Report of the inaugural Global Citizenship Summit is now online
The report from the inaugural Global Citizenship Summit is now available to read, download and share. The summit that took place from October 29-31 2015 at Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, GA was held as part of the Salzburg Global Seminar Mellon-Global Citizenship Program (M-GCP).
This first summit focused on the theme of Sustainability and Innovation. An Undergraduate Research Conference with the theme, Global Sustainability: Cultural and Scientific Issues and Perspectives, was organized by Lindsey Wilson College and held in concurrently at Clark Atlanta University on October 30.
Approximately fifty educators and practitioners representing around twenty of the M-GCP institutions were brought together at the summit to showcase innovative global citizenship education approaches, share information and results, align work across the various activities of the Fellows, develop new spin-off activities and plan for the activities' ongoing sustainability.
Also attending the summit were prominent experts in global citizenship education as well as members of the Advisory Council of the M-GCP.
The summit built on the rich history and legacy of civil and human rights as global engagement by partnering with Atlanta-based institutions for events at the Jimmy Cart Presidential Library and Museum and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Inc.
The M-GCP has continued its work with a second round of project activity grants being awarded earlier in the year and also by making preparations for a second Global Citizenship Summit planned for the fall of 2016.
The Mellon Global Citizenship Program builds on the Mellon Fellow Community Initiative and supports thirty-six colleges and universities representing select HBCUs and members of the Appalachian College Association in their ongoing efforts to develop, implement and expand global citizenship education activities on their campuses and in collaboration with others involved in the M-GCP.
The Mellon Global Citizenship Program is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
More information about the Mellon Global Citizen Program can be found at the M-GCP website: m-gcp.salzburgglobal.org
Historically Black Colleges and Universities and members of the Appalachian College Association further partnerships at inaugural Global Citizenship Summit
More than 40 faculty and administrators from select Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and members of the Appalachian College Association (ACA) convened at the first annual Global Citizenship Summit to share and receive feedback on deepening global citizenship education work, expand and enhance multi-campus partnerships, and establish new collaborative program activities. The Summit was hosted by Clark Atlanta University and co-organized by Morehouse and Spelman Colleges, October 29-31, 2015.
“Global citizenship education is a conscious and courageous commitment to the future,” Dr. Walter Fluker, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership at Boston University School of Theology, told Summit participants. “We are not sure how we will get to where we are going, but we are prepared to make this first step together.”
The Summit, which included programs at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum as well as the Center for Civil and Human Rights, was a result of a competitive grant process organized as part of the Mellon Global Citizenship Program (M-GCP) of Salzburg Global Seminar. The M-GCP was launched in 2014 to further the innovative work that moved 36 US colleges and universities – all of which are either HBCUs or members of the ACA – toward becoming sites of global citizenship education as part of the Mellon Fellow Community Initiative.
Focusing on the theme Sustainability and Innovation, participants in the Summit heard from world-class speakers on global citizenship education and outlined concrete next steps for the creation of the Global Education Consortium, an independent organization that will support activities and partnerships developed through the M-GCP. An undergraduate research conference organized by Lindsey Wilson College was held concurrent to the Summit at Clark Atlanta University and was an opportunity for students to engage directly in the core theme and present their own innovations and ideas.
“Global citizenship education is the umbrella that captures various projects found across university spaces,” Dr. Ronald A. Johnson, president of Clark Atlanta University, said. “One benefit of global citizenship collaboration is that we improve our understanding of each other and how we relate to the world itself. Universities must look at mechanisms for multi-campus collaboration to prepare students to move to a place in which they are more accepting and more understanding of the dynamics that make the human community who we are and how we all fit in the context of this planet. To me, that is at the heart of global citizenship education.”
The Summit offered 2015 M-GCP grantees the opportunity to discuss the process and results of recent multi-campus programmatic activities, including the global education visiting specialist series Global Citizenship Revisited: New Approaches to Achieve Global Competencies between Ferrum College, Bennett College, and King University, along with a partnership between Florida Memorial University and Berea College on Global African Diaspora Citizenship. Dr. Bettie Starr, vice president for academic affairs at Lindsey Wilson College, described the upcoming study away incentive program Trading Spaces, a collaboration between her institution and Clark Atlanta University, as an opportunity for urban and rural students to gain new experiences and perspectives that may otherwise not be available to them.
“Global citizenship education is a vibrant and integrated part of our campus,” Starr said. “We have revised our general education requirements to include the student-learning outcome ‘engaged local and global citizenship,’ and we have started a Center for Global Citizenship on campus. When the opportunity arose to collaborate with HBCUs, we jumped on it.”
Students benefiting from the activities of the M-GCP also had the opportunity to address the value and impact of global citizenship on their educational experiences.
“Global citizenship education forces me to operate outside of my comfort zone,” Sederra Ross, a senior chemistry major at Clark Atlanta University, told Summit participants. “As an aspiring green chemist, global education has given me the tools to make myself a better citizen and a better person. It’s like I have superpowers.”
