Students should have experiences in settings that have a diversity of persons. This diversity can include persons or children of other races/cultures or children with documented special needs. Students report these diversity hours gained in EFE II and EFE III, in their individual experiences, in the clinical, and in student teaching.

Students must log a minimum of 40 hours with at least 10 hours in each category. These hours are not in addition to the required hours in these experiences, but students have the responsibility for planning and arranging opportunities to work with diverse persons. For example, a student could arrange an early field experience in a classroom that has a significant number of minority children. A student could log individual field experience hours in a group home with developmentally disabled adults. In these examples, the student is meeting the requirements for the field experience as well as the diversity requirement.

The following table shows how students earn diversity hours.

Minority Culture Children Documented Special Needs Children
Experience 30% or more 10-29% Less than 10% 20% or more 10-19% Less than 10%
EFE II 15 hrs 5 hrs 0 hrs 15 hrs 5 hrs 0 hrs
EFE III 30 hrs 10 hrs 0 hrs 30 hrs 10 hrs 0 hrs
Clinical 75 hrs 30 hrs 0 hrs 75 hrs 30 hrs 0 hrs
St Tchg II 120 hrs 45 hrs 0 hrs 120 hrs 45 hrs 0 hrs
ECE St Tchg (PP) 160 hrs 55 hrs 0 hrs 160 hrs 55 hrs 0 hrs
St Tchg I 200 hrs 70 hrs 0 hrs 200 hrs 70 hrs 0 hrs
IFE Hours* Actual hours* Actual hours* Actual hours* Actual hours* Actual hours* Actual hours*

 *EDU3405 Individual Field Experience is the only experience reported by the candidate. All other diversity hours are reported as a percentage of the classroom by the supervising teacher of the respective field experience. The reported percentages are calculated into hours according to the table above.

Diversity hours can be tracked on the Portal (under Grades). Logging the minimum of 40 hours is a graduation requirement.