FIU is Going Global!

There's no doubt that your student is coming of age in a new era of globalization-20 years ago who could have imagined keeping in touch with the world via tweets, trading with the world via eBay, or learning about the world via wikis? We're connected by the Web and interconnected through a worldwide flow of information, ideas, and resources. The speed of change these days is fast, but FIU wants you to know that it is keeping apace. With its leading-edge Global Learning for Global Citizenship program, FIU is enhancing the quality of your student's education by preparing them to thrive in our increasingly globalized world.

Global Learning for Global Citizenship is a set of curricular and co-curricular initiatives carefully designed to enable your student to acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of citizenship in the 21st century:

• Global Perspective: ability to view the world from multiple perspectives
• Global Awareness: knowledge of the interconnectedness of issues, trends, and systems
• Global Engagement: willingness to address local, global, international, and intercultural issues

Beginning in Spring 2010, your student will be able to enroll in foundational global learning courses. Global learning courses focus on big issues, those that affect our daily lives and that require multiple disciplines to understand and solve. Global learning courses are team-taught by faculty from various departments and colleges and they involve the latest active-learning techniques to facilitate interest and collaboration: simulations, case studies, team-based activities, and online research and discussions. Your student will have six global learning courses from which to choose:

• Global Supply Chains and Logistics
• International Issues in Public Health and Nutrition
• Artistic Expression in a Global Society
• How We Know What We Know
• Loosening Cultural Comfort, Gaining Global Perspectives
• Our Coastal Environment from the Bay to the World

In Fall 2011, all incoming freshmen will be required to take a minimum of two global learning courses prior to graduation: one in the core curriculum and one in their major. Every undergraduate program is now in the process of developing a global learning curriculum that addresses global knowledge, skills, and attitudes for their profession/discipline. Transfer students who enter with an AA degree will take two global learning courses in their major. Students admitted to FIU prior to Fall 2011 are not required to take global learning courses to graduate, but they may take them as electives.

Student Affairs is also developing a series of co-curricular activities that will enhance and expand classroom global learning experiences. In addition to existing programs such as International Education Week, Alternative Breaks, and language and culture clubs, your student will soon have more opportunities to learn about the world via lecture series, film festivals, concerts, and art exhibitions.

FIU intends to be recognized as a leader in global learning by preparing students to navigate and shape future change. Our goal is that in another 20 years' time, you will look back and say that FIU was the place where your students' future began by learning to go global!

By Hilary Landorf, PhD - Director, Office of Global Learning Initiatives