By completing the Global Perspectives 21 Curriculum, students graduate with a minor in Global Studies. The Global Studies minor is constituted by core classes and electives devoted to teaching the skills and insights needed to fulfill Drury’s mission to liberate persons to participate responsibly in and contribute to life in a global community. It also provides the broad perspectives, the ability to “learn how to learn,” as well as particular skills that employers and graduate schools want to complement the knowledge and methods developed in the major.

Goals:

• Prepare students for leadership roles in which creativity and interdisciplinary thinking will be essential. Students will gain experience in integrating multiple experiences and diverse sources of information into innovative solutions to contemporary issues – both local and global.
• Develop student understanding of the Western tradition, scientific and quantitative reasoning, and the diversity of human experiences and cultures.
• Enhance student abilities in writing, critical thinking, and oral communication.
• Cultivate student abilities in ethical and moral reasoning.
• Foster cross-cultural understanding, recognizing the value and integrity of multiple world cultures, religions, etc., and skill in cross-cultural communication that rests upon mutual respect and understanding.
• Liberate students to become engaged citizens who pursue a vision for social justice.

Outcomes:

• Graduates will apply disciplinary, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary models of analysis to contemporary world issues.
• Graduates will demonstrate an understanding of globalization's causes and effects.
• Graduates will apply deontological, utilitarian, and virtue ethics approaches to ethical reasoning.
• Graduates will compose effective papers, reports, and projects.
• Graduates will demonstrate the ability to present information orally.
• Graduates will demonstrate the ability to apply critical thinking strategies.
• Graduates will apply strategies to analyze the meaning and aesthetic structures of literary, artistic, and/or musical artifacts.
• Graduates will be able to identify and explain significant ideas and events of Western Culture, including key elements of the American experience.
• Graduates will demonstrate a basic understanding of social science, its methodology, and its understanding of human behavior and social systems.
• Graduates will be able to perform basic arithmetic and algebraic operations and use mathematical concepts to comprehend, interpret, and communicate quantitative information.
• Graduates will be able to apply scientific methods to solve discrete problems.
• Graduates will be able to analyze diverse traditions, social institutions and symbolic systems.
• Graduates will have practiced the skills of conceptualization, synthesis and expression in finding imaginative solutions to artistic challenges.
• Graduates will develop a love of learning, questioning, and discovering that will allow them to enrich their personal and professional lives.