Shared Futures

Otterbein College

Lyle Barkhymer
Chair and Director, Integrative Studies program
lbarkhymer@otterbein.edu

After graduate work at IU Bloomington in music and a D.Music degree, I began teaching clarinet, conducting, and music history at Otterbein in 1967.  Along with that, I was a bass clarinetist in the Columbus Symphony Orchestra for several decades. I had the opportunity to become director of the college's core curriculum in 2002, and I have been Integrative Studies Chair since then. As the result of sabbaticals and NEH Seminars, my interests have expanded in a global way over the years. I travel frequently, leading the Senior Year Experience to Vienna each December, and I have lived and taught in Japan at Kansai Gaidai University. . My interest in other cultures is evident in the IS Global Perspectives courses Approaching Japan through Its Arts and Aspects of World Music. I also teach music history in the Department of Music.

Tammy Birk
Academic Teaching Staff
tbirk@otterbein.edu

Currently a member of the English department at Otterbein, I teach a wide swath of courses in our core Integrative Studies curriculum.  Because of this, I have a strong interest in interdisciplinarity, integrative learning, and innovative general education efforts.

Before I arrived at Otterbein, I shaped and oversaw a program in Global Studies at Franklin University, an urban university in Columbus, OH, that caters largely to returning adult students.  That Global Studies curriculum—a two-course general education requirement—was a rich curricular space that encouraged ‘world-mindedness’ and social action for a group of students who often believed that they had little time for either.  I became deeply interested in the affective dimension of global learning, particularly the resistances that preclude care and involvement.  My own doctoral work deals with psychoanalytic pedagogy—the shaping power of transferential investments in the classroom—so I am drawn to the complex ways that students defend against a course that encourages a ‘global consciousness.’ 

In the last year at Otterbein, I have designed a Senior Year Experience (SYE) course, ‘Global Citizenship: Issues and Problems for the 21st Century,’ that serves as a (belated) introduction to the most pressing issues facing the global community.  It bills itself as ‘anti-cynical,’ and we spend a terrific amount of time sorting the many possibilities for meaningful action in worlds both local and global.  I very much look forward to sharing my observations about this class with colleagues in the Global Learning initiative.