Citizen Scholars

CAL Enrollment Closed

Program Contact Information

Program Director:

Stacia Rigney

Enrollment Closed

Global Leadership Experiences

To become Global Leaders, we need to think about how our political, economic, and social policies, our cultural practices, and our values and choices as citizens of a major western nation affect those from other regions across the globe, and how we are also affected by what happens elsewhere. By simply engaging and interacting with cultures other than your own, you may begin to cross cultural boundaries and enrich your understanding of the world in its complexity and richness. Other required experiences ask you to engage with significant challenges and issues that affect those in local contexts, but that also have implications and ramifications that reach across regional and national boundaries. You should choose experiences that take you into unfamiliar territory, that expose you to new cultural, social, political, or community contexts, and that are not part of a course for which you’re receiving credit (optional extra credit assignments may be counted). The experiences of the Global Leadership badge aim to broaden your cultural understanding and sensitivity, and to strengthen and deepen your understanding of local and global interconnections. The larger aim is to make you leaders in imagining and implementing positive changes in interconnected local and global contexts. You will also complete some analytical work exploring intersections between local and global issues, in order to demonstrate that you have grasped some part of the global picture, and can engage with the implications of the policies, practice, and values embodied there. High-impact learning through study abroad or study away offers opportunities to live, study, and interact in an unfamiliar environment; to test and stretch your world view and understanding of how global interconnections affect us all; and to recognize that those from different groups and lived conditions experience such global effects differently. Remember that the point of these experiences is to expose you to new ways of thinking, unfamiliar practices or policies, or communities that you would not naturally or readily be included in. Cultural experiences as well as events focused on issues, problems, and local/global relationships are appropriate options for different requirements in this badge. This badge connects to the other badges by increasing your knowledge about communities and conditions, providing understanding and insight into local and global relationships that may shape your academic/artistic engagements, and increasing your credibility and capability. Itbuilds your capacity to collaborate with others to address problems, issues, and concerns in community, regional, and global contexts. It is also appropriate, particularly in the more demanding reflections, to consider what it means to be a leader in this context.

Participate in 3 Cross-cultural Events/Activities

Students participate in at least three activities or events which put them in contact with cultures or identities different from their own. The emphasis is on creative, social, or cultural exposure and interaction; not necessarily global in scope; not necessarily political or critical.

Learn more

Participate in 3 Global Issue-oriented Events

Students attend events that engage with a significant global issue that shapes lived conditions, practices, values, or interactions of people across geographic locations.

Learn more

Cross-Cultural Engagement Workshop

This workshop highlights the tools and strategies needed to work respectfully, fruitfully, and transformatively in your engagements with people from other cultures and other socioeconomic conditions; central is the capacity to understand and help to mobilize the human resources found in such contexts, with the aim of supporting others as they develop the capacities to help themselves and contribute to our society. Your summary should identify the key concepts and approaches outlined in the workshop, and your comments should identify what you have gained from the workshop.

Study Abroad or Study Away

Studying off-campus, whether in another country (study abroad) or in another location in the United States (study away), is an important component of the Citizen Scholars program. By studying off-campus, students have the opportunity to develop academically, professionally, personally, and interculturally through engagement with people, ideas, and cultures in unfamiliar contexts. The intention is to link your coursework to experiences that draw connections to places and perspectives not available in the classroom, and to support your self-directed explorations of other cultures, their issues, and their conditions as well as providing guided explorations and interactions of a similar sort. During your experience, you will create and regularly post to a blog in which you highlight your activities and comment on them. Additionally, within 1 month of your return, you will write a reflection that considers the larger impact of the overall experience, and consider whether and how you were transformed by studying and interacting off campus