MINOR IN AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES

Brief Program Summary: Ball State University’s minor in African-American Studies provides students a better understanding of the nation as a whole and African-Americans’ contribution to it. Students explore how race, power, and resistance have shaped American society more broadly. Students also gain a meaningful and informed sense of events like Ferguson and Charlottesville, which swirl around the national consciousness and shape politics and culture every day. In that sense, being an African-American Studies minor can make a student a more informed citizen. This minor can also make a student a more marketable potential employee after college. As studies from the “Wall Street Journal,” Monster.com, and others have shown, employers want to hire people who are diversity-conscious. This is true across disciplines, from the humanities to STEM fields. Employers want employees to be knowledgeable of contexts and experiences outside of their own.