The Globalization Studies and International Relations Major is an interdisciplinary program that combines academic perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering to study, research, and create knowledge on global and trans-regional issues. This program's central objects of study are the emerging changes wrought to human communities by both historic and on-going processes of globalization. Globalization has brought a new level of complexity to traditional issues emerging from the interaction of human groups, cultural traditions, environmental, legal, economic and technological. This complexity has changed both the character of the challenges and also enabled new potential for solutions to them. The curriculum in this major encourages students to become critical examiners and engaged researches of these interactions by focusing on global flows of commodities, traditions, diseases, knowledge, technologies, and people. They will also focus on how these flows impact existing social, economic, and political inequalities.
As part of the major, students complete a set of core courses each combining theoretical and experiential components. Each student will choose a specific Global Interaction Area of their interest, and a Specialized Global Issues Track. These will become their areas and issues of specialization and expertise as they tackle the complex set of phenomena associated with globalization. Students are required to either participate in a semester abroad study program, or to complete a semester long internship in an institution, business, or government agency that engages directly with the student's area and issues specializations. The program educates leaders and researchers in global issues, international service, diplomacy, and activism. We also prepare students to pursue graduate study in programs that train professionals in a wide variety of fields, from diplomacy and consultants, to research journalism and social entrepreneurship.
