Founded in 1787, the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is one of the oldest higher education institutions in the United States. As such, the university has an impressively long tradition of international engagement. From its creation of its first Nationality Rooms nearly 80 years ago, to its consistent efforts to make global engagement a part of every student’s university experience, Pitt has long been a leader in promoting international engagement in new and innovative ways.
Perhaps the most visible evidence of Pitt’s commitment to engaging the world are its 30 Nationality Rooms. Housed in a 42-story Gothic skyscraper known as the “Cathedral of Learning,” each Nationality Room celebrates the heritage of an ethnic or cultural group from the Pittsburgh area. The first four rooms—Scottish, Russian, German, and Swedish—were built in 1938, while the newest—the Korean room—was dedicated in 2015. Local organizations that represent the group are responsible for designing and financing the construction of the rooms. After construction, the rooms are governed by committees made up of members of the local community.
Though the Nationality Rooms certainly attract a lot of interest from outside the university, they are primarily used as classrooms, meeting spaces for student organizations, and for other academic purposes. As Associate Director for International Programs Belkys Torres, PhD, explains: “The heritage rooms are a really interesting connection between the university and local and global communities.”
The committees don’t just fund and construct the rooms—they also finance study abroad and research scholarships to their respective country. For example, communications major Noah Coco received the African Heritage Nationality Room Scholarship for a summer program in Cape Town, South Africa, in addition to studying abroad in China. He says, “There are so many sources of funding and opportunities to study abroad at Pitt that I can go to two countries that could not be much further away from where I am right now.”
The Nationality Rooms represent just one of the many initiatives overseen by the University Center for International Studies (UCIS), founded in 1968. Due to Pitt’s decentralized structure as a comprehensive research university, UCIS plays an important role as the university’s keystone for global engagement. The center supports university-wide international programming, activities, services, and research across Pitt’s 16 schools and four regional campuses throughout western Pennsylvania. Torres says: “We function independently, and that allows us to make connections and collaborate across schools and disciplines with faculty, undergraduate students, graduate students, visiting scholars, and administrators across all levels.”
UCIS’s portfolio includes education abroad and international student and scholar services. In addition, UCIS currently hosts six area studies and thematic centers, which award a number of undergraduate and graduate certificates highlighting a world region or transnational theme.
Leading the charge for internationalization at Pitt is Ariel C. Armony, PhD, director of UCIS and senior director of international programs. Armony became the university’s senior international officer in 2015, serving as a senior adviser to both Provost Patricia E. Beeson, PhD, and Chancellor Patrick Gallagher, PhD. Armony jokes, “The chancellor likes to refer to me as his ‘secretary of state.’”
Recognizing the connection between the city of Pittsburgh and the rest of the world is central to Armony’s approach to internationalization at Pitt. “We want the world to enrich what we have here at Pitt, and we want to help enrich the world outside of our region. The interaction between the local and the global is very much at the core of the ways in which we conceptualize our role as a global university,” he says.
Provost Beeson concurs: “We say ‘Bring the world to Pitt.’ That means making connections throughout the city and really developing a strong partnership around global issues with our major partners, such as UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center).”
Following the adoption of a new strategic plan that included global engagement as an institutional priority for the first time in the university’s history, Gallagher gave Armony the mandate to develop Embracing the World: A Global Plan for Pitt, a strategy to achieve the university’s internationalization goals for 2016–2020.
“Our university is committed to growing a global community. These plans underpin our efforts to grow international partnerships and experiences that will widen our reach—and connect our students and faculty members to opportunities across the world,” says Gallagher.
Jeff Whitehead, a Pitt alumni who worked in the study abroad office for several years before becoming its director in 2009, explains that the global plan offered an opportunity to take stock of the various international activities the university was already pursuing.
For more than a semester, the UCIS team surveyed staff, students, faculty, and administrators, seeking feedback on where the university should focus its international initiatives. “We made a big point in developing the global plan as a result of a very extensive process of engagement with our campus community,” Armony explains.
