eJournal of Public Affairs: Recent Issue on Global Engagement
Congratulations to the eJournal of Public Affairs and to ADP’s Global Engagement Scholars on the publication of the latest special issue — focused on Global Engagement — Volume 4, No. 1 published on March 31, 2015. It’s what we’re reading!
Introduction Essay: Global Engagement: Educating Globally Competent Citizens
Dennis Falk and Darrell A. Hamlin
Global engagement is a multi-faceted concept, and there are many components to educating globally competent citizens (Falk, Domagal-Goldman, & Hoerrner, 2014; Hartman, 2014). This second special issue of the eJournal of Public Affairs, along with the first special issue released in December 2014, reflects the breadth of activities related to internationalized engagement for fostering global competence among students, educators, and institutions. Indeed, colleges and universities, particularly those affiliated with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), are engaged in a range of such activities, drawing upon a wide variety of valuable resources.
Article: Creating Courses about Global Forces: Global Challenges and General Education
Martin Shapiro, Lisa Anderson and Kris Clarke
This article describes the work of faculty members and administrators at California State University, Fresno to create courses in the General Education (GE) program taught around the Global Challenges framework developed by members of AASCU’s Global Engagement Initiative. The first course, H102, was developed in 2008 for the upper division GE program and was designed specifically and exclusively for the Smittcamp Family Honors College. Two new courses were developed in 2013, one that fulfills a lower division GE requirement in critical thinking, and an upper division GE course that fulfills the Multicultural/International requirement. The authors (developers and instructors of the courses) describe experiences teaching the courses, including how resources are selected, strong and weak assignments, pre- and post-semester survey results, developing the course as part of the GE program, and the unique experience of teaching an interdisciplinary course with the ultimate goal of creating more globally engaged students. Keywords: Global Challenges, General Education, Interdisciplinary, Honors, Critical Thinking.
Article: AASCU’s Global Challenges: Promise and Peril in the 21st Century Course
Tina Zappile and Shala Mills
In 2006, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) launched its Global Engagement Initiative and began developing a set of curricular tools for faculty to use in educating globally competent citizens. A national blended-model course was developed in 2011 and has now been delivered to more than 1,200 students on 15 campuses across the country and abroad. The blended-model course is the first in what AASCU hopes will be a series of National Blended Course Consortium (NBCC) courses. In this article, the authors share the AASCU NBCC model for the Global Challenges curriculum and offer case studies on how that curriculum has been successfully delivered on two campuses. Keywords: global engagement, AASCU, global citizenship, first year, general education
Article: Using Research to Examine Global Challenges
Amy Buddie, Kenneth Hill and Phillip Poskus
As a contributing partner to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ (AASCU’s) Global Engagement Initiative, President’s Emerging Global Scholars (PEGS) program at Kennesaw State University uses the nationally recognized, researched-based, Global Challenges concept to provide a foundation for its three-year leadership program targeting high-achieving undergraduate students. Delivered through KSU’s Tomorrow’s World Today course, this content provides a futurist’s look toward the year 2030 by examining key drivers of change such as economics, technology, security, governance, population, and resource management. Through classroom study and an international experience in Salvador, Brazil, the PEGS program partners with UNIFACS University, a Laureate institution. Students, faculty, and administrators from both institutions utilize undergraduate research in concert with intercultural relationship development as tools to better understand the geopolitical, social, academic, and economic challenges that face our world today and, more importantly, tomorrow. Keywords: Seven Global Challenges, undergraduate research, student leadership, intercultural competency
Invited Essay: Teaching Abroad: Creating Global Citizens and Global Teachers=
Denise Horn
This article discusses international study programs in light of faculty development. Based upon ten years of experience working with students abroad, I offer some insights on the difficulties and rewards for faculty who lead programs overseas. I point to reasons for the growth in study abroad programs, as well as the opportunities these afford for both faculty and students.
Invited Essay: Aggregating Latin American News Media for Fun (and Hopefully Enough Profit to Survive): The Ideas Underpinning the Latin American News Digest
John Green
This article describes a news service focusing on Latin America. The Digest provides access to 140 stories from Spanish and Portuguese sources every week. By subscribing to the Digest, an instructor can offer students links to translations and abstracts of dozens of articles including, editorials and commentary, coverage of politics, society, the economy, the environment, travel and tourism, arts and culture, and international relations among Latin American countries. The Digest can be used as a tool to engage students in contemporary politics and culture of any area of Latin America.
Feature: Research Note — The Soliya Connect Program: Two Institutions’ Experience with Virtual Intercultural Communication — (invited research note)
Steven Elliott-Gower and Kenneth Hill
In 2012, Georgia College and Kennesaw State University partnered with Soliya, a Washington, DC-based non-profit organization, to bring their students a unique international education experience: the opportunity to engage “virtually” in dialogue, via video-conferencing technology, with students around the world about Islam and the relationship between Western countries and Muslim-majority countries. In this article, the authors compare their respective approaches, examining course objectives, student learning outcomes, course structure, students’ experience with Soliya, and student learning outcomes assessment. The authors conclude with some observations about Soliya and, by implication, other virtual international education experiences as alternatives and/or complements to traditional study-abroad programs in educating globally competent students and citizens.
Feature: Research Note: Undergraduates’ Awareness and Perceptions of Globalization: A Comparison of U.S. and Chinese Students
Brett Zollinger, Fu Runfeng and Keith Campbell
Assessing current awareness of and attitudes toward predominant globalization processes among undergraduate students is helpful for future course design, particularly courses about globalization or those with substantial globalization components. Such assessments also provide research opportunities for understanding changing levels of awareness and attitudes among undergraduate students over time. This paper reports research about the knowledge and perceptions of globalization concepts and trends among undergraduate students. The analysis compares findings among U.S. undergraduates at a Midwestern university (Midwest U.) with those among Chinese undergraduates at a university (China U.) in an east-central province of the country. Findings from two years of research (i.e., 2012 and 2013) are reported.
Feature: Research Note: A Transformational Learning Model for Designing Internationalized On-Campus Courses
Shellley Smith
Internationalizing on-campus courses is a key part of creating globally engaged students. An internationalized course should provide students with the opportunity to: (1) openly engage and value new perspectives; (2) develop skills for critical analysis of the knowledge and perspectives encountered during the course; and (3) observe, participate in, and reflect on the information gained. This article presents a four-step transformational model for internationalizing on-campus courses and curricula Keywords: teaching and learning, internationalizing, course design, intercultural sensitivity, global engagement
Feature: Video – Tour of the Globe
Samantha Francka
Many college and university campuses have events that emphasize the intercultural component of global engagement. The following video provides an overview of such event that occurs at Missouri State University.
AASCU's American Democracy Project 