To ensure that students are best equipped for the increasingly complex global realities ahead, Global College has a structured and focused curriculum with freedom of academic subjects through independent study.

Global College utilizes classroom and field-based seminars, low faculty to student ratios, community-based service learning, directed independent study projects, internships and one-on-one tutorials. Central to the curriculum are requirements that students focus on several key regions of the world – chosen from international centers in China, Costa Rica, India, Japan and South Africa – and a New York-based final capstone semester, where students complete their senior thesis.

Global College students have won a variety of distinguished scholarships including Fulbright, NSEP, Gilman, Freeman-Asia and Rotary.

Yearly Seminars and Capstone Experiences
In addition to area studies and language courses at each center, each of the four years has its own seminar that introduces students to critical texts in theory and method as well as great classic texts. An academic advisory board works with local faculty members and staff to ensure that the core texts of basic disciplines are well-represented and that students are prepared for advanced study. Progression through the four-year program is clearly defined through the increasing sophistication of texts in these yearly seminars. Capstone experiences include a career preparation seminar, an internship in New York City and completion of an undergraduate thesis.

Guided and Independent Field Experience
Global College students are trained in the anthropological and sociological theories and methods necessary to successfully conduct guided and independent fieldwork in a foreign cultural environment. In the freshman year, students learn fundamental approaches to the study of culture through selected foundational texts in the humanities and social sciences as well as fundamental approaches to fieldwork through basic assignments conducted locally under close faculty supervision.

In the sophomore year, students are introduced to more specific theories and methods and learn to propose an ethnographic research project of their own choosing that applies the appropriate qualitative and quantitative tools to the problem in question. They also undertake a guided independent study supervised by a faculty advisor.

In the junior year, students are given the opportunity to further develop and test theories and methods under continued faculty supervision in different cultural contexts.

Additionally, students learn how to propose and design a larger and fully independent project, which is conducted in the first semester of their senior year.

Students also have numerous opportunities to conduct supervised internships with various local grassroots, non-governmental organizations.

Learning Community
Global College is a dynamic, interactive and vibrant learning community that is multifaceted in its approach to education. The learning community consists not only of Global College students, study abroad students, faculty members and staff, but also of the citizens of the communities throughout the world in which students are studying.

The educational setting is not simply a building or a campus, but rather the world, with its inherent social, environmental and political developments. Our Global College community is simultaneously close-knit and geographically dispersed.

One-on-one advising on a weekly basis, combined with regular community meetings at each center, a Global College community listserv, program-wide Internet chats, as well as podcasting by Global College students and faculty members, help to sustain and enhance this global learning community.

Each of the centers, with its integrated faculty and staff support systems, embodies a close-knit, personal learning community within Global College. Student peer mentors are appointed at each center to offer additional assistance to new students.

Individual Flexibility
Global College is renowned for the individual flexibility students can attain in their academic plans. Students may choose to pursue their studies in two different locations in their sophomore and junior years. They have great freedom in choosing an area of concentration to explore in their junior and senior years. In addition, students have the option to pursue at least three credits of independent study per semester, and must complete a one-semester independent study project in their senior year.

For the final senior thesis, a student may combine field work skills from anthropology with an interest in art history to explore differences in religious or cultural appreciations of the Mysore Palace in South India. Or a student may use a framework from sociology to research the experiences of Nicaraguan migrant women in Costa Rica, which may become a springboard for a thesis in the senior year on the feminization of migrant labor and the struggles of transnational families. Another student may look at sustainable agriculture and ecology in three cultures, before doing an internship with Slow Foods U.S.A. and parlaying his experiences into a job as a lobbyist in Washington, DC.