Torres adds, “Engagement sessions with faculty, senior leaders, and administrators on all five campuses underscored a need for more robust global operations support, streamlined mechanisms and criteria for developing and tracking strategic international partnerships, and a communication strategy that would connect and inform faculty and administrators across Pitt about their global engagement.”
Students also expressed a need to understand all of the existing opportunities for global engagement on the Pitt campus. The Pitt Global Hub, launching in 2018, will offer students a one-stop-shop for peer mentoring and expert advising about Pitt’s local-global connections.
The ultimate results of the feedback are, according to Torres, “really emblematic of the collective voices and interests of people across our five campuses.” The final global plan has four areas of focus: connecting Pitt’s domestic and international pursuits to create synergies that strengthen its communities, producing globally capable and engaged graduates, creating a global research community that solves global challenges, and developing infrastructure to expand its engagement with the world through global operations support.
In the next year, academic units across Pitt will be asked to align with the global plan as part of their strategic planning process. As part of their annual planning and reporting process, the provost’s office will ask each dean for information on how their school is contributing to the implementation of the global plan.
Many are optimistic that global engagement is now explicitly recognized as part of the institutional mission. “This is the first time in the school’s history where [internationalization] has been a point of focus—for fundraising, programming, recruitment of academics—so it’s a good time for us to be putting a large amount of emphasis on global studies as well as future study abroad and experiential learning pursuits,” adds Whitehead.
The Study Abroad Office has also been central to the institution’s internationalization efforts. Pitt currently sends approximately 1,900 undergraduates and graduate students abroad each year. In fact, around 10 percent of the undergraduate class goes abroad at some point in their academic career.
Over the last decade, Pitt has transitioned from sending the majority of its students abroad with third-party study abroad providers to doing so largely through its own faculty-led programs. “In 2007, about 80 percent of our study abroad participants went through external providers,” Whitehead says. “Now we’ve completely flipped that number on its head.”
Today, only 15 percent of Pitt students studying abroad go through third-party providers, with another 5 percent enrolling in direct exchanges with other universities. The rest participate in Pitt’s own faculty-led programs.
Pitt offers around 350 study abroad options, 100 of which are the faculty-led “Panther Programs,” developed in collaboration with Pitt faculty and the Study Abroad Office. “We credit our faculty—their energy, their enthusiasm, and their creativity—with developing our own offerings,” Whitehead says.
Pitt also has dedicated study abroad managers housed in the Swanson School of Engineering and the College of Business Administration. Both schools have significantly increased the number of students studying abroad over the last few years. Currently, around 45 percent of all engineering students and 50 percent of all business undergraduates will have an international experience before they graduate.
Pitt also administers the Vira I. Heinz (VIH) Program for Women in Global Leadership, which targets young women from Pitt’s four regional campuses and 10 other colleges and universities across Pennsylvania. The program provides $5,000 travel scholarships for female undergraduate students who have never traveled internationally. Around 75 percent of participants are Pell-grant eligible. The program has several components: a predeparture retreat, the international experience, a reentry retreat, and a final community engagement project.
Bethany Hallam, who recently finished her master’s in public health at Pitt, studied in France as a participant in the VIH program during her undergraduate days at Pitt-Greensburg. She says the model provided her with much-needed support: “Before the VIH Program, I never believed that I would be able to accomplish my goal of studying abroad, let alone have the confidence to manage three layovers and live on my own in a studio apartment in the heart of Paris. The VIH mentoring program and predeparture retreat gave me the tools to understand myself and the environment that I would soon be entering.”
Hallam adds that, as the first person in her family to have a passport, the reentry retreat gave her the opportunity to process her time abroad.
In addition to the robust number of students it sends abroad, Pitt also hosts more than 3,100 international students from 100 countries. The Office of International Services (OIS) provides support to all international undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to around 1,800 employees from abroad. The number of international students on campus today is nearly double what it was 10 years ago.
Two-thirds of Pitt’s international student population are graduate students attracted to Pitt’s high-ranking programs in fields such as nursing, law, engineering, and computer and information sciences. At the undergraduate level, they recruit top high school graduates from around the world. “Currently, the university is working toward diversifying the undergraduate international population to amplify the multiplicity of perspectives and experiences in the classroom and on campus,” says Torres.
OIS’s staff and immigration specialists offer immigration advising, as well as run the university’s international student and scholar orientations. In addition to providing direct support to students, OIS also does a lot of campus outreach. Over time there has been a concerted effort to increase services for international students and scholars across the entire institution, especially as the international population has grown, says Genevieve Cook, OIS director.
For international scholars and their families, OIS runs the Experience America program, which is a series of events and activities designed to help them understand U.S. culture. OIS also hosts a workshop series where participants learn about topics such as U.S. politics, the healthcare system, and recommendations for surviving the winter in Pittsburgh.
OIS also works closely with student affairs for much of its programming, in particular the Office of Cross Cultural and Leadership Development (CCLD). Students can, for example, volunteer through CCLD to assist with international orientation. According to Summer Rothrock, the director of CCLD, the office works with fraternity and sorority life, leadership development, cross-cultural and diversity programming, and student organizations. CCLD also collaborates with the Study Abroad Office and UCIS on social and educational programs for students.
Global Ties, for example, is a program for incoming international freshmen and transfer students that pairs new students with a mentor who helps them adjust to life at Pitt. “We want the Global Ties program to provide a global experience right here on campus for any student who may want it as well as to help integrate our international and domestic students together,” Rothrock says.
Both domestic and international students serve as mentors. Jiahui Wei, a senior science major from China, notes, “I actually got a mentor from Global Ties when I first came here. We became really close friends and then I joined Global Ties as a way to give back.”
CCLD also brings together 50 international and domestic student leaders for the annual Hesselbein Global Academy for Student Leadership and Civic Engagement. Students participate in a four-day retreat in Pittsburgh that includes mentoring from professionals in the business, government, and nonprofit sectors.
In addition, CCLD works closely with the Office of Residence Life, which oversees Pitt’s 25 Living Learning Communities (LLCs). Several of these communities focus on themes such as diversity or social inclusion, and the Casa Cultural and Global Village LLCs both have an international focus. Students living in Casa Cultural must enroll in Spanish or Portuguese, and Global Village residents participate in programming that explores global issues.
Assistant Director of Residence Life Philip Badaszewski is also in charge of the Pitt to You initiative, which sent 11 student ambassadors to China during the summer of 2017 to run an orientation for incoming Chinese students. “When everybody is back on campus in the fall, the ambassadors will meet with their mentees,” he says.
One of the hallmarks of Pitt’s internationalization is its commitment to multidisciplinary international scholarship. More than 550 faculty members from across the university are affiliated with its various centers, which include four U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Centers: the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS), the European Studies Center (ESC), the Global Studies Center (GSC), and the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies (REES). As a Jean Monnet European Union Centre of Excellence, the ESC holds the additional distinction of being one of only eight such centers in the United States funded by the European Union (EU). UCIS also hosts the Asian Studies Center (ASC) and African Studies Program (ASP). While the other centers are focused on area or regional studies, the GSC focuses more on cross-cultural themes related to global health, global security, global economy, and global society.
The various centers also do outreach to the local community. Drawing on resources and expertise from all of UCIS’s centers, the Global Studies Center coordinates the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Global and International Studies, a four-week summer residential program for high-achieving high school students from around the commonwealth. Another initiative run through the African Studies Program is the Model African Union, which provides opportunities for both Pitt students and local high school students to participate in a four-day conference and take part in simulations.
UCIS has a number of other affiliated programs, including the Center for International Legal Education. Every year, the center’s director, Ronald Brand, JD, takes law students to Vienna, Austria, for the International Commercial Arbitration Moot competition. Pitt law students compete against other teams from around the world. Brand uses the competition to recruit talented lawyers from abroad and build relationships with law schools in other countries. “It has become a platform for legal education. We have used it to build legal curriculum in transition countries,” he says.
Through UCIS, Pitt also awards 250 undergraduate and graduate certificates each year in area studies or global studies. Students from any major are able to enhance their degree program by taking courses with an international focus. The 11 undergraduate and eight graduate credentials have been designed to complement students’ existing degree requirements. They also offer an interdisciplinary bachelor’s of philosophy degree in international and area studies, in partnership with the University Honors College.
