The division of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) will offer a new Intercultural Global Studies minor for fall 2012, which will teach students the critical thinking skills necessary to communicate across diverse cultures and communities.
“The original intention was to combine work in intercultural [and] domestic issues with work on global issues as the two are so often separated,” said associate dean of AHSS Eleanor McNees, referring to work on the minor that began two years ago.
The IGS minor will incorporate classes across multiple fields, such as geography, gender and women’s studies and anthropology, among others.
“This minor is unique in that it’s really truly interdisciplinary and also that it puts a heavy emphasis on domestic and global engagement experiences,” said John Tiedemann, IGS affiliated faculty member and director of the Social Justice Living and Learning Community.
McNees said the minor would be a strong complement to almost any major.
“It naturally ties in well with certain areas of business, economics, communication, languages and literatures, political science, religion, philosophy and literatures,” said McNees. “It should be an asset for students who wish to pursue graduate school, law school or social work, among other advanced degrees.”
Potential courses that would fall under the IGS umbrella include Introduction to Gender & Women’s Studies; People, Places, Landscapes; Fundamentals of Intercultural Communication; and Cultural Anthropology. The majority of electives will be from the AHSS and must also meet certain requirements to be included in the IGS program.
“Those criteria include linguistic and cultural competencies, acquisition of humanistic and social science concepts integral to interpretation of international and domestic environments and critical analysis of local and global differences, similarities and inequalities,” said McNees.
The 24-credit minor will consist of four credits of introductory courses, four of engagement experience and 16 elective credits. The engagement experience is a service learning component that can be taken at DU or abroad in order to give students a more enriching experience.
“There are existing programs here at DU like Project Dar Es Salaam that are really intensive, really immersive and really stress both local engagement in culture and pretty serious academics,” said Tiedemann. “So programs like that are very much the kind of thing you can expect in IGS.”
Students who have already taken classes that are approved by the minor can participate in the program as well.
“It’s not as if you have start in the fall,” said Tiedemann. “You may have already accumulated a whole bunch of credits towards this minor because, again, it’s not out of one department.”
The majority of the 10-person advisory committee, composed of AHSS faculty, will mentor students and will convene once a quarter to check in on student progress.
Students are encouraged to focus on specific areas of interest, but will only be able to take two electives from any one department.
McNees said she would like to partner with Josef Korbel School of International Studies at some point, but at the moment most undergraduate International Studies (INTS) courses are taken by INTS majors. IGS isn’t limited to arts and humanities, however.
“We have a cadre of courses from outside AHSS, principally geography courses,” said McNees.
The planning for the program began two years ago with the Office of Study Abroad (now the Office of International Education) and the Center for Multicultural Excellence (CME), but was eventually transferred to the Division of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS). Vetri Nathan, a former Italian professor, chaired the planning committee composed of staff from Internationalization and Living and Learning Communities.
Tiedemann said he is optimistic the interdisciplinary minor will be able to serve students across all fields.
“Hopefully the minor will turn out to offer a lot of different advantages to people with a lot of different ambitions,” said Tiedemann.
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