (Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures)