The GEI is a Mellon-funded initiative for Carleton to reflect on how it can best integrate global issues into its curriculum. It seeks to fuel this discussion via faculty enrichment opportunities.

The GEI Steering Committee has outlined the following broad goals for global engagement at Carleton:

1. Build connections among disciplinary and area studies programs: We will identify opportunities for cross-area collaboration, especially through faculty-led collaborative work, research and site visits during the planning project. Particularly fruitful will be the discovery of specific areas in which methodological and theoretical cross-fertilization may occur.
2. Integrate off-campus studies with the on-campus experience: We will explore ways for faculty to adapt innovations and experiences from off-campus studies to on-campus work, enhance on-campus preparation of students prior to off-campus study, and integrate student off-campus experience as part of their subsequent coursework.
3. Integrate global vision into the new curriculum: We will develop student learning and faculty development outcomes related to the Global Citizenship requirement, while identifying strategies for enhanced advising and for the “threading” of students’ coursework in ways that develop skills and knowledge beyond our core requirements and area studies.
4. Sustain our commitment into the future: We will recommend a model for a permanent non-departmental structure to administer, direct, and assess the global engagement initiative in the future, identifying as well the ongoing resources required for its success.

We investigated these goals during the 2010-11 academic year, in three phases.

Phase I: Fall. During the Fall term interested faculty working collectively and in small groups will carry out research on global initiatives, assessing Carleton’s current strengths and needs, and studying models for research and teaching that have been used at other institutions. Activities will include a reading group sponsored by the LTC, a visit by Jeff Cason, Dean of International Programs at Middlebury College, and a faculty seminar in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Phase II: Winter. During the December break GEI hosts a faculty workshop (Dec. 13-14). Soon thereafter, we will create a number of working groups, each charged with the task of proposing a different model for the integration of Global Engagement at Carleton. Additional study of existing models will continue.

Phase III: Spring. A faculty workshop will allow for working groups to come together and discuss the models devised in Phase II, resulting in the selection of a single model for further elaboration. During the remainder of the term, a group will work on an implementation plan for the model.

This investigative work is now complete, and we are working on a more extensive grant request for implementing our findings and recommendations.