Global Studies is an interdisciplinary program featuring courses that converge around 21st century problems and their implications for a sustainable future. The curriculum is organized around contemporary global topics such as: food, water, health, migration, transportation, and energy.

Courses are team-taught by two or more faculty from across the social and natural sciences, humanities and the arts, with a focus on integrating local and global knowledge and skills. Using sustainability as one of the broad organizing principles around which curricular content is structured, students learn to identify intersections between local life and global forces, and to understand how contemporary problems are mediated by particular geographic, demographic and sociopolitical forces across local-global scales.

Students gain broad knowledge of key competencies required to succeed in a global world and workforce – with emphasis on how to manage complexity, diversity and change, and how to apply acquired knowledge in real-world settings. Core competencies that students develop include: interdisciplinary critical analysis, evidence-based reasoning (qualitative and quantitative), the ability to link local-global theory and practice, collaboration across differences, and ethical reasoning and action.