Throughout the Summit, participants met in thematic issue groups to identify opportunities for future multi-campus collaboration on global citizenship education programs. The Leadership Circle, a working group of senior administrators from M-GCP partner institutions, met with M-GCP Advisory Council members to outline specific plans for a new independent consortium to facilitate ongoing collaboration as leaders in the field of global citizenship education once the current program activities end in 2017.
In addition to deepening global citizenship work across academic institutions, the Summit also addressed the need for colleges and universities to form strategic partnerships outside of academia. M-GCP Advisory Council member Dr. Yolanda Moses moderated a panel of experts at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum that included Professor Wallace Ford, founder of Fordworks LLC, and Dr. Jennie K. Lincoln, director of The Americas Program at The Carter Center.
“The first study abroad programs at universities were a choice,” Lincoln said. “Global education is no longer a choice. The world is becoming flat, and the requirement for educators is to prepare students to be able to function in that world. Developing strategic partnerships between academia and the private sector, government, and non-profit organizations is critical.”
At The National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Inc, civil rights leader and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young, encouraged Summit participants and students from the Undergraduate Research Conference to identify strategic opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration on solving the world’s most pressing issues. Fellow panelist Carlotta Arthur, program director of the Clare Boothe Luce Program at the Henry Luce Foundation, concurred, and reminded the participants both how unique and highly valuable the collaboration among the HBCU and ACA schools is.
“The specific constellation of ACA and HBCU institutions offers a unique opportunity, through cooperation, to make ‘globalization at home’ and ‘citizenship without borders’ a powerful and tangible learning experience,” said M-GCP manager David Goldman.
Other speakers at the Global Citizenship Summit and Undergraduate Research Conference included Dr. Maghan Keita, director of the Institute for Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University; Anne Gahongayire, former Secretary General, Supreme Court, Rwanda; Deborah J. Richardson, interim CEO of The National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Inc; and Dr. Champa Patel, director of Campaigns Programme and interim director of the South East Asia and Pacific Regional Office at Amnesty International.
More information about the Mellon Global Citizen Program can be found at the M-GCP website: m-gcp.salzburgglobal.org
Newly established organization to operate Salzburg Global Seminar’s successful Global Citizenship Program
After 12 years, 71 sessions, and more than 3000 participants from 80 colleges and universities in the United States, the Global Citizenship Program (GCP) is reorganizing to increase its scope and streamline its operations. The GCP’s staff have formed an independent organization, the Global Citizenship Alliance, which is assuming operating responsibility for global citizenship education programs previously run under Salzburg Global’s aegis. The Alliance will continue to offer sessions “in association with Salzburg Global Seminar,” underscoring both organizations’ commitment to innovative, highest quality programs. Following a consultative process extending over several months, the senior leadership of Salzburg Global Seminar and the GCP staff agreed to place the GCP, formerly known as the International Study Program (ISP), on new footing. Growing interest by program partners in a range of global citizenship education programs – close to home as well as overseas – argued for a dedicated organization able to respond flexibly to the needs and expectations of program partners and alumni. Areas of interest for the newly formed Alliance include:Miami Dade College sends students to Salzburg Global Seminar for 12th consecutive year
Fifty students from Miami Dade College will arrive at Salzburg Global Seminar to participate in Global Citizenship Program Session 66 | Global Citizenship: Ethics and Engagement, from February 26 to March 5.
The long-running Global Citizenship Program aims to develop young people who are consciously prepared to live and work in the complex interdependent society of the 21st Century and contribute to improving the common global welfare of our planet and its inhabitants.
Salzburg Global partners with dozens of universities and colleges across the USA to put global citizenship at the forefront of academic curricula, extra-curricular programs and institutional policies.
2015 marks the 12th consecutive year Miami Dade College in Miami, Florida has traveled to Schloss Leopoldskron for a dedicated GCP session.
Salzburg Global is delighted to welcome back former Associate Director of Education David Goldman, who returns as a faculty member alongside Salzburg Global Fellows Farid Hafez, researcher in Political Science at the University of Salzburg and Tazalika M. Te Reh, PhD candidate at the American Studies Department of the T.U. Dortmund University, together with long-serving GCP faculty member Reinhold Wagnleitner, retired associate professor of modern history at the University of Salzburg and visiting professor of United States history at three American universities.
“Global citizens are consciously prepared to live and work in the complex interdependent society of the 21st Century and contribute to improving the common global welfare of our planet and its inhabitants,” says GCP Director Astrid Schröder.
“In an age of globalization which increasingly brings people in contact with other cultures as a result of changing social, political, and economic activities and technological advances, the need to understand international affairs, to recognize cultural values other than our own, and to understand world events from a variety of perspectives, has become increasingly critical. So has the need for people to think and act as global citizens in order to address some of the most pressing issues of global concern that are facing humanity in the 21st Century.”
