Cultural Compass Navigating Curriculum Design in Higher Education

Cultural Compass: Navigating Curriculum Design in Higher Education offers a timely, practical guide for faculty who want to move beyond surface-level inclusion and design courses that reflect the cultural realities of today’s students and global society. Grounded in a replicable Model of Cultural Infusion, the authors introduce the Building Blocks framework: four progressive levels (Auxiliary, Comprehensive, Community and Societal Influence, and Conversion) that help instructors embed cultural consciousness into content, instruction, assessment, and technology without sacrificing academic rigor.

With discipline-specific applications spanning liberal arts, arts and architecture, education, computing and informatics, health, engineering, science, and mathematics, Cultural Compass shows exactly how to translate the framework into learning outcomes, assignments, and readings. Built-in pre/post self-measures and an observation instrument support continuous improvement and provide evidence of impact for departments, teaching and learning centers, and institutional initiatives. Artificial Intelligence and online learning are also addressed.

Ideal for instructors, instructional leaders, and graduate students preparing to teach, Cultural Compass equips readers with a clear roadmap to create culturally grounded, engaging learning experiences

Gloria D. Campbell-Whatley is a Professor in the Department of Special Education and Child Development at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA.

Kimberly Bunch-Crump is an Assistant Professor of Special Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Keonya C. Booker is a Professor of Educational Psychology and Interim Dean of the Graduate School at the College of Charleston.