International advisers help students customize their course plan and study abroad opportunities to maximize their impact. Because Pitt’s general education requirements include nine credits with a global focus, students are able to complete their certificates with an additional two or three classes. Khadija Diop, a film studies major who is completing a certificate in African studies, says, “the certificates help you look at your major through a global perspective and integrate the global aspect into every single thing that you’re doing.”
Environmental studies major Rachel Bukowitz adds that her certificate in global studies has also given her a talking point during job interviews: “As an environmental studies major, being able to say that I learned about sustainable development in the Middle East or water rights in the Gaza Strip has really made me stand out.”
With state support shrinking, the University of Minnesota did something that President Robert Bruininks concedes was counterintuitive: it slashed tuition for international students and other nonresidents. Instead of paying $6,000 more than Minnesotans pay each semester, they now pay just $2,000 more. The public university was able to do so without asking for the legislature’s permission because “we’re one of the few academic institutions in the country that has constitutional autonomy from the state,” said Robert Jones, senior vice president for academic administration. But university leaders are convinced the move will pay off for an institution that aspires to become one of the top three public research universities in the world in a decade.
Minnesota already holds a position that most universities would envy: 28th in the world rankings by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and 9th among U.S. public institutions. With 51,000 students on the Twin Cities campus alone, including 3,700 from other countries, it is also one of the largest, and only three research universities send more students to study abroad. The Office of International Programs (OIP) has extended its reach and seen its budget burgeon since 2002 from $13 million to almost $23 million.
Another reason for the cut in out-of-state tuition is that Minnesota is girding for a projected drop in the number of students’ graduating from its high schools. “The University of Minnesota is a unique strength and comparative advantage for our state in a global economy. It’s a talent magnet,” said Bruininks. Pursuing “the international agenda of the university is not only the right thing to do to advance research and education… (but also) to advance the Minnesota economy as well.”
The University of Minnesota already had a broad global footprint when the Board of Regents in 2005 endorsed a strategic blueprint that made further internationalization a top priority. Since launching this “Transforming the U” initiative, it has consolidated colleges, expanded the faculty, and made rapid progress on improving graduation and retention rates. It also has moved quickly and adroitly to attract more international undergraduates. International students now comprise 3 percent of undergraduate enrollment, up from 1 percent, and the goal of 5 percent is in sight, thanks in part to intense recruitment efforts, tuition changes, and a push by International Student & Scholar Services (ISSS) to streamline admissions paperwork and make the university more inviting.
Former Associate Vice President for International Programs Gene Allen laid the groundwork for expanding Minnesota’s activities in China and elsewhere, including its signature “Minnesota Model” for integrating education abroad into the curriculum. The international profile has grown even further under his successor, Meredith McQuaid, who was given a seat at the table with other deans when decisions are made about the university’s research and spending priorities. McQuaid, an attorney who formerly led international programs in the law school, is a Minnesota alumna who studied Mandarin in China as an undergraduate, taught English in Japan and once took a motorcycle trip around the world. She recently found spacious, new quarters for the Office of International Programs on the East Bank campus, closer to the Mall and main administration buildings. The University International Center also is home to a new Confucius Institute, the 30-year-old China Center, and the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, Title VI national resource center. More strategically, McQuaid’s creation of an International Programs Council has led to renewed investment in internationalization efforts across the university system.
“Transforming the U” initiative, the university awarded faculty $1 million in grants in 2007 and 2008 . . .”
The OIP was established in 1963 in an era when the university had an Office of International Agricultural Programs as well, coordinating dozens of faculty projects across the world, many under contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID). Some 130 Moroccans—including students of Jones and Allen—earned doctorates and returned home to make the Institute Agronomique et Veterinaire Hassan II in Rabat one of Africa’s top agricultural universities. Exchanges were forged with universities in India, Nigeria, Uruguay, Norway, Hungary, Malaysia, Tanzania, and Tunisia.