As the world commemorates the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, participants will travel to Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site in nearby Germany to better understand how and why the Holocaust unfolded, and witness first-hand the terrible consequences when understanding and acceptance of the other breaks down at the most extreme level imaginable.
GCP participants will be exposed to a number of perspectives on what it means to be a global citizen through faculty presentations, and develop these ideas further through small group discussions. Presentation topics include The United States of America and the World: Views from a Distance, Mapping Globalization, and The Islamic Faith Community in Austria.
Participants will also take part in a teleconference with GCP alumnus and Salzburg Global "Face for the Future" Lavar Thomas, who will be sharing his experiences as a Peace Corps community health volunteer in Kigali, Rwanda.
Global Citizenship: Ethics and Engagement is part of Salzburg Global’s long-running Global Citizenship Program. More information on the session can be found here: www.salzburgglobal.org/go/66. You can follow all the discussions on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram by following the hashtag #GCP66.
"Students at the Margins" Fellow reflects on her experiences in Salzburg
Betty Overton-Adkins has observed higher education and Salzburg Global from a wide variety of vantage points. During her long career in higher education—working as a researcher, funder, policymaker and academic—she's attended sessions in Salzburg in the role of participant, facilitator and faculty.
As she discusses in an interview with Salzburg Global, she's observed how both the organization and higher education institutions worldwide have worked to embrace a more informal and inclusive approach. For example, at her first session in 1995, entitled "Higher Education: Institutional Structures for the 21st Century," participants never asked questions after lectures in Parker Hall, and everyone had to walk from the Meierhof to the Schloss for a coffee break.
Listen to the interview below.
Success after partner institution launches its own Global Citizenship Institute aimed at high school level
To paraphrase a quote by Anatole France: ‘When a thing has been done and done well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.’ This tongue-in-cheek dictum was the precept of an exciting joint venture between St. Mark’s School in Southborough, Massachusetts, and the Global Citizenship Program (GCP)* at Salzburg Global Seminar culminating in the launch of a new program, the Global Citizenship Institute at St. Mark’s which is intentionally modeled after the GCP.
St. Mark’s School became a partner institution of the GCP in 2011 and at the time was the first high school to send teachers to this program which usually is for higher education institutions only. Soon the idea was born that St. Mark’s would emulate the program by adopting and adapting it for the high school sector. The actual planning process took more than a year and involved a small team of champions from St. Mark’s as well as GCP staff in a consulting capacity. This work was generously sponsored by Bruce Wilson, a St. Mark’s board member and close friend of Salzburg Global who firmly believed in the potential of this joint endeavor and in the need to teach the lessons of global citizenship at high school level.
The great moment came in early July when 33 students and 8 teachers from both private and public high schools based in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, California, the UK, and Australia convened at the St. Mark’s campus for the inaugural Global Citizenship Institute. The GCI was led by St. Mark’s School faculty – all of whom are GCP alumni. Building on their experience in Salzburg, they have a similar understanding with regard to the defining ideas of global citizenship and how to make it tangible in the classroom. This spring, Laura Appell-Warren, Director of the GCI, participated in one of the GCP student sessions which gave her some further insights in terms of engaging youngsters in envisioning borderless citizenship.
From the Salzburg Global side Astrid Schroeder, GCP Program Director, and Adam Beeson, former Salzburg Global staff member and now teaching at a high school, attended the week-long meeting in Southborough offering presentations and providing advice when needed. Peter and Hedy Rose, both long term GCP faculty, came as guest faculty. Two GCP student alumni, Kanza Naqvi (San José State University) and Jeremiah Lindgren (Kingsborough Community College) served as interns.
A beginning has been made and indeed a very successful one with plans for a second edition of the Global Citizenship Institute next summer already in the making. And what is more, the precept of ‘take it and copy it’ has worked and the GCP can now proudly call itself an incubator of global citizenship education also at high schools.
*Since its own launch in 2004, the GCP at Salzburg Global has gained a significant subject expertise on global citizenship working with partner institutions to bring students, faculty, and administrators to Schloss Leopoldskron. The main goal of the Program is to initiate institutional change by forming long-term relations with these partners. It is designed to help build a critical mass of change agents on campus who introduce notions of global citizenship to the classroom and in fact into every aspect of campus life.
Reinhold Wagnleitner discusses how attitudes to globalization and the GCP have changed in 60 sessions
Reinhold Wagnleitner, long-term faculty member of the Salzburg Global Seminar's Global Citizenship Program delivers his lecture on “The United States of America and the World: Views From a Distance” to the participants of GCP 60 from Miami Dade College.
“[Globalization] is a very, very complicated term and what we are doing is trying to find a way of untangling this web of meanings and of sometimes not very meaningful expressions,” he intones.
I ask Wagnleitner, a lecturer in modern history at the University of Salzburg, for a short description of globalization, but for the seasoned professor this would be akin to asking a politician to simply solve the recession overnight. “We cannot talk for 30 hours,” he jokes.
