In 1996, the Metropolitan Community Colleges (Missouri) participated in the American Association of Community Colleges' Exploring America's Communities project, which works to strengthen the teaching and learning of American history, literature, and culture at U.S. community colleges. The colleges' team formulated a humanities course exploring the "American experience" to address a perceived lack of coursework dealing with American pluralism and identity. Since the team felt that the Midwest represented a microcosm of the larger issue, the course attempted to narrow its scope by focusing on diversity in the Midwest. The faculty selected a core history text that addressed multicultural issues to use as a background for the course. The text was supplemented with literary texts from Native American, African American, Asian American, Hispanic, and European writers. The course was team taught by four instructors who attended each class; one instructor presented material while the others added their own commentary. The program's main obstacle was the campuses' own lack of diversity, and budgetary constraints have raised questions about the course's future. Throughout much of the course, the instructors focused on the differences among the various groups studied. However, in the last few weeks, they focused sharply on the commonalties. On the final, students responded to commonalties in a surprising and encouraging manner. (HAA)