Global GE

Global GE

Develop a Language and Global Competencies General Education Theme

CSULB requires a sequence of 18 GE courses broken down into 15 category baskets, with one three-unit global course requirement.  There are existing international course options in 8 of these 15 categories and the possibility exists to create courses to cover with international/global content that cover 3 more for a total of 11 courses with international/global content. At present there is no conversation between departments offering courses with global content, and it is difficult for students to seek them out.  In 2013 The GSI carried at Global Learning Inventory where it analyzed all syllabi (7049) for the Academic Year 12-13.  The study found 157 courses across curricula where at least one section had a significant international or global component and other sections of the same course did not, demonstrating that the opportunity to capitalize on global learning outcomes without compromising other GE and disciplinary learning objectives is significant.  Yet, because it isn’t formalized or woven into GE, students have no way of self- selecting into those courses. Findings indicated that 19% of the courses at CSULB have international or global content.  However, those courses tend to be offered in silos and poorly distributed across the diverse department offerings with a few offering a significant number of international/global courses and most offering few to none. As a result, nearly two-thirds of CSULB students graduate with the one global course in GE as the only global or international content anywhere in their university education. The Language and Global Competencies General Education Theme will bring together these optional international/global courses available from across departments and thread them into a single track through the GE sequence. Of particular interest in this objective are the opportunities for Heritage Speakers of Spanish (with more than 10,000 Latino students on campus and an estimated 74.6% of Latinos in Southern California speaking at home we estimate approximately 7500 Heritage Speakers of Spanish at CSULB).   The intensive 6-unit Spanish for Spanish Speakers course is a highly innovative hybrid course that can fulfill a GE requirement  (Category C: Humanities), yet relatively few Heritage Speakers take it and even fewer connect this language development with an international content critical thinking course, global competencies development.