The A.A. degree in Ethnic Studies is designed to foster individual cultural identity and cr​​​oss-cultural communication, develop a consciousness about the American pluralistic society and its origins, and provide essential education regarding professional careers involving intercultural relations in fields such as arts, business education, government, health, law, public relations, and public service.  

Emphasis will be on a cultural survey of Asian American, African American/Black American, Chicana/Chicano, and American Indian/Native American Studies from the pre-Columbian period to the present and the contributions of these ethnic groups to U.S. society.  

Enrichment and a global perspective will be part of completing one of the degree programs to prepare students to pursue a major leading to a baccalaureate degree.

From there, a student can continue to their respected Master's program or Ph.D., which many of these degrees have available. 

There are three Degree Programs:​ Black Studies, Chicana/Chicano Studies, and Ethnic Studies. 

The Department of Ethnic Studies examines the social and historical narratives of those seen as non-American. The Anglo, Caucasian, and WASP ideal of America created a separation where all others encountered and endured the United States nation-building project, which erased the narratives of non-Americans. The department's educational principles aspire to expand students' social and political horizons and the critical thinking skills vital in comprehensively participating in humanity transnationally. We explore how various kinds of resistance, persistence, liberation, struggle, and radical wisdom confront and transform oppressive conditions and create new social change possibilities.

The Ethnic Studies program is committed to centralizing the epistemologies, histories, narratives, and living experiences of disenfranchised/marginalized First people/Indigenous and those seen as non-American from the Anglo, Caucasian, and WASP ideal of American to challenge and critique all structures of despotism, oppression, repression, subjection, suppression and promote emancipatory, self-determining destinies for all people. The Ethnic Studies program aspires to present the intersections of ethnicity, gender, race, identity, agency, and sexuality within the voiced concerns of the four major groups disproportionately affected in the United States: Asian American, African American/Black American, Chicana/Chicano, and American Indian/Native American Americans.

The Department of Ethnic Studies creates course content based on the factual conditions of people of color; we also utilize methodologies that accentuate the structural dimensions of social, political, and economic inequalities and the struggles used against them. The department dissects the intersectionality of race, racism, and various forms of institutionalized violence. Areas of focus include land conquest, state violence, colonialism, U.S. imperialism, racial genocide, chattel slavery, militarization, forced assimilation, legalized discrimination, White supremacy, and the rationale of ethnic/racial domination. The comparative examination of racialization seeks to expose structures of disparity and privilege.