Los Medanos College will now be added to the list of colleges that offers Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) studies.

This fall, a new LGBT class will be added to the course list and it will be fully transferable. The new course will also meet the LMC general education (GE) requirements.

English Teacher Jeffrey Mitchell will teach the course and he is looking forward to teach this class. “People think LGBT is one community, but each of those letters lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender actually stands for its own group,” said Mitchell adding, “so we will be talking about that whole alphabet soup and what all those letters mean.”

The course will be broken down into 4 units: history, politics, literature and the arts and media.

Each unit will branch further into discussing the LGBT community in order to get a full understanding of each specific category.

Since history started being recorded, there have been many people that were known to have been gay and lesbian. This course will not only talk about those people, but it will provide an overview of famous LGBT people in history.

Since the course is so versatile and draws from different fields, students will get a chance to learn a little bit of everything. The course outline states that you will read essays and literature written by lesbian and gay people as well as works written by straight people about gays and lesbians, view art, watch films and listen to music by and about members of the LGBT community.

“I’m planning on having a lot of very interesting creative ways for students to meet the requirements of the course, lots of movies, lots of music it should be a very enjoyable class” said Mitchell.

This new course will be the start of something bigger as Mitchell plans to expand it to a program with multiple courses. He plans on talking with other faculty in other departments to develop LGBT themed courses in the history, music, art and other departments.

“My goal is that eventually we will get a core of five or six courses that will enable us to offer at least a certificate in LGBT studies if not a full-fledged A.A. degree,” said Mitchell. Another class on gay and lesbian literature is planned for possible implementation in the spring of 2015.

“It’s going to be a really fun course,” said Mitchell enthusiastically adding, “It won’t be boring.”

Although it was a long road to bring this course to LMC, Mitchell has seen the progression and change throughout the years and has knowledge about the subject. He will offer students knowledgeable information that they can carry with them beyond the classroom and beyond LMC.

He never thought he would see the legalization of gay-marriage in his lifetime, but that has changed and that change is the perfect example of what will be talked about in this course.