Starting with an enrollment of less than 10 students in 2000, it jumped to 74 by the end of last spring semester.
The minor is an opportunity for students to learn about justice issues in the classroom and discover how to apply the perspectives they learn about to the pursuit of justice in their daily lives. Students in this minor learn about human rights, economic justice, equality, diversity, sustainable development, democratic participation and peace issues.
"It is growing at a wonderful pace," said Professor Judith Blau, the chairwoman of the curriculum.
Blau said she is satisfied that the minor has had constant growth. However, she's also glad that it has not had frantic growth because the curriculum is having a hard time finding enough professors to teach the required courses, especially Sociology 68, "Social and Economic Justice."
To resolve the problem, Sociology 68 has been cross-listed with Political Science 69 and professors have been brought in from other departments to help teach the course.
Students in the minor are required to take four courses, including Sociology 68, and also are required to participate in a service-learning project through APPLES, a student-run service-learning group on campus. The social and economic justice minor was the first minor at UNC to require service-learning.
Students can take a course that includes a service-learning component, or APPLES offers a three-credit internship that counts as a course and fulfills the service-learning requirement. The third option is a Spring Break course in the special studies program in which students spend their vacation participating in intensive volunteer projects.
"It fits into any major or career path you may want to pursue," said Raj Panjabi, a first-year medical student who graduated last May with a biochemistry major and a social and economic justice minor. "I found in the minor an academic foundation that would help enhance my ability to make a difference. ... I had a chance to learn about the root causes of social problems and learn about ways to change these problems."
Panjabi said he thinks more students on campus are deeply involved in activism than at any other time in the past four years, especially in certain pockets such as peace movements. Panjabi thinks the minor is a good way for such students to learn inside the classroom how to enhance their ability to make a difference.