He tries to summate the key points that participants of the Global Citizenship Program should take away. “Globalization is a term that has been used predominately from the end of the Cold War in describing first of all an economic and financial shrinking of the world with loss of the Soviet zone of influence. The world seemed to become one market more or less, and the financial flows have become dramatically stronger. Globalization is also the movement of people: refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, which are influenced by the wars, revolution, anti-revolution, so we have in a sense a global flow of people or at least many people try to get into this flow because they have to get out of horrible situations. Then we have cultural globalization where one could argue, pessimistically, that the whole world becomes a homogenous place but globalization has to be understood as both global and local, so ‘glocalization’ is coming in.”
Wagnleitner, who has also taught at numerous college institutions across the United States, first gave presentations to the participants of the Global Citizenship Program, then International Study Program, a decade ago. He explained how his talk had developed organically alongside an idea he had for a presentation at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna, focusing on converging and diverging views of the United States.
Reflecting on a decade of preparing for this unique educational experience, Wagnleitner sees a significant shift in the attitudes of the participants. “The reaction of the students and faculty and administrators with whom we have been working has evolved from being a mostly defensive viewpoint, as if they were responsible for these growing negative views outside, into more understanding and the understanding of politics and elections and the influence of Presidents Bush and Obama. So I do think that the GCP participants in a sense reflect the changes of the US itself, of the mood in the country itself, and in the mood of others looking towards the United States. It is a very good reflection of that I think.”
In a decade that is bookended by 9/11 and the death of Bin Laden, Americans of all ages have had to come to terms with the idea that the US is not this beacon and bastion of liberty that they hold so dear. War has shot a hole in the belief of American justice and increased access to media coverage, thanks to 24 hour news channels, mobiles and the internet has led to a proliferation of sources by which students have reassessed their position in the world.
“The last ten years have definitely made more US Americans, and people of other countries, aware that they have to be more cooperative and we can’t do this just by war because, as we know, not that much has been achieved as was the plan. If the richest countries in the world are unable to solve their problems by war, maybe there needs to be a plan B.”
Yet, Wagnleitner, the chair of the Society of Modern History, is careful not to make grand or blasé statements. In a decade that has seen a lot of negative reaction, he insists that learning from mistakes is equally important. “We may make mistakes but not everything that we are doing is wrong.
“I do see these young US Americans who come to these programs here being able to go back and have a better understanding of the way things are done here and that there is not only one way to do things, and learn from that.”
As a recipient of the Tolerance and Diversity Prize from the Embassy of the United States in Vienna, Wagnleitner has long since believed in the need to be considerate and empathetic of alternative views from other cultures. Weighing in on topical issues, Reinhold puts his philosophy to practice in discussing Ukraine. “What has to be seen in the West is Russian feelings of security. NATO has gone eastwards and the Soviet Union was promised that NATO would not go eastwards. So whilst not supporting Russian imperialism in Ukraine, from a Russian viewpoint, and that is the empathy one has to have for an opponent, the actions are understandable from their side.”
More, Wagnleitner warns that discussions such as those at Salzburg need continue to provide fruitful outcomes because the media lacks total clarity on these big issues. “The biggest problem is not that they are bad or anything sinister like that, but it is that they are not informed. They are leaving out certain things, because they themselves do not know what is going on.”
There have been different ways of channeling this communication throughout history. Wagnleitner points to music, religion and the adoption of the English language as a lingua franca. “The spread of English to become at least the second language of many people who have the privilege of being schooled is potentially a force for understanding. Some people see it as a force of imperialism, cultural imperialism, but I would rather speak two or three languages, and thereby get deeper insights into another culture, into another way of speaking, into another literature and into another media usage, into another way of running a government, than being bound to only my language.
“Each language acquisition opens up a completely new world for the learner: how to do things, how to think.”
This is the very ethos of the GCP at Salzburg: to foster a new approach to cultural acquisition and understanding in students and the institutions that they attend. It is important that the study of this trend should occur in Europe, in order to better understand the history of relationships between much of the developed world. “America was not just discovered, it was conquered and it was also invented by Europeans; the very idea of America is a European invention," says Wagnleitner.
“Globalization, which now people think is ‘Americanization’ – a term I only use in quotes because it doesn’t make much sense – was already begun by the Europeanization of the world, by European imperialism, by European colonialism,” he adds.
Program inspired by three 'clusters': Imagination, Sustainability and Justice
Salzburg Global’s 2014 Program will feature over 25 distinctive sessions and workshops inspired by three interdependent values: Imagination, Sustainability and Justice.
The three values underpin Salzburg Global’s new program ‘clusters’ and aim to form the foundations for global citizenship.
Under these ‘clusters’, a number of topics will be discussed. For example, participants will be asked how societies can renew their education, how to improve life chances for present and future generations, or examine how societies can reframe responsibilities.
The 2014 Program brings together distinctive multi-year projects and partnerships with the common goal of promoting vision, courage and leadership to tackle the most complex challenges of a globalized society.
