Shared Futures

Dickinson College

During the grant period, Dickinson College will take a close look at our already vigorous general education and global education programs by focusing on what has been accomplished and consider re-shaping existing courses or programs in new or more effective ways.  Our team will explore:

• The relationships among our cross-cultural studies general education requirements, including especially conversation among faculty teaching comparative civilizations and U.S. diversity requirements.
• The relationships between our cross-cultural studies requirements and the other dimensions of our global education program; this exploration will consider possible new connections among comparative civilizations, U.S. diversity, study abroad, and advanced culture and language courses.
• Ideas for additional global projects, such as “gateway” courses to prepare students more fully for study abroad.
• Lessons from current study abroad assessment projects in which we are participating that might be applied to or adapted for global education generally.
• Other new or revised models discovered through discussions with faculty and administrators from other institutions.

Dickinson College subscribes to the distributive rather than the core approach to general education requirements which gives students the freedom to craft their own educational program from a variety of options within the following specific categories.  The Dickinson College curriculum introduces students, through the liberal arts and sciences, to the special nature of inquiry in each of the three major divisions of learning: the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences. Our curriculum ensures that students develop both breadth and depth of understanding across a range of disciplines, and guides them, through interdisciplinary and collaborative learning, to synthesize what they learn. It also provides students with concrete ways to experience the liberal arts as a useful education that engages America and the world via diverse cultural and intellectual perspectives.

First-Year Seminar
All entering first-year students take a seminar to introduce them to the intellectual life of the College and our standards for student writing, research and discussion. The seminars offer students the opportunity to examine a particular problem or topic, often from more than one disciplinary perspective. It is in these seminars that we lay the foundation for our students to become engaged citizens and leaders.   Frequently, these seminars are global in content.  Below is a sample of offerings that already include or could easily be modified to include a global perspective.  Each of these seminars is capped at 16 students.

Images of Latin American Women

Our Linguistic Identities: Language and Social Function

From Bachelor Society to Model Minority: Chinese in America

Theater and Human Rights

Cybersociety: Ethical, Legal and Philosophical Issues for a Digital Age

"Ireland Unbound": Social Change in a Postcolonial Society

Controlling Nature?

Globalization: Its Contents and Discontents

Writing Intensive Course
The writing intensive course is designed to reinforce and develop the general writing skills introduced in the First-Year Seminar.  Offered within an academic subject area this course is intentionally designed to integrate the teaching of writing with the teaching of subject matter. The course underscores for students that writing is a process of planning, drafting, revising, and editing, and it encourages students to read attentively for content, forms, and conventions of the text and for rhetorical concerns such as author's purpose, audience, and context.

Quantitative Reasoning Course
The quantitative reasoning course is designed to help students become critical thinkers. Both words are carefully chosen: "quantitative" suggests having to do with numbers, relations, and logic, while "reasoning" refers to the creation and interpretation of arguments. In a quantitative reasoning course, students focus on analyzing and drawing inferences from quantitative data, or on the formulation of deductive and analytical arguments. While we often think of these as mathematics courses, any department at the College may offer such courses.

Distribution courses
These particular requirements engage students in the full breadth of liberal learning as represented by the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences and introduce students to various areas of inquiry which they are then free to explore and study in further depth over the four years of their undergraduate program. Students must take two courses from each of the following divisions:

Arts and Humanities help us interpret the human experience through artistic and conceptual self-expression and through critical reflection.  Two courses from two of the following three areas: philosophy or religion; literature, or the arts.

Social Sciences seek to describe, analyze, and interpret the ways in which people interact within and among the societies they have created. Two courses from different departments.

Natural Sciences aim to understand the character of the natural order through investigation of the basic structures and regularities in the planet Earth and universe. Two laboratory courses.

