Shared Futures: Global Learning and Social Responsibility

Liberal Education and Global Citizenship: The Arts of Democracy

Project Summaries

Albany State University (ASU) has in recent years developed several initiatives to increase the internationalization of its curriculum and campus, including curriculum development, establishing the Ron Brown International Trade Center and conducting campus programs and observances. Participating in the AAC&U initiative is another opportunity for Albany State University to continue internationalizing its curriculum. ASU's "Liberal Education and Global Citizenship: A HBCU Model" is therefore, designed to build on previous curriculum efforts. Focusing on the African Diaspora within the contexts of world developments and the dynamics of cultural exchange, the ASU faculty team will participate in AAC&U activities and develop courses in major programs in History, Political Science, Sociology, English, and Humanities, incorporating liberal arts inquiry and methodology.

The American University of Paris (AUP), an international university with no national majority in its student and faculty populations, comprised of over a hundred different nationalities, is a natural laboratory for developing and practicing the never-more-crucial arts of democracy. Global citizenship is not a goal at AUP, but a way of life to be creatively managed. On the heels of our general education review, which has moved from a model of teaching for global preparedness to one focusing on our students demonstrated capacity to have an impact on the world in which they live, we seek to develop upper-division summative exercises located within and across the majors. These interdisciplinary, laboratory-style, team-driven, student-produced, faculty facilitated, externally juried courses both create learning environments that encourage students to negotiate cultural, ideological, and linguistic difference, and include metacritical reflection on the challenges, the difficulties, and the need for mediative, democratic negotiation in highly diverse populations.

Beloit College proposes to enhance our students' sense of social responsibility and their active civic engagement by connecting international education and experiential learning. We will add content on the ways that global issues require active participation from informed citizens and infuse experiential components into international/global courses. This infusion will energize our students to see the vital relationship between understanding global issues and acting to address those issues. Model programs in Political Science, Women's Studies, and the Religious Studies will use action-oriented activities, such as election simulations to enhance students' awareness of global issues. Additional global content will emphasize themes of universality in each of the model program areas. Faculty will use the experiences in the model programs to create similar programs in the natural sciences.

Brooklyn College seeks to become a "community of diversity" as opposed to a diverse community. Located in ethnically diverse Brooklyn, the student body of Brooklyn Colleges comes from the world. In the past the development and implementation of democracy, democratic training, and citizenship in the curriculum, although widespread, was not in the forefront. In fact, it is precisely the presence of that larger world in which we are enmeshed that compels us now to take democracy more seriously, and move synergistically and comprehensively in our approach. Through curriculum and faculty development, democratic pedagogies, reaching out into the community through a combination of discipline-based internships, service learning and field work, creating both physical and virtual centers to focus our energies and help to pull our various initiatives into coherent and powerful whole. Our goal is to help faculty to articulate and students to appreciate the profound importance of democracy in the present moment.

Heritage College, from its founding days, has been inspired by a vision of education, which embraces issues of national and international significance. These issues revolve around the realization that cooperation across cultural boundaries-whether they are geographic, ethnic, religious, or economic-will be vital to human survival. In a previous AAC&U project developed a new General Curriculum Requirement: the Heritage Core, which stresses cross-cultural community and community involvement among incoming students. Now we wish to extend that approach to our majors by sequencing courses involving global awareness and community service across all programs, including business and mathematics as well as more "expected" programs such as American Cultural Studies and Education. Our goal is to influence our students to continue their community involvement-their "global citizenship"-beyond those courses.

John Carroll University (JCU) seeks to support the development of two curricular initiatives designed to deepen faculty and student understanding of democratic practice, cultural diversity and globalization. The first is a three hour per week, sophomore level, interdisciplinary, case-based course, "Justice and Democracy," for prospective majors in History, Political Science, and Religious Studies that will introduce students to these disciplines in the context of broader issues of globalization, democracy, and cultural diversity. The second is a nine-hour per week, senior-level learning community that will organize courses from the same three departments around the theme, "Human Rights and the Arts of Democracy." The learning community is intended to bring students' (and faculty's) disciplinary skills and understanding fully to bear on these same issues of a more praxis-oriented way.

Pacific Lutheran University's (PLU) proposal connects our university's strengths in service learning and international education with democratic values and civic engagement at home and abroad. Courses in Theater, Religion, English, Women's Studies, and Environmental Studies use comparative methodology as part of disciplinary analyses and incorporate experiential activity (primary research, service learning, and collaboration) in global and/or local communities (Trinidad & Tobago and Seattle/Tacoma). Faculty explore the intersection of democratic ideals-justice, security, human rights, sustainability, and equality-and global/domestic in/equity where these issues meet essential concepts or theories in the major. Faculty apply democratic principles to comparative case studies of our local working in-class/ethnic/immigrant communities and Caribbean communities in Trinidad and Tobago. Students will explore the impact of colonialism and immigration. They will also identify, describe, and engage complex global issue/s and the place of civic involvement in potential solutions that further a just and equitable society.

Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is actively planning and promoting a dramatic shift in its curriculum focus toward "Globalization, Human Rights, and Citizenship." Building on its required Senior Seminar capstone course, this curricular grant will help to develop a cadre of new, multidisciplinary faculty in the College of Liberal Arts interested in sponsoring globalization related courses through the university's curriculum review process and contributing to the proposed International Studies Program. Based on creating a "community" of interests among faculty and students, the proposal will develop a series of topic-specific modules (with supporting teaching materials) for inclusion in existing courses and contribute to the design of new courses and a web site for integrating teaching and research resources.

The University of Delaware will implement Liberal Education and Global Citizenship: The Arts of Democracy through a multi-year "threaded curriculum" integrating courses, international discovery-and service learning, technology, general education, major study, and innovations in instruction, advising, and grading. Students will follow one of three global citizenship tracks-Enacting Democracy, Global Community, Transnational Issues-which begin in the freshman year, extend halfway into the sophomore year, and then have a variety of reinforcement, extension, and expansion activities through the remaining course of study, thus giving a fully integrated, four-year global citizenship experience. Each track will combine courses, study abroad, and co-curricular experiences, culminating in a capstone project.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) is uniquely situated in a natural milieu that not only makes it the academic gateway to the Arctic and Pacific Rim, but a platform for the study of global change. What do we need to know in order to survive? The many answers will be examined in the framework of new courses, curricular reforms, and experiential learning opportunities. For example, using UAF's recognized expertise on climate change, the Political Science major is developing a new concentration of courses in Global Environmental Policy. Our proposal also relates the challenge of global citizenship specifically to the Alaska experience. How do students, geographically isolated and united more by climate than cause, interpret civic virtue and public service? Is volunteerism more pronounced in the North because of the sparse population and need for everyone to engage in community tasks? Do freedom and independence have particular relevance to life in the North where culture, climate, and human security seem to have a special relationship? All curricular strategies build on prior reform efforts in progress to continue building competence to serve the common good.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee proposes to develop a BA in Global Studies in the context of a larger innovative, interdisciplinary undergraduate curriculum in Global Security that will link faculty in diverse professional fields with their counterparts in letters and science. We expect to include such topics as sustainable development, environment, public health, peacekeeping, food supply, nutrition, and human rights. Integrating foreign language and overseas study as well as internships and service learning into the curriculum, the Global Security initiative will emphasize the importance of crossing borders in intellectual as well as practical endeavors. It will better prepare students for successful personal and professional lives in an increasingly interconnected world. With a focus on new conceptions of "security," this project addresses the most salient issues challenging democratic values and practice in the 21st century.