Teaching
Majoring in international studies is a unique experience because there are two required components: satisfying curricular requirements and completing an appropriate study abroad experience. Professors use class time to prepare students for their international experience, providing them with the tools they’ll need to relate to a cultural system very different from their own. Upon their return from overseas, students once again become immersed in coursework, though this time, professors gear seminars toward helping students synthesize their experience abroad. The senior seminar covers international issues and relationships using tools and approaches from several disciplines and acquired, at least in part, from the students' experiences spent in a foreign country.
The diversity of courses within the international studies discipline means that students are as likely to learn from a biology or literature professor as they are to learn from an economics, history or political science professor. Students make contact daily with faculty from across a large number of departments and fields. In doing so, they get the best of all academic worlds. They are exposed to varied classroom environments, from open discussions to hands-on field work, and they experience a range of different approaches to teaching since their professors have scholarly specializations that are as far flung as the African novel, Russian cinema, symbolism in world religions, human rights in Central America, Arab politics, world hunger, Asia security and international relations.
