Dear Friends:

I am pleased to introduce you to the Friends World Program, a unique program in international higher education.  Friends World College, founded in 1965 by a group of committed Quakers, was established to provide a genuinely alternative educational path that would lead students to consider the world’s pressing issues as a focus of their curriculum.  The college was established on a Quaker foundation of community, governance by consensus, and education through firsthand experience which would be recorded and documented through the construction of a Portfolio of Learning.

In 1991, the college affiliated with Long Island University and its Southampton College campus and in 2005 it relocated to the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University.  The Friends World Program is a discrete educational entity of Long Island University, with its own curriculum, faculty, staff, graduation requirements and internal governance procedures.  Long Island University is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, 3624 Market Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, (215) 662-5606. The Commission on Higher Education is an institutional accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education Accreditation.  The degree and certificate programs are also approved and registered by the New York State Department of Education.

The international and experiential approach to education is the heart of Friends World and is what makes it unique.  There are other colleges that employ an experiential method and still others that require students to study abroad.   However, it is not likely that you will find another program where you will reside and learn in at least two other cultures and regions while pursuing a course of study that you have been instrumental in designing with the help of a faculty advisor.

There are many changes taking place within Friends World – these are both exciting and challenging, in the face of the events of September 11, 2001.  I am heartened by conversations with students and parents who think that now – more than ever - is the time for making a commitment to cross-cultural education.  We are strengthening our commitment to our original goals emphasizing themes and programs that will focus even more on peace and reconciliation.  

Our Program in Comparative Religion and Culture allows students to undertake an experiential study in three sites:  varying year to year with past sites including Taiwan, China, India, Thailand, Greece, Italy, Romania and Turkey.  We continue to maintain our centers in China, Japan, India, Costa Rica and Brooklyn.  Perhaps, our biggest change is taking place in our Latin American Center which will host the Foundation Year Program for the first time in fall 2005.  Naturally, we will also have a program for continuing students in Costa Rica as well. 

Besides offering the four-year degree program, leading to a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies, Friends World serves as a host to visiting students from colleges and universities across the United States.  Our overseas centers provide unmatched opportunities to pursue many fields of study in the context of other cultures and to learn firsthand about those cultures.  What better way, incidentally, to learn foreign languages than through this sort of immersion?  We welcome visiting students to our Friends World learning community.

Friends World Program is not for everyone.  We offer a place for you to make practical use of learned theories and concepts and, as a result, gain a profound understanding of global issues.  You will do this in the company of other students who value curiosity, sensitivity, self-motivation and a spirit of adventure.

Let me close by quoting from Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.  He has said:  “The challenges of our age are problems without passports; to address them we need blueprints without borders.  The United Nations is there to provide them.”  Kofi Annan’s vision of the United Nations is a challenge to all of us involved in international education.  Can we break down the boundaries of our traditional ways of thinking and develop new ways of seeing, understanding and existing in our world?

I wholeheartedly invite you to read on, and I thank you for your interest in the Friends World Program.  The entire staff welcomes your inquiries. 

Sincerely,

Robert Glass, Ph.D.
Dean