The Salzburg Academies – covering Global Citizenship, Media and Global Change, and the Future of International Law – will continue to prepare outstanding young people with the skills to drive change.
Salzburg Global Seminar remains determined in breaking down barriers separating people and ideas. It spans the world’s regions and challenges countries at all stage of development and institutions across all sectors to rethink their relationship and identify shared interests and goals.
The program is available for download as PDF.
Publication features essays, personal reflections and the next steps forward
A new report on The Mellon Fellow Community Initiative (MFCI) is now available to view online.
Produced by Salzburg Global, the report is entitled, ‘Creating Sites of Global Citizenship’.
The MFCI offers week-long seminars and shorter workshops for faculty and administrators to develop tailored approaches of incorporating global citizenship education into the fabric of their institutions.
In the last five years, the MFCI has brought together more than 250 people from 36 colleges and universities with world-class international faculty.
These students have been taken from either designated Historically Black Colleges and Universities or members of the Appalachian College Association.
The report includes a number of essays on Global Citizenship Education, personal experiences and reflections from MFCI participants, and information on the next steps forward.
In addition to this, Salzburg Global President and Chief Executive Officer, Stephen Salyer has penned a letter outlining the MFCI’s significance.
In an extract taken from this letter, Mr Salyer writes: “As this report demonstrates, the MFCI’s unusual constellation of partners is uniquely suited to developing and implementing innovative approaches to global citizenship education in classrooms, across campuses, and throughout communities.
“Through the MFCI, our partners have embarked on a journey to explore and reinterpret their own historical legacies for the 21st century.”
The MFCI is based on Salzburg Global’s Global Citizenship Program, created in 2004, which has brought together nearly 3,000 higher education administrators, professors and students from 80 colleges and universities.
Jochen Fried, Director of Education at Salzburg Global, and David Goldman, Associate Director of Education at Salzburg Global, have been involved in all stages of MFCI conceptualization, planning and implementation.
The initiative remains committed to strengthening educational access, success and relevance.
It holds a determination to find practical ways to advance global citizenship through rigorous teaching, research, cross-cultural exchange and community outreach.
US Supreme Court Justice speaks at Global Citizen Program
US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy took the floor at Salzburg Global Seminar on Monday, July 15 to make some remarks “On Citizenship” to an engaged audience of university and college faculty and administrators.
Addressing participants from community colleges, small liberal arts colleges and large state universities, Justice Kennedy urged them to see themselves as the “trustees of freedom” and to encourage their students to also see themselves as such.
The more than 50 college professors and administrators were taking part in the 59th session of the Global Citizenship Program, held last week at Schloss Leopoldskron.
This session on ‘Education for Global Citizenship: What, Why, and How?’ focused on how colleges and universities can embed global citizenship education into the fabric of their institutions.
Justice Kennedy has a long relationship with Salzburg Global Seminar and the Global Citizenship Program.
He first came to a Salzburg Global session in 1988 – the same year as he was nominated to the US Supreme Court – as a member of the faculty for session 269 ‘American Law and Legal Institutions’.
He has since served as faculty or a guest lecturer at two law-related sessions, as well as five sessions of the GCP and the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change.
The session concluded on July 21 with participants having developed strategies to create, strengthen and implement programs designed to transform their institutions into ‘sites of global citizenship.’
The GCP is concluding its tenth year of programming and has fostered deep and sustainable change at over 80 colleges and universities.
Jochen Fried joins European Training Foundation’s FRAME project
Jochen Fried, Salzburg Global Seminar's Director of Education, has been appointed to the advisory board of the European Training Foundation (ETF)'s FRAME project, which supports pre-accession countries to strengthen their human resource development.
ETF is a decentralized agency of the European Union based in Turin, Italy.
Its mission is to help transition and developing countries to harness the potential of their human capital through the reform of education, training and labor market systems.
The FRAME project aims to answer such questions as: "Which skills should we (in our country) develop towards 2020, and how can these skills be generated by the education and training system? What are the capacity needs of institutions to achieve the 2020 vision for skills? (This includes capacity review of policy planning, implementation and monitoring and the capacity to use foresight as forward looking policy making approach). What indicators are needed to monitor progress and targets for the 2020 vision of skills? How can countries create synergy in human resource development and learn from each other?"
"The countries seeking to accede to the European Union require a strategic approach to developing a vision for human resource development focusing in particular on the skills that are more likely to be needed in the period 2014-20," states the ETF website.
As member of the FRAME Advisory Board, Dr. Fried will attend the Torino Process Conference 2013: Moving Skills Forward on May 8-9.
The Torino Process was launched in 2010, and is a biannual participatory analytical review of the status and progress of vocational education and training in the ETF partner countries, which include not only countries in the "Enlargement Region" such as the former Yugoslavian states and Turkey, but also the wider "European Neighbourhood" and Central Asia.
According to the ETF, "The objective of the Torino Process is twofold: to acquire up-to-date knowledge about the policies and their results in a country; and to strengthen the ownership, participation and evidence-bae of policy making to improve the performance of policies."
