Curriculum
The global studies major at Azusa Pacific is much more than a traditional list of courses to complete. It is a dynamic, unfolding, and individualized set of learning experiences – some occurring within a formal classroom environment and others within informal field settings. These experiences are organized into the following six phases.
Phase 1: An Individualized Learning Plan
Students entering the global studies major are assigned a faculty advisor who serves as a resource guide and friend. The advisor assists the student in developing an individualized learning plan, choosing electives, and ensuring that general studies requirements are met. During this phase, students learn about themselves – their interests, gifts, and life calling – by sampling the liberal arts, mixing with peers, relating to faculty mentors, and engaging in intercultural learning activities.
Phase 2: Multidisciplinary Coursework
During their freshman and sophomore years, students may enroll in a variety of required and elective courses in the major. Students complete courses surveying the history, social life, politics, and cultural systems of world civilizations. The aim is to contribute multidisciplinary perspectives to students' understanding of the world while enabling them to develop intercultural relationships in the immediate communities surrounding the APU campus. This phase helps build an important conceptual, campus-based foundation for the more experiential, community-based learning that will take place both in Los Angeles and abroad.
Phase 3: Los Angeles Term
During the spring semester of their sophomore year or the fall semester of their junior year, majors enroll in a residential urban study and service program in central Los Angeles. Here students learn to "think locally" by being immersed in the life of the world's most ethnically diverse city. Students complete 15 units of coursework that includes GLBL 315 Urban Explorations (3), GLBL 345 Urban Religious Movements (3), GLBL 330 Community Organization and Social Change (6), and SOC 359 Immigrant L.A. (3). Learning activities include living with culturally different families, collaborative research projects, supervised community internships, interdisciplinary reading, prayer, and biblical reflection.
Phase 4: Pre-Global Learning Term Preparation
By the spring semester of their junior year, students select a particular "focus" (region, nation, city, or people) of the world for in-depth study. The student enrolls in GLBL 305 Peoples and Places (3) and HIST 210 World Geography (3). The Peoples and Places seminar prepares students for their Global Learning Term (GLT) by surveying the major trends and problems of the "Third World," researching materials, and developing individual learning contracts for the GLT courses in which they will enroll. The World Geography course enables them to do extensive area study on the place to which they will be traveling. Students also take GLBL 320 GLBL 320 Global Engagement in the 21st Century (3) prompting them to ask new scriptural questions in light of their urban experience while examining a range of global concerns that might be addressed through their Global Learning Term.
Phase 5: Global Learning Term
Students have now completed the preparatory work (Phases 3-4) for their study and service term abroad. During the summer session of their junior year and/or the fall session of their senior year, students enroll in three required courses: GLBL 350 Global Study Project (3), GLBL 335 International Internship (3-6), and GLBL 325 Family Organization (2); and one or both elective courses: GLBL 340 Community Life (3) and GLBL 300 Self-Directed Language Learning (3). They carry out their study and service projects under the combined direction of a faculty advisor and in-field guides. (This requirement may be adjusted in the case of international students.) The projects immerse students in a country, culture, or city significantly different from their own for a long enough time (at least four months) to maximize involvement in the host culture, with adequate support to ensure successful management of stress. The aim is to provide each student with the necessary contrasts during their study and research to critically examine their faith, politics, culture, and identity.
The length of the sojourn ranges from three months (the summer following their junior year) to eight months (students leaving in May of their junior year and returning in December). Before leaving, students formulate learning contracts which describe their proposed study and service in terms of the main objectives, learning activities, and evaluation procedures. Students typically find that the impact of their experience is in direct proportion to the quality of the preparation that precedes the sojourn abroad, and the degree to which students interact directly and intensively with the host people and culture.
During their Global Learning Term, global studies majors and minors remain registered at APU and may potentially earn the same amount of credit as they would have earned for full-time study on campus.
Phase 6: Re-Integration Seminar/Senior Presentation
The culmination of the global studies major is an analysis and presentation of students' field learning in the form of two courses and a final evaluation. Students enroll in a special re-entry seminar, GLBL 420 Intercultural Journeys (3 units), within one semester of returning to campus. The course provides an extended period of time for consciously reflecting upon, reinterpreting, and organizing field learning. They concurrently enroll in GLBL 496 Senior Seminar: Global Issues and Prospects (3), in which they prepare and present a senior thesis which seeks to interpret a range of global issues in light of the Kingdom of God.
The final evaluation marks the official end of the program. Students reflect on and project future plans for continuing study, research, service, and employment. They also assess the impact of the program on their personal and vocational lives and recommend to the faculty changes to the program.
All global studies majors complete 48 units of required coursework. Because several courses in the major also satisfy general studies requirements, many students find they have space left to augment their program with available electives. Some (like Community Life) are only available during the GLT. Other on-campus courses (like the minor in English language teaching) are designed to help students acquire practical service skills.
