Shared Futures

Otterbein College

The Integrative Studies program began at Otterbein in 1968-69, at a time of significant change for the college. Majors were reorganized, the calendar moved from semesters to the quarter system, and distribution requirements were replaced by a core of 50 hours of general education courses, to be taken over four years by all students. To emphasize their centrality in the college curriculum, these courses were called the Common Courses, and were specifically designed for the core under the theme, "The Nature of Man." Dr. Harold Hancock, in his history of the college, said, "Future historians will look upon this transformation as a landmark in the academic life of the college."

In the years since, the original curricular design has been modified, new courses have been added, new focal points for study have emerged, a few course requirements have moved from the lower to the upper division, and some requirements have been added. In 1976 the program's theme became "Human Nature" and in 1980 the program's title became Integrative Studies. But, the fundamental, original structure has proven sound and enduring.

The program has several other distinguishing features.   The courses in the program are specifically designed for it, rather than offered to the students from a list of introductory courses in the majors.  Each course must address the central theme, "human nature," and help students make progress on the seven goals of the program.

These goals are stated as follows:

The Integrative Studies Program endeavors to help students:

• Understand human nature and the many facets of our being more fully.
• Think critically and creatively.
• Communicate their thoughts accurately and effectively in writing and speaking.
• Develop competencies in a broad range of disciplines in the liberal arts and sciences.
• Make integrative connections across disciplines, helping to engage complex problems with interdisciplinary knowledge.
• Identify their beliefs and extend their knowledge of ethical and spiritual issues to create a broader understanding and tolerance.
• Know how to access and evaluate information, resources, and technology and apply them in the appropriate context.

Otterbein students are engaged in the Integrative Studies Program throughout the four years of study, five courses in the first two years and five courses in the second two years.  The courses are conceived sequentially, beginning with a focus on "the self" and widening that focus through the years to others in society and the natural world.

The faculty who teach in the program all come from home disciplinary departments, and we feel that by doing that we are modeling what we expect our students to do:  to be at the same time competent in a discipline and broadly educated.

 The Cosmopolitan Ideal

Otterbein is ready to imagine a general education curriculum that explores and encourages what Martha Nussbaum calls the ‘cosmopolitan ideal,’ an enriched model of citizenship that acknowledges the centrality of one’s obligations to communities both local and global.  Many at Otterbein already are convinced of the importance of cultivating ‘world-mindedness’ in both our students and the ‘deep structure’ of our institution. On the whole, there is little or no philosophical opposition to cosmopolitan education at Otterbein. Rather, the challenge is to find a form for such an effort, and we believe it is right for our general education core—central to the unique identity of our campus—to lead the evolution.

The Otterbein faculty believe that it is important for us to equip our students with a conceptual framework that would allow them to ‘look beyond the classroom to the world’s major questions’ (Greater Expectations report).  Such a framework might best be understood as a critical paradigm or a working vocabulary; whatever form it takes, we believe that such a framework is necessary to provide tools and resources for our students to collectively understand and resolve the roots of persistent conflict in our world.

Early in their college careers, our undergraduates need to define and debate the responsibilities of active citizenship (both local and global), understand the value of the public good, and discover what the larger global civil society, especially the NGO community, is prepared to provide in the way of analysis and action.

Our undergraduates also need to be introduced to the concept of sustainability, and they need to be able to evaluate the impact of personal and public choices on a sustainable future.  A small group of Otterbein faculty (primarily, those who affiliate with our Environmental Studies minor) is passionately interested in educating for sustainability and has been incubating ways that our campus might highlight the UN Decade of Sustainability in both curricular and extra-curricular venues. The group is a key player in our general education reform efforts. 

Other concepts that would prove crucial to a globally informed curriculum include security (here defined in its broadest sense to include food and water security as well as resource war and conflict), development (here understood as an economic goal with clear social and political implications), and human rights (here embedded in a larger conversation on social justice and enlarged to allow for specific inquiry into women’s and children’s rights). 

t is notable that a number of faculty have expressed interest in foregrounding the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) in the curricular design process. We believe that such an effort might offer an important scaffolding for our efforts to introduce students to a common set of global priorities.

The Integrative Studies Core Curriculum

Despite the fact that we have not formally launched a campus-wide conversation on global learning and its place in our general education curriculum, our Integrative Studies program has been quietly and consistently supporting courses that privilege a global perspective or, at minimum, complicate a too-facile understanding of the local.  For years, various faculty have been building global learning outcomes into our core curriculum; however, it is important to admit that we have been something less than intentional in our development of such coursework.  As a result, there has been an uneven and sporadic investment in the goal of global education.  Part of Otterbein’s interest in the General Education for Global Learning initiative has been driven by a growing desire for curricular cohesion and consistency.

As mentioned, our Integrative Studies curriculum has a number of established courses that teach--or could be reframed better to teach—in the service of global education.  Most notably, our senior requirement in Global Perspectives encourages students to closely study the cultural and political landscape of a single nation or region (e.g. Approaching Japan Through the Arts, Modern Indian Culture and Literature). This recent addition to the Integrative Studies curriculum testifies to a growing insistence on the incorporation of global learning goals in our general education core, but, as we’ve mentioned, it is isolated in its aims.

Our freshman social science requirement allows students to choose from a small number of courses that either assume a global perspective (World Geography and Human Society) or encourage systems thinking (Encountering Cultural Systems).  While our freshman composition and literature course, Growing Up in America, has traditionally focused its energies on American adolescence, a variant of this course, Growing Up in the Global Village, has been successfully piloted within the last year, and we have yet to decide its role in the curriculum. 

The sophomore literature and composition course, Relationships and Dialogues, and junior literature and composition course, The Dilemma of Existence, encourage our undergraduates to consider the larger implications of human relationship and responsibility.  Together, these two courses provide an optimal space for students to explore and clarify what Kenneth Tye calls the ‘role of the other in his or her world.’  We believe that UNESCO was right to identify that ‘learning to live together’ and ‘learning to be’ are the aspirations of higher education, and both of these courses save room for an important dialogue on our search for authenticity in relationship and self.

Our sophomore philosophy course, Philosophy and Human Nature, openly contends with larger questions about human suffering, the problem of evil, and our obligations to the larger community.  It brings an important ethical sensibility to the curriculum, and we believe that it lends a crucial language to the conversation on global action and moral choice.

Our Integrative Studies coursework in the natural sciences has ample room to develop in ways that would direct scientific inquiry to the pressing problems of the global community.  A course in Global Health, another in Environmental Challenges, yet another in the search for Energy Alternatives: these proposed courses underscore that we have the curricular commitment and supportive faculty to innovate in exemplary ways.

A junior fine arts course (Theatre, Art, or Music and Human Nature) allows us to explore and promote cross-cultural creative expression. In a revamped general education curriculum, we would aim to further diversify the texts for these offerings.

Our required freshman history course, The Western Experience, is an obvious problem. Faculty have been interested in redefining its parameters for some time.  A thematized global history course that helps students think in critical-historical ways about formative cultural processes and systems would prove a more helpful foundation for further work in global studies.

All things considered, we are interested in using the next two years to initiate a thorough program review of our general education curriculum, adapt existing courses to the goals of global learning (when feasible), design new courses to better highlight our commitment to cosmopolitan education, and pilot those courses that are prepared to launch in 2006-7.