In his advisory role, Dr. Fried will be able to draw on his extensive experience and contacts accumulated during the Universities Project (1998-2003) and the Global Citizenship Program (2004-present) of Salzburg Global Seminar.
The cooperation with ETF will help strengthen SGS’s relations to the EU and generate synergies across our programs.
The Torino Process Conference 2013: Moving Skills Forward starts today, May 8 at 2pm CEST and will run for two days in Turin, Italy.
A guide to the conference can be found in the ETF's Issuu library and for those wishing to follow the conference live, ETF (@etfeuropa) and other participants will be tweeting on the hashtag #etftrp and posting on Storify.
2013 sees new name and new partnerships for Seminar’s longest-running program
If all good things must come to an end, a quick glance at the 2013 Salzburg Global Seminar program listing would suggest that the well-renowned International Study Program (ISP) has disappeared. But fear not! The Seminar’s longest-running program has not vanished, but been renamed the Global Citizenship Program.
Besides its new name, 2013 introduces a number of new facets to the Global Citizenship Program (GCP): the year will also see newly revised week-long programs launched and new partnerships being formed.
What’s in a name?
In essence, the International Study Program has always been a global citizenship program – indeed that principle has been at the very heart of the program since it was established in 2004 with its first two partners, Miami Dade College in Florida and Iowa State University.
The need for the new name, explains Dr. Jochen Fried, Salzburg Global Seminar’s Director of Education, came from the growing recognition of the distinction between ‘international’ and ‘global.’
“Global and international are not the same,” says Fried, who has been leading the Seminar’s higher education programs since 1999.
“Global is the combination that is planetary and local at the same time – like climate change. Is climate change local? Of course it’s local – you experience it locally! But at the other end, it cannot be addressed on the local level alone. You can’t escape it by shrinking it to its local or national dimension. So it is global in reach.
“That is different from the ‘era of international’ when governments were basically still able to protect the people within a nation state against unwanted external influences and disruptions. For example, in economics they used tariffs, customs or import quotas to deliver on their promise, which is to preserve and promote the well-being of their citizens. But in a globalized world, the power and capacity of the traditional political actors, including governments, to do so is eroding.”
Many of the aspects that have made the ISP/GCP unique inevitably remain. Since its beginnings, the GCP has sought not only to inspire and enact change within individual participants and their peer groups at their home colleges or universities. Rather, the GCP has aspired to change the very higher education institutions from which the students, faculty and administrators come.
“[The GCP] was not just for the few select people to have a pleasant week in Salzburg but actually to become change agents in their own right, on their own campuses, which in turn requires the institutions to take a strategic approach in sending participants to Salzburg,” explains Fried.
“You can’t expect people to spend a week in Salzburg on an intense week-long program on global citizenship to come back and suddenly make everything change unless you empower them on their own campuses to do so.”
For many participating colleges and universities, the selection of students to come to the four annual week-long programs at Schloss Leopoldskron is very competitive.
Of Miami Dade College, the largest higher education institution in the United States with around 170,000 students, only the best 50 students of its 800-strong honors program are chosen each year.
The annual faculty and administrators program, hosted at Salzburg during the summer break is equally selective.
Fried says that the GCP partner institutions have become very deliberate in appointing (and sponsoring) those who get to come to this program.
“Our partners understand that real change is a long-term effort and requires the buy-in of all the stakeholders, particularly of all faculty and administrators. So it’s the combination that the GCP is offering which makes the difference – that students, faculty and administrators are not just being sent on a short-term study abroad trip or a faculty development exercise in a vacuum. We tell our partners from the start that, if they do it right, over time they will build critical mass on their campus that they can draw upon to plant global citizenship education into the DNA of their institutions.”
Moving on
The program now has some 2500 alumni from almost 80 partner institutions. Many of these students have gone on to pursue higher degrees or seek employment in the international and global arena (and many have returned to Salzburg for SGS’s own internship program); the movement into these areas of study and employment is something many admit they would never have considered had it not been for their time in Salzburg.
The GCP staff in Salzburg, who include David Goldman, Associate Director of Education, Astrid Schroeder, GCP Program Director and Ginte Stankeviciute, the Salzburg Academies’ Program Associate, are trying to support students who want to actively move on from the program, identifying organizations into which graduates can place their global citizenship and social justice-seeking efforts, beyond the scope of those NGOs which are fairly obvious like Amnesty International, Greenpeace and UNICEF, etc.
But it’s not just the students who have ‘graduated’ from the program.
Of the 50 to 60 institutions currently active within the program, many, by virtue of the training of faculty and administrators through both sessions held in Salzburg and the on-site workshops offered at their campuses by the GCP team, have now fully embedded global citizenship into their programs and curricula.
Some institutions have even gone so far as to win national awards for their own global citizenship programs.
They are now ready to take their global citizenship education to the next level. As such, the GCP staff is constantly adjusting the program to partner institutions’ needs and specific requests.
