UM American Culture Unit Becomes Dept.

The University of Michigan’s American culture program has been granted departmental status, following a vote by the UM regents at their July 19, 2012 meeting.

The program, formed in 1952, houses several other programs – in Arab American studies, Native American studies, Latina/Latino studies, and Asian/Pacific Islander American studies. According to a staff memo, the departmental status of American culture will clarify its relationships with these other programs, and bring it into equivalent structural status with similar units, including women’s studies, which became a department in 2007, and Afroamerican and African studies, which received departmental status in 2010. The change will take effect Sept. 1, 2012.

This brief was filed from the Michigan Union’s Rogel ballroom, where the board held its July meeting.