IE 200 Global Studies [CRN 74129]

Overview of Course

This course offers participants the opportunity to engage in experiential global learning from multiple perspectives. It engages them in the comparative study of complex global systems (e.g., institutions, cultures, environmental systems) and global challenges as a basis for intercultural encounters, reflective inquiry, and global citizenship. Through experiential, project-based, and field-based learning across the Semester at Sea voyage, course participants develop the analytical, collaborative, and reflective capacities needed to engage complexity and contribute responsibly as people who share an interconnected world. By the end of this course, course participants will have had the opportunity to develop and/or nurture their own global self-awareness needed to become productive change makers both as individuals and/or in collaboration with others.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
1. Recognize opportunities to act as a global citizen with the capacity to improve the health and welfare of others, and the sustainability of the Earth’s systems
2. Describe implications for human welfare, and individual and collective measures for improvement, for a selected special topic
3. Identify key conditions and defining systems (e.g. cultural, economic, environmental, historical, political, and/or technological) of port countries in preparation for intercultural encounters
4. Demonstrate observational and analytical skills needed to draw cross-cultural comparisons and to assess the similarities and differences in a variety of human experiences
5. Identify one’s own assumptions, beliefs, and biases in order to increase cultural self-awareness and how this may impact interactions with others
6. Demonstrate an understanding of cultural differences and similarities in order to enhance intercultural communication skills for effective navigation of cultural encounters
7. Demonstrate knowledge of ocean dynamics and their role in global climate systems and environmental sustainability
8. Describe key aspects of the human uses and abuses of the marine environment and how they inform global citizenship and the development of ocean stewardship