This year, for example, all student sessions will have a specific thematic focus – ‘Global Citizenship and Universal Human Rights,’ ‘Global Citizenship: Ethics and Engagement,’ and ‘Pathways to Global Citizenship: Roots and Routes’ – in addition to the long-running ‘Global Citizenship: At Home and in the World,’ designed with the multi-time returning partners in mind.
Unlikely partners
The partner institutions of the Global Citizenship Program have thus far been all US-based colleges and universities.
But that is not to say that the students have been by any means the traditional image of an all-American student.
“It has become a characteristic of the GCP that we bring together very unlikely partners, and these unlikely partnerships have in and of itself become an asset of the program,” says Fried.
“The HCBUs [Historically Black Universities and Colleges] come together with the Appalachian colleges which serve a very different population; then you have the biggest US higher education institution [Miami Dade College, Florida]; as well as other large and small, urban and rural, community colleges mixing with the splendour and very wealthy liberal arts colleges, like the University of San Francisco. Everyone is coming together.
“This diversity is a unique strength of the GCP and adds a crucial element to the impact that participants and partner institutions alike attest: when it comes to global citizenship, it doesn’t matter where you are coming from—we need to get the same mindset. If we remain stuck in our boxes, we are missing the most elementary lesson of what global citizenship ultimately is all about.”
These unlikely partnerships are deliberate, encouraging students to confront, discuss and understand the national, linguistic, ethnic, religious, social and economic range and multiformity alive in their own country of study, as well as the world at large.
Whilst the GCP grew out of the Salzburg Global Seminar’s Universities Project, it is from community colleges that many of the GCP’s participants come. Dubbed by some as the “Ellis Island of US higher education,” these two-year institutions are often more diverse and more globalized than any other segment in US academia.
"Take for example Kingsborough Community College,” says Fried. “23,000 [students] in Brooklyn, NY; like so many US institutions they have all the flags up of where they have students coming from. In the case of Kingsborough, there are 142 country flags. I doubt that except for the UN there are too many other institutions even in New York that are composed of a similar number of nationalities.
“But we are not romanticizing this. There is the flip-side of globalization and there are clashes in this world. In a very real sense, community colleges of this type are pre-figuring the world as a global village, which will be our daily experience more and more in the future.”
These sort of diverse institutions are a good fit for the GCP because, as Fried says, “They are already globalized, and they are all about providing opportunities for the less privileged.”
Another new aspect of this year’s program is the active international expansion and invitation of non-American institutions to the program, starting with the July faculty and administrators session.
From there, Fried hopes to expand and, in the near future, have students from these other countries participate alongside their American peers, similar to the three-week Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change.
Building from the ground up As the Global Citizenship Program forges new ground in 2013 with its new name, new programs and new partners, its ethos will stay the same.
In its recruitment and expansion, the GCP will continue to put an emphasis on the broadest possible crosscut of partner institutions.
According to Fried, for many, globalization has the distinct flavour of corporate elites dividing up power and wealth among themselves.
To a certain extent, especially in the United States, this is also reflected in whose children get access to the exclusive and expensive universities.
“The GCP combines academic rigor and a spirit of democratic egalitarianism, as it befits a program promoting citizenship with a global perspective.
“That is kind of the pre-consideration that is critical for the idea of global citizenship writ large: all voices must be taken into account,” explains Fried.
“Those who are in the margins experience the impact of globalization in a way that those who call the shots in globalization will never know. And when you experience globalization from below, you probably have more answers for how to address troubles in the global village...
“The constellation of our partner institutions reflects the spirit of what we mean by ‘global citizenship’ – it’s empowerment from below.”
The Global Citizenship Program will this year run on the following dates: February 28-March 7, March 24-31, May 19-25, May 25-June 1, with the faculty and administrators program on July 14-21 entitled ‘Education for Global Citizenship: What, Why and How’.
To find out how your institution can be part of the program, please contact Astrid Schroeder, Global Citizenship Program Director: aschroeder@salzburgglobal.org
We do not accept applications directly from students. Interested students must apply through their home institutions. To find out if your college or university is a partner, please visit our website.
Micah-Sage Bolden on visiting the Dachau Memorial and presentations by Astrid Schröder, Reinhold Wagnleiter and Darci Arnold during his time at Salzburg Global Seminar.
SALZBURG – May 15-18, 2012
My experience with the Salzburg Global Seminar from over the last three days has broadened my emotional range, my international confidence, and my mastery of collaborative action; just as the seminar challenged me intellectually so did it emotionally and socially.
One of the most touching experiences I have had was our trip to the Dachau Memorial. I had been reading about the Holocaust since I was young, but nothing could have prepared me for the heartbreaking weight of visiting a site that was host to the worst of what people of capable of, ‘singing with the voices of thousands of lost souls’. Each exhibit combined historical perspectives with an aura of sentiment unmatched by other memorials I have visited. Our excursion sparked passionate discussion upon our return that not only touched me intellectually, but also spiritually.