Cross-cultural studies
We require three different types of course work to familiarize students with the ways in which the diversity of human cultures has shaped our world.  Dickinson is distinctive in its emphasis on combining the study of diversity globally (international education) and within the United States.  These courses prepare students to be effective citizens in an interdependent world and to appreciate the breadth of voices, perspectives, experiences, values, and cultures that constitute the rich tapestry of our world and our nation. 

Languages
All students must demonstrate that they can read, speak, write and interpret information from and about a particular area of the world in the native language. We expect them to complete coursework in a foreign language through the intermediate level from any of the following: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Hebrew, Latin, Portuguese, Russian,  and Spanish.  In most areas, advanced study of the culture and literature in the original language are also offered. 

Comparative Civilizations
Students must take one course on the comparative study of civilizations to deepen their understanding of the diversity in cultures. This course introduces them to traditions other than those that have shaped the modern West.

The following list represents a sample of courses currently meeting the Comparative Civilizations requirement that are candidates for adding a US component (the capacity for each course is listed in parenthesis):

ANTHR 101 – Anthro for the 21st Century (35)
ANTHR 219/WOMST 219 – Geography of Gender (25)
ANTHR 255 – Global Eastern Africa (25)
COCIV 102C – Films of British RAJ in India (35)
EASIA 203C – Modern Japan Depicted in Lit (25)
EASIA 205O/FLMST 301N – Chinese Cinema (25)
EASIA 306D/POLSC 390AB – Pol/Leg/Ethic Conf in US/Chin (15)
EASIA 306E/HIST 315C – US Relations with Japan (15)
ENGL 101B/WOMST 101B – Post Colonial Women Writers (35)
FRNCH 246 – Intro to Francophone Cultures (25)
HIST 371 – Arab-Israeli Conflict (25)
RUSST 100 – Russian and the West (25)
SOCIO 224 – Family & Gender in a Cross-Cult Perspective (25)

U.S. Diversity
Students must take one course on U.S. diversity to gain a broader understanding of the commonalities and differences among cultures and values to help them function effectively in civic life. Such courses focus on the history of cultures based on race, ethnicity, gender, class, religion and/or sexual orientation.

The following list represents a sample of courses currently meeting the U.S. Diversity requirement that are candidates for adding a global component (the capacity for each course is listed in parenthesis):

AMST 101 – Cultures of the US (25)
ANTHR 101 – Anthro for the 21st Century (35)
ENGL 101CG – Major African-American Authors (35)
ENGL 349M Black Lit of Slavery/Freedom (25)
ENGL 101CG – Major African-American Authors (35)
ENGL 349M Black Lit of Slavery/Freedom (25)
HIST 211C/WOMST 220 History of American Feminism (25)
POLSC 290BJ – Race, Media & Politics (25)

The following are a sample of our offerings that are candidates for revision to become globally integrated courses:

AMST 200Z/JUDST 206/RELGN 206 – Jews and Judaism in the US (25)
AMST 200O/SOCIO 230T  - Crossing Borders: Sites of Memory  (25)
ECON 349 – Political Economy of the 3rd World (25)
ENGL 212E – Writing about Food & Cultures (15)
ENGL 212K – Writing About Music (15)
ENGL 339 – The Craft of Poetry (25)
ENVST 330 – Env Disruption & Pol Analysis (25)
FRNCH 236 – Intro to Cultural Analysis (25)
GEOL 105 – Geology of Natural Disasters (36)
GERMN 250/JUDST 216L/SOCIO 230AO – Seeking German/Jewish Culture (25)
IB&M 200 – Global Economy (25)
MUSIC 109 – World Music (35)
POLSC 150 – Comparative Politics (35)
POLSC 258 – Human Rights (25)
POLSC 271 – Ethics and World Politics (25)
SOCIO 230AA – Global Inequality (25)
SOCIO 230AM – Comparative Social Policy (25)
SOCIO 230AN/WOMST 202B – Gender and Latin America (25)
SOCIO 313A/WOMST 300J – Women’s Health (25)