Ethnic Studies

General Overview

Many of you are working on completing the California State University (CSU) General Education Breadth and/or the IGETC General Education Breadth, as part of an Associate Degree or just for the purpose of getting CSU GE Certified or IGETC certified for upcoming transfer to a CSU/UC/private/out-of-state school/community college program. 

• If you are working to complete the CSU GE pattern with Fall 2021 catalog rights or after, you need an approved 3-unit CSU GE Area F Ethnic Studies class.
• If you have Fall 2023 catalog rights and are following IGETC GE pattern, you need an approved 3-unit IGETC Area 7 Ethnic Studies class.
• Not every student needs an Ethnic Studies course for CSU GE and/or IGETC certification. This depends on how long you have been consistently enrolled at College of the Canyons, another CA Community College, and/or a CSU.

Since Fall 2021, College of the Canyons has only had 1 CSU/UC approved course that could meet that requirement.  It was Polisc 290-Ethnic and Gender Politics (which was cross-listed as Ethnst 290-Ethnic and Gender Politics).  Since the creation of the Ethnic Studies transfer requirement, College of the Canyons has been trying to get more courses approved according to the CSU/UC Guidelines for this requirement, but hasn’t yet been approved for additional courses to be offered.  At the beginning of Fall 2023, gained more clarity from the CSUs/UCs that course which are approved to meet the CSU Area F and IGETC Area 7 Ethnic Studies requirement, needed to be courses written by actual faculty with actual Ethnic Studies Master’s Degrees. Therefore, we learned that our Polisci/Ethnst 290 course would no longer be approved to meet the CSU Area F/IGETC Area 7 Ethnic Studies requirement as of Summer 2024.

At the moment, College of the Canyons just learned that our new Ethnst 102 Intro to Chicana/o/x Studies (3 units) is approved for Fall 2024 to be able to count within the CSU GE Area F ONLY, which is great news. ETHNST-102 has NOT yet been approved for IGETC Area 7. COC does NOT currently have any course approved for IGETC Area 7 at this time.

We are still awaiting news from the CSUs and UCs about whether additional newly written and proposed Ethnic Studies classes will be approved to meet the CSU GE Area F and/or IGETC Area 7 Ethnic Studies requirement, as of Fall 2024 onward.  Please check in with the College of the Canyons Counseling Office for additional updates as this situation unfolds.