The day following our Dachau tour we explored the histories and culture of pre- and post- Cold War Europe with Astrid Schröder, continued our intellectually enriching group work, and experienced a joint class with students from the University of Salzburg taught by Reinhold Wagnleitner, held at the university. My discussions with the Salzburg students helped to explore the intricacies of the problems facing America and addressed European views of the social, political, and economic struggles of the United States.
Finally, Thursday’s presentation by Darci Arnold raised pertinent questions regarding the issues of corporate responsibility, the rising importance of data and integration between data, technology, and our lives, as well as the societal and cultural changes brought on by the advent of digital media and the digital economy. Our group work helped to solidify our views of global citizenship and its importance in our globalized society and aided in the development of lifelong partnerships in the pursuit of social justice and the maintenance of a global citizenship.
My experiences with the seminar have expanded my mental and spiritual capacities and enhanced my understanding of international perceptions of the United States.
Micah-Sage Bolden is a junior at King College in Bristol, TN, USA. He is majoring in history, political science and philosophy, concentrating on intelligence and security studies. He is the communications officer of the King Security and Intelligence Studies Group (KSI) and a member of the King World Awareness and Activation Campaign. He has served as the executive editor of King College’s Security and Intelligence Studies Journal; editor-in-chief of the Kayseean, a bi-weekly student publication; a member of the Board of Directors of the Appalachian Peace Education Center; and co-author of “Social Networking as a Paradigm Shift in Tactical Intelligence Collection” in the 2012 Mediterranean Council for Intelligence Studies. In the future, Micah-Sage would like work in diplomacy and social activism.
King College junior Micah-Sage Bolden writes on his experiences as an ISP student
SALZBURG – May 15-18, 2012
My experience with the Salzburg Global Seminar from over the last three days has broadened my emotional range, my international confidence, and my mastery of collaborative action; just as the seminar challenged me intellectually so did it emotionally and socially.
One of the most touching experiences I have had was our trip to the Dachau Memorial. I had been reading about the Holocaust since I was young, but nothing could have prepared me for the heartbreaking weight of visiting a site that was host to the worst of what people of capable of, ‘singing with the voices of thousands of lost souls’. Each exhibit combined historical perspectives with an aura of sentiment unmatched by other memorials I have visited. Our excursion sparked passionate discussion upon our return that not only touched me intellectually, but also spiritually.
The day following our Dachau tour we explored the histories and culture of pre- and post- Cold War Europe with Astrid Schröder, continued our intellectually enriching group work, and experienced a joint lecture with University of Salzburg students taught by Reinhold Wagnleitner, held at the university. My discussions with the Salzburg students helped to explore the intricacies of the problems facing America and addressed European views of the social, political, and economic struggles of the United States.
Finally, Thursday’s presentation by Darci Arnold raised pertinent questions regarding the issues of corporate responsibility, the rising importance of data and integration between data, technology, and our lives, as well as the societal and cultural changes brought on by the advent of digital media and the digital economy. Our group work helped to solidify our views of global citizenship and its importance in our globalized society and aided in the development of lifelong partnerships in the pursuit of social justice and the maintenance of a global citizenship. My experiences with the seminar have expanded my mental and spiritual capacities and enhanced my understanding of international perceptions of the United States.
Micah-Sage Bolden is a junior at King College in Bristol, TN, USA. He is majoring in history, political science and philosophy, concentrating on intelligence and security studies. He is the communications officer of the King Security and Intelligence Studies Group (KSI) and a member of the King World Awareness and Activation Campaign. He has served as the executive editor of King College’s Security and Intelligence Studies Journal; editor-in-chief of the Kayseean, a bi-weekly student publication; a member of the Board of Directors of the Appalachian Peace Education Center; and co-author of “Social Networking as a Paradigm Shift in Tactical Intelligence Collection” in the 2012 Mediterranean Council for Intelligence Studies. In the future, Micah-Sage would like work in diplomacy and social activism.
King College junior Micah-Sage Bolden writes on his experiences as an ISP student
SALZBURG – May 12, 2012
My first three days of the Salzburg Global Seminar have in many ways been everything I expected, and yet beyond anything I could ever have imagined.
Growing up in a valley of the Appalachian Mountains in Eastern Tennessee, it had always been a far off dream to see firsthand the idyllic landscape of Europe. My day of arrival in Salzburg was a day of firsts: my first time to leave the Southeastern United States, my first time ever riding in a plane, my first time in Europe, and yet the kindness with which I was greeted by the faculty, staff, and fellow attendees of the seminar resonated with a charm that echoed the Southern hospitality of my homeland.
The topic of the seminar – global citizenship – at first seemed as foreign as the Schloss or the mighty fortress on the hill, but just as the Schloss quickly became a second home, so too did the concept of global citizenship rapidly settle into the deepest confines of my mind and heart.
The plenary discussions of the seminar helped to make concrete the airy concepts of ethnocentrism and globalization, challenging me with firsthand encounters of global citizenship; sitting in the plenