In order to gain Global Scholar (GS) designation in the course catalog, your course syllabus must meet essential course criteria and be approved through the curriculum review and approval process. Once approved, designated Global Scholar (GS) courses will count toward students’ achievement of a Global Scholar distinction on their transcripts.
UW Oshkosh Global Scholar criteria and learning outcomes are based on Best Practice as developed by AAC&U’s Shared Futures and LEAP (Liberal Education for America’s Promise) initiatives, which informed our campus Essential Learning Outcomes and helped to shape the University Studies Program.
AAC&U, in its Global Learning Value Rubric defines Global Learning as
“a critical analysis of and an engagement with complex, interdependent global systems and legacies (such as natural, physical, social, cultural, economic and political) and their implications for people’s lives and the earth’s sustainability. Through global learning, students should (1) become informed, open-minded, and responsible people who are attentive to diversity across the spectrum of differences, (2) seek to understand how their actions affect both local and global communities, and (3) address the world’s most pressing and enduring issues collaboratively and equitably.”
Global Scholar (GS) Course Criteria
Each Global Scholar course syllabus must contain the following three elements:
1) A statement concerning the Global Scholar designation. Copy and paste the statement below into your syllabus or write a statement of your own that is substantially similar.
Global Scholar courses build upon the knowledge, skills and perspectives that students gain in their (required) USP Global Citizenship (GC) course. Together, GC and GS courses aim to provide students with the knowledge of nations, cultures or societies beyond the U.S.; the recognition of how interaction, interdependence and inequity among diverse geographical, social, political, or economic systems have shaped historical and contemporary global challenges and opportunities; and the skills needed to engage with the responsibilities of informed citizenship in a complex, interdependent and changing world.
2) The course itself should:
- Examine nations, cultures and societies beyond the U.S. historically or in the present.
- Appreciate diverse human ideas and traditions.
- Understand forms of and sources of interaction, interdependence and inequity at the local and global levels.
The syllabus should provide a sense of how these three criteria are addressed in the course. The course description, goals, content, readings, assignments, and projects as detailed in the syllabus should clearly reflect these key course criteria.
A central element of any Global Scholar course is an emphasis on interaction and interdependence at the local and global levels (criteria c above). This can be difficult both for students to understand and for instructors to incorporate in their course. Global Scholar courses provide students with opportunities to grapple with interdependence, complexity and in connection. For some this interdependence is best exemplified by systems thinking.
“The real system is interconnected. No part of the human race is separate either from other human beings or from the global ecosystem. It will not be possible in this integrated world for your heart to succeed if your lungs fail, or for your company to succeed if your workers fail, or for the rich in Los Angeles to succeed if the poor in Los Angeles fail, or for Europe to succeed if Africa fails, or for the global economy to succeed if the global environment fails.” – Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems, December 2008
3) Adapt at least two of the Global Citizenship / Scholar Student Learning Outcomes (from the eight listed below) to the specific course and list them in the syllabus among the course student learning outcomes. See Writing Global Learning Outcomes for additional guidance and examples.
- Students will gain knowledge of global systems, movements, institutions of cooperation and / or fundamental international agreements.
- Students will acquire knowledge of and appreciation for diverse beliefs, ideas, traditions and / or geographical, social, political or economic systems.
- Students will examine how diversity in value systems and cultures and / or inequities among geographical, social, political, or economic systems have shaped past and / or contemporary global challenges and opportunities.
- Students will be able to recognize the construction of identity as shaped by cultural heritage and / or patterns of power or privilege.
- Students will gain competency or familiarity with different forms of intercultural communication.
- Students will recognize diverse methodological or disciplinary lenses used to examine global challenges, past or present.
- Students will recognize the connections, past or present, between personal experiences, local action and global impact.
- Students will critically, creatively, independently and / or collaboratively engage with global challenges and opportunities.