The Center for Multicultural and Gender Studies (MCGS) is a part of the College of Liberal Arts, one of the seven colleges at Texas State University-San Marcos (Texas State).  MCGS was established at the beginning of the 1984 academic year.  It assists students in preparing for a pluralistic society by providing faculty and students with resources that encourage the infusion of an interdisciplinary curriculum that addresses race, class, gender, and ethnicity. 

MCGS provides and administers the U.S. Ethnic Studies minor at the undergraduate level and the Women's Studies minor at the graduate and undergraduate levels.  Each minor gives students an interdisciplinary background in 18 hours of course work.

The minor in Ethnic Studies provides conceptual frameworks for exploring new perspectives that recover the history, creative expressions, and voices previously excluded by the traditional approaches to higher education.  The Ethnic Studies minor provides students the opportunity to focus on three different tracks—African American Studies, Latino Studies, or Native American Studies—or to complete the minor with a combination of courses from each of these areas.

Drawing on recent scholarship on women and gender, the minor in Women's Studies concentrates on the images and realities of women and in doing so enables students to consider the significance of gender. 

The Center for Multicultural and Gender Studies has sponsored a variety of co-curricular events aimed at expanding the discourse on ethnicity and gender including the Multicultural Book and Film discussion series, Herstory and Ourstory Lecture Series, Diversity Reading Series, symposiums, professional development workshops, theatre productions, and art exhibits. Ongoing projects include the Multicultural Curriculum Transformation Institute and co-sponsorship of the Black and Latino Playwrights Conference. In 2003, it sponsored the African American Presence at Texas State University: Celebrating 40 Years; this project included research on the African American presence that led to a booklet, exhibit, and symposium.  In 2006, MCGS is leading a similar celebration--Latino Presence at Texas State University: Celebrating 100 Years.