WU adds global events, global emphasis to touchstone classes for future growth

Alison Angel
angela@mytjnow.com

The tide is changing when it comes to global experience on Winthrop’s campus: global events, which add much more emphasis on global content, now join cultural events in broadening student experience.

Karen Kedrowski, the chair of the department of political science, said that while cultural events have traditionally had a lot of global content in the past, deeming them global learning cultural events would highlight the influence.

“Hopefully that will continue to raise the profile of the global learning initiative on campus,” Kedrowski said.  “It communicates to the campus community that the global learning initiative is happening and that faculty are taking it seriously and participating in it.”

Now when an event comes before the cultural event committee it can apply for dual credit:  cultural and global.  

If a cultural event is deemed to be global, cultural event applicants only have to go through one channel and fill out one application.

The introduction of global events is just one of several moves by the university in an attempt to create more global awareness for future students.  One of the most evident changes is in the ACAD 101 class for freshman.  

ACAD students will now have to attend a cultural global event in addition to a regular cultural event and will now be shown a video about the international center via Blackboard to learn about study abroad opportunities as early as possible.

Even the peer mentors this year bring a special global emphasis to the classroom, Kedrowski said.

“We have 12 peer mentors that have some significant global experience, studied abroad or lived abroad, so they are bringing their personal experiences into ACAD to hopefully encourage other students to get out there and learn more about the world,” Kedrowski said.

Even the traditional ACAD service learning experience is now geared specifically on global implications.  She said that the focus this year is on literacy, an opportunity to tie the service project into both the Rock Hill community and to see the broader global issue.

“Literacy is a global challenge,” Kedrowski said.  “Even people within our community might not be literate in English…so it’s an opportunity of understanding the diversity of experiences in our community as well as to think about the importance of literacy.”

The results of the increased global emphasis on campus overall will be measured in years to come.  Kedrowski said that half of the freshman class recently took a global learning evaluation, an assessment tool designed to measure global knowledge.  The idea is to see what they know before they’ve even had a global experience on campus, and to later have them retake the test to see how much they’ve learned.

These results will be measured year after year and compared to current senior’s evaluations to determine the effect of this year’s changes.

“Hopefully, future seniors will end up with more global knowledge than current seniors,” Kedrowski said. 

Another way the university hopes to increase global awareness is by incorporating new global learning components to many touchstone courses.  So far, Kedrowski said, all touchstone courses have enacted at least one topic that’s different or global that wasn’t there previously.

Courses such as Human Experience, for example, have a textbook with two additional readings that are global in nature and the textbook committee is meeting regularly to add even more global readings within the human experience classroom.

Even future common books are being planned along these lines:

“All books being reviewed for next year’s common book in ACAD have a global theme to them,” Kedrowski said. 

On September 17 the global learning initiative will host a one day conference open to faculty and staff for the purpose of bringing them together to explain what has been done to globalize their courses; faculty can share their experiences globalizing their courses, and students will be given a voice as well:

“I am recruiting students who studied abroad, international students who have come to the United States so they can talk about their experiences,” Kedrowski said.  

The idea is to hear the different global perspectives from people who have been through it first-hand and can share how education in the United States differs from education in their own country.

Above all, however, Kedrowski said that the purpose of increasing the amount of exposure to global events both in the classroom and at campus events, as well as hearing stories from Winthrop’s own faculty and staff, is to become more aware of the world within our own little community.

“The whole purpose of this is that we can learn from each other,” she said.