Global Competency

• Integrate the study abroad experience more fully into the regular curriculum by:
  • Developing departmental courses and programs that are specifically linked to the study abroad experience. These might be optional 1- or 2-credit extensions to existing courses in which students travel with faculty to explore the issues of the course in an international setting.
  • Improving coordination between departments and International Programs. We recommend that each department designate a particular faculty member to serve as liaison with International Programs, attend orientation meetings, and assist with the development of new study abroad initiatives.
  • Increasing access to the study abroad programs. We recommend the elimination of the GPA requirement for access to study abroad—it currently stands at 3.0, which, if enforced unequivocally, restricts access to about half the student body—or lowering it, as well as the consideration of additional financial aid targeted specifically at foreign study.
  • Integrating life-changing study abroad experiences more fully into the continuing education of returned students and their peers, and showcasing this experience through, for example, the compilation or designing of a portfolio.
  • Continuing to prepare science and engineering majors for participation in the international scientific community (the Department of Physics is starting a program at CERN for junior physics majors in spring 2010).
  • Continuing to include language learning as a component of all (or nearly all) BU International Programs in non-Anglophone host countries.
• Encourage courses that have a global component by:
  • Requiring students to incorporate a global perspective into their academic programs. This can be done in many ways: by incorporating a more pronounced global or comparative dimension wherever that makes sense in existing courses; by developing new courses, or making existing courses more well-known by branding them differently; or by clustering courses together so that contemporary and historical issues—religion, the arts, health, sustainability, power and politics, conflict and diplomacy, race, literary and philosophical texts, to name just a few topics—are studied in a global context. It also would be possible to institute a new requirement, in which students would be expected to demonstrate “global competency” through some combination of coursework, study abroad, or international service.
• Support student organizations and other co-curricular opportunities by:
  • Showcasing the diversity of the BU student body in new ways through a series of public events that draw attention to the wide array of international organizations, and incorporating their contributions more fully into the undergraduate experience.
  • Developing language-specialty housing as centers for cultural events and programming, as well as living-learning communities for residents.
  • Increasing global community service opportunities that are incorporated into classroom discussions and University-wide programs.
• Encourage greater curricular and co-curricular involvement with cultural and linguistic programming in the City of Boston and surrounding communities.

Previous: Accessing the Arts at BU | Next: Co-Curricular Education