Global Community: International Opportunities
Asmara Mebrahtu (Foreign Affairs, French '07)With each passing day, the need for our students to understand and experience other cultures and for our faculty to contribute to understanding our global community intensifies.
Campaign gifts will fund global research on such timely topics as sustainable energy, population growth, water use, pandemics, and the effects of humans on the environment, through establishing professorships, supporting faculty research and travel, and funding the acquisition of scholarly materials.
In addition, we need a new physical home for our international programs to bring together scholars who can research and advance issues of world-wide concern: peace, economy, health, and global warming. This new Center for International Studies will connect the people and programs that introduce students to languages and cultures and prepare them for learning and living abroad. Here’s how:
- The center will house offices for international programs, the International Studies Office, seminar rooms, offices for postdoctoral and visiting scholars, and international career advising.
- It will bring together four existing area studies programs — the East Asia Center, the Center for South Asian Studies, the Center for Russian and East European Studies, and the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies — and two new programs that will focus on the Middle East and Latin America.
- It will draw in not only scholars of these areas, but also those who study the histories, politics, languages, and cultures of other areas as well as those who research topics of cross-cultural importance such as sustainability, the environment, and energy.
- The center will provide the highly visible institutional framework to promote international studies not only in the College but also throughout the University and local community as it promotes conferences, public lectures, outreach in the schools, and interdisciplinary studies.