As part of the “Transforming the U” initiative, the university awarded faculty $1 million in grants in 2007 and 2008 “to promote a global network of scholarship and engagement and encourage interdisciplinary and transnational partnerships.” While the faculty grants were modest—in the $15,000 to $20,000 range—civil engineering Professor Efi Foufoula-Georgiou said they went a long way. “It’s unbelievable how much mileage I got for this grant,” said Foufoula-Georgiou, who directs the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory. The grant allowed graduate students to travel to conferences in Italy, and that in turn led to collaborations at the University of Genoa and University of Padua. Art Professor Tom Rose received a small grant for exchanges with the Beijing Film Academy, which led to the creation of a course on contemporary Chinese art. Now a department that “never really had much of an international presence is now becoming much more interested and engaged,” Rose said.
OIP’s new Global Spotlight Initiative is focusing on Africa and global water issues. Carol Klee, chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, was named assistant vice president for international scholarship. Senior Vice President Jones and McQuaid visited Africa twice in 2008 to explore partnerships with sub-Saharan universities. Biologist Craig Packer, who has spent three decades studying lions in Tanzania, now is working with Minnesota colleagues on a broader “Whole Village Project” to address overpopulation and poverty, starting with an examination of how international aid impacts rural villages.
Following up on an academic task force’s blueprint for forging an international university, McQuaid appointed an International Working Group in 2007 to produce a five-year action plan. Its “Where in the World Are We Going?” report pinpointed gaps in the university’s efforts, including opportunities missed because faculty and schools had traditionally operated on their own in the international arena “The university lacks oversight of international efforts and knowledge of where in the world we are and what we are doing there,” the report said. The “plethora of MOUs [memoranda of understanding] signed with institutions around the globe is redundant, inefficient, and ineffective; the complete lack of oversight—legal and otherwise—is surely exposing the university to heightened risk.” Even within OIP, the staff of the Learning Abroad Center and that of ISSS worked apart. “That struck me as absurd,” said McQuaid. Changes to the structure and interaction of OIP units are being made under her leadership.
More than 2,000 students study abroad each year, and the University’s goal is to double that number, which would mean 50 percent would have an education abroad experience by the time they graduate. OIP combined separate education abroad offices and opened the Learning Abroad Center under the same roof with ISSS. The name “Learning Abroad” was chosen, Director Martha Johnson said, because “learning is a verb.” The 38-person staff arranges education abroad for 400 non-University of Minnesota students each year along with their own 2,000.
The so-called Minnesota Model of Curriculum Integration has won acclaim and foundation grants to knit education abroad into the curriculum. More than 800 faculty, administrators, and staff have attended OIP workshops on curricular education, and 90 recently returned for a refresher course led by director Gayle Woodruff.
The university sits in what Brian Atwood, dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, calls “an international city”—home to 19 Fortune 500 companies with global operations—in a state with a reputation for hospitality toward immigrants and refugees. The world headquarters of the American Refugee Committee and the Center for Victims of Torture are in Minneapolis.
When Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf— the first democratically elected female head of state in Africa—came in April 2009 to receive an honorary degree, nearly 2,000 of the 4,800 people who filled Northrop Auditorium were her compatriots, part of the diaspora from Liberia’s brutal civil war. Large populations of Hmong from Cambodia, Somalis, and others who fled strife have started new lives in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
“Some of our population,” quipped Atwood, former U.S. AID administrator, “is a result of failed U.S. foreign policy.” The university recently appointed its first postdoctoral and graduate fellows in Hmong Studies. Minnesota has had “an open, accommodating, accepting culture for a long, long time,” observed Bruininks, who has spent four decades at the U as education professor, dean, provost, and president.
Minnesota is also home to the federally funded Study Abroad for Global Engagement (SAGE) project, which examines how education abroad affected the attitudes of nearly 6,400 participants from 22 institutions dating back to 1960. One significant finding: the duration of education abroad had negligible impact on how involved they were in civic activities, volunteering, and other forms of “global engagement” in later life.
Minnesota’s Office of Institutional Research has conducted important research of its own on education abroad. It found that among freshmen who entered in 2000 and did not study abroad, the graduation rates were 30 percent within four years, 51 percent within five years, and 56 percent within six years. But the rates were sharply higher among those who did study abroad: 51 percent within four years, 84 percent within five years, and 91 percent within six years. The gap is even greater among the freshmen who entered in 2004: 40 percent within four years for those who did not study abroad versus 65 percent for those who did. This casts doubt on what the Learning Abroad Center’s Johnson calls “the misperception” that education abroad makes it harder for students to graduate on time.
ISSS Director Kay Thomas, an educational psychologist, stressed the importance of getting data like this “to back up what we’ve been saying” about the importance of international education. Her office has also been doing research on the critical experiences of international undergraduate students about to graduate, as well as studying the impact of administrative staff exchanges. Thomas is a past president of NAFSA, as were the two directors she worked for earlier in her 40 year career at the university, Forrest Moore and Josef Mestenhauser.
Thomas’s office enlisted nine international students in 2008 to blog about life on campus from the classroom to the cafeteria and to field questions from prospective students. Theerachai Chanyaswad of Thailand told of being stumped by his new classmates’ rapid-fire, idiomatic American English. His suggestion: “Calm down and try to fit in. You will succeed.”
“The so-called Minnesota Model of Curriculum Integration has won acclaim and foundation grants to knit education abroad into the curriculum.”
Asa Widiastomo of Indonesia offered practical advice about what clothing to bring to “MinneSNOW-ta.” Asa, who is Muslim and wears a hijab, said in an interview, “it was really hard in the beginning. People just saw me for my appearance.” But the outgoing Widiastomo joined the University Women’s Chorus, became a leader of the Indonesian Student Association, and got involved in multicultural groups.
Following a post-September 11 slump in enrollment in intensive English classes, the College of Liberal Arts shut down in 2004 an ESL program that had existed for decades. One student pointedly asked, “How can we be a world-class university if we don’t invite the world?” With encouragement by OIP, the university reopened the intensive English program (IEP) a year later within the College of Continuing Education. Enrollment is growing and Michael Anderson, director of the Minnesota English Language Program, said, “The closing and rebirth of the IEP has helped internationalize the university and also bring attention to the functions that it serves on campus.”
In harsh economic times, budgets remain tight. Bruininks and Jones both expressed a determination not to stint on the U’s expanded international thrust. “If anything, those areas will be strongly protected,” said the president. Jones was even more emphatic. Cuts “will be the last thing I do because I think we’re on the cusp of creating something here that’s going to position the university for the next 50 years.”
When Sonia Penso enrolled at Providence College, it was the dream of her autoworker parents—Portuguese immigrants whose education stopped in grade school—that she become a doctor or lawyer. Sonia herself envisioned law school as a strong possibility. But majoring in global studies, studying abroad in Nicaragua and Argentina, and working with troubled U.S. and Latino youth led her down a different path. She is now a caseworker with Homeboy Industries, a renowned gang intervention program in Los Angeles. “When everything shifted, I was really surprised that both my parents were incredibly supportive,” said the 23-year-old, who graduated in 2011.
Global studies seems to have the effect of altering career trajectories. Michelle DePlante ‘08, who was among the first to sign up when Providence created the interdisciplinary major in 2005, does immigrant and refugee work in the Rhode Island capital. Victoria Neff ‘09 is at the University of Denver doing graduate work in international studies after two years in the Peace Corps in China. Alexandra BetGeorge ‘11 is a Fulbright Scholar teaching English to high school students in Bulgaria.
These are the career paths that leaders at the Catholic college envisioned when it created the interdisciplinary major and imbued it with extensive community service requirements across all four years. They must become fluent in a second language (two advanced level courses) and, naturally, participate in education abroad. The global studies program now has nearly 100 majors and graduates 25 students each year.
The ethos of service runs strong at Providence, the only U.S. college founded and run by the white-robed Dominican Friars, but a push to internationalize students’ experiences picked up steam with the creation of a Center for International Studies in 2007 to facilitate education abroad. The college’s 2011 strategic plan seeks to boost the education abroad participation rate from 15 to 35 percent. An overhaul of the core curriculum addressed the need to develop more engaged students who undertake “research, scholarship, service, internships, and other immersion experiences locally, regionally, and abroad.”
Since making financial aid fully portable for the first time—a step with an annual cost of $3 million—Providence has seen the number of education abroad students rocket from 163 in 2010–11 to 230 in 2011–12, with even larger numbers projected for the 2012–13 academic year, said Dean of International Studies Adrian Beaulieu, who recently hired a fourth staff person for the Center for International Studies. The percentage studying abroad for a full semester has risen to 25 percent. Beaulieu said the first mandate he was given when hired as dean in 2007 was “to get serious about study abroad.”
Nicholas Longo, now the director of global studies, taught the first introductory course on global studies to 20 students back in 2005 as a part-time lecturer. Longo is a summa cum laude graduate from the class of 1996 who majored in political science, minored in a then-new department, public and community service studies, and became a civic engagement activist and scholar. He returned to his alma mater in 2008.
Global studies has no faculty of its own but draws from other departments. Longo, an associate professor in the Department of Public and Community Service, said, “There’s a core group of six faculty from social work, from philosophy, from the business school, from foreign language, from sociology, and from public service.”
Some courses are co-taught by community advisers such as DePlante, outreach coordinator for International Institute Rhode Island (IIRI), a nonprofit that provides educational, legal, and social services to immigrants and refugees throughout the state and southeast New England. She had done volunteer work for the institute as a college student and joined it full-time upon graduation. Now some of the students she teaches fulfill their service requirement by volunteering at IIRI.
Service learning is built into most of the major’s required courses. Students often work in teams on projects that in Longo’s words “examine globalization and global citizenship through the lens of local community engagement.”
Using local activists as co-teachers “really brings a community voice into the classroom,” said Longo, who once was a national student coordinator for the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Campus Compact and later directed Miami University’s civic leadership institute.
“Students are not just studying globalization in that first course. They are doing service learning and civic engagement projects and seeing what the real world implications of globalization are in Providence,” said Longo.
Like Sonia Penso, DePlante, the daughter of a Cuban immigrant, had to explain her choice of the major “more than once” to her parents and other relatives skeptical of whether it would lead to a job. “But I knew I was learning critical skills that would be the foundation for any direction I wanted to go,” said DePlante, who minored in business and Spanish as well. “The major provides the leadership and thinking skills that employers and grad schools are looking for.” She studied and did a business internship in Seville, Spain, then wrote her thesis on the assimilation of Hispanic immigrants in Providence.
Most of Providence’s 3,900 undergraduates do not have to write theses, but the capstone of global studies is a requirement to produce a “globally engaged” thesis. The seniors participate in a year-long seminar synthesizing what they have learned in the classroom and in their community involvement at home and abroad, then write a paper that is supposed to have real world implications, like the comparative study that Penso did on troubled urban youth in Nicaragua, Argentina, and Rhode Island.
Throughout the four years, the majors must develop an individualized learning plan and keep an “e-portfolio” tracking their progress in learning a second language, choosing an education abroad program, engaging in civic and service activities, and demonstrating awareness of global issues.
Longo said it has taken time to convince some faculty colleagues that global studies was “a rigorous and legitimate academic discipline,” but the projects students have taken on and their success after graduation have made that task easier. Neff, who came to Providence on a soccer scholarship, wrote her thesis on the role of community organizations in combating HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. BetGeorge studied abroad in Tunisia, which positioned her well to write a thesis on the role of Facebook in sparking the first Arab Spring revolution.
While global studies has had a strong influence on its own students, until this fall there was scant room in its courses for non-majors. But with a newly hired adjunct, the college now offers four sections of Introduction to Global Studies instead of two. “Part of the reason we haven’t grown as much as we probably could have is that if you didn’t come in as a global studies major, it was hard to get into the course,” said Longo. Now he hopes to “introduce the themes and the concepts from our course to many more students.”
“People aren’t looking at us any more like we were totally crazy for majoring in global studies,” Penso said with a laugh. “For me, it was the best choice I made. I’m so thankful that so many of the experiences that I had”—she worked with gang kids in Managua and undocumented youth in Buenos Aires—“were so far out of my comfort zone. It made me feel I can accomplish so much and do so many other things. It prepared us for the real world.”
