Shared Futures: Global Learning and Social Responsibility

General Education for Global Learning

Campus-Based Curriculum Development

During the fall of 2007, AAC&U awarded $3,000 to each of the participating institutions to help support the further development of general education science courses with significant global learning outcomes. Institutions were required to demonstrate support for the curriculum development by matching these funds, creating a pool of $6,000 or more at each institution for this work. A short description follows of the projects undertaken by each institution.

Arcadia University

Arcadia University has a new undergraduate curriculum that blends general education and major courses. Among the new requirements, students must take a first-year seminar and two university seminars that address global perspectives and extend into multiple disciplines. These courses are meant to be interdisciplinary, integrative, and creative. Arcadia used the curriculum development sub-award to provide stipends for faculty members developing first-year and university seminars with interdisciplinary approaches to themes such as coffee, chocolate, and sustainability in contemporary art.

Butler University

The major conversation in curriculum development at Butler University is centered on culture, distinct areas of the world, and contemporary social issues running across societies and regions.  During the summer of 2007, five faculty workshops were held to aid in the development of Global and Historical Studies courses.  Teams focused on world regions, as well as post-colonial studies and women’s rights. Funded in part by the AAC&U curriculum development grant, these workshops guided faculty in forming learning communities and working on course development. 

Dickinson University

With support from AAC&U’s Shared Futures program and the Mellon Foundation, Dickinson College has created thematic learning communities and course clusters comprised of interdisciplinary seminars to foster global learning for social responsibility.  Learning communities offered in the fall of 2008 include: Perspectives on Health; Literary Representations of History and Identity; Civil Liberties and Human Rights; and Environment, Science, and Sustainability.  The latter is a result of Dickinson’s recent Environment and Sustainability initiative.  Inspired by Emory University’s Piedmont Project workshop in January of 2008, Dickinson held a similar internal workshop, the Valley and Ridge Project.  In August of 2008, eight faculty from across the disciplines brought their proposals and syllabi to discuss plans to further infuse sustainability themes into the curriculum.

Drury University

Drury University’s efforts to instill interdisciplinary global awareness into the curriculum are reinforced through faculty development and the purchase of new materials partially funded by the Shared Futures program.  Faculty discussion on issues such as science and sustainability and women in Islam were facilitated by guest speakers, David Orr and Dr. Merve Kavakci.  The purchase of materials such as books and videos also expands Drury’s faculty resources for integration of global issues across the curriculum.  Lastly, part of the funding was used to send the newly developed, team-taught, Science & Inquiry course to Montana to teach science to sixth grade students.

Hawai'i Pacific University

HPU has used the campus-based funding from Shared Futures to sponsor a lecture series by Dr. Stephen Schneider, a leading specialist in climate change and pedagogy. The goal of this series is to inspire and inform conversations about curriculum, teaching and learning, as well as to create a basis for follow-up discussions and workshops relating to continuing elements of the global learning project at HPU. The events are designed to support and promote HPU's principal objectives in the General Education and Global Learning project, and they will be followed by faculty workshops on integrative assignments to incorporate science and global learning into general education courses. Furthermore, the lectures and discussions will extend and strengthen faculty dialogue on global learning, linking with a number of curriculum initiatives that have taken hold in the past few years: a film series [.doc](weekly films on global learning topics), a global citizenship student symposium each term, and the second year of the "common book project."

Marquette University

To launch its first annual curriculum for global learning theme, “Who Counts?  Math Across the Curriculum for Global Learning,” Marquette is incorporating math assignments in non-STEM core and major courses while creating partnerships with the community, government, and business organizations. On the cutting edge of interdisciplinary and globalized education, “Who Counts” was initially seeded by a Shared Futures sub-award and subsequently supplemented by a 3-year $631,661 FIPSE grant.  In addition to offering curriculum development, incoming freshmen are issued a multidisciplinary book to reinforce the goals of the curriculum.  Faculty are encouraged to apply for mini-grants to redesign courses to include mathematical reasoning assignments. 

Mesa Community College

Mesa Community College will encourage greater integration of global issues in its curriculum by using the sub-award grant to provide stipends and new materials for faculty development.  By developing global content in specific introductory classes, MCC hopes to enable students to re-contextualize global problems incorporated into the curriculum. One ultimate outcome may be to bring together multiple classes at the end of the semester to discuss common themes and different disciplinary perspectives, perhaps through a student showcase.

Otterbein College

Campus-based curriculum development at Otterbein has largely taken the form of faculty Professional Learning Communities (PLCs).  The Center for Teaching and Learning at Otterbein is supplementing AAC&U's funding to support PLCs in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences. These communities meet biweekly to work on developing global learning objectives and assessment strategies for global courses, as well as to share common readings on global learning in each discipline.

Wheaton College

Wheaton's Subcommittee on Global Education has used the funds received from AAC&U to seek pedagogies that would integrate scientific knowledge, relate science to society and to the students’ own lives, and prepare students to become scientifically literate global citizens; that would combine the scientific approach with other modes of thought, such as writing and visual expression; and that would make effective use of new teaching technologies. The courses arising out of this work are currently being offered and evaluated.

Whittier College

To expand its commitment to prepare students for the responsibilities of global citizenship, Whittier College has used the sub-award funds to offer stipends to expand and develop new courses.  Some funding was used to acquire up-to-date materials on issues such as the global AIDS/HIV problem.  The mini-grant also supported a survey of course descriptions to identify global content, using the criteria that a global course compares at least two cultures or regions, one of which is outside the U.S., and addresses global issues. This survey included all courses in all departments except for practicum courses, senior seminars, and research methods courses.  Across the curriculum for the 2008-09 academic year, about 27% of the courses included global content. Whittier’s Educational Policies committee began to look for ways to increase the number of courses that include cultural comparisons addressing issues relevant to globalization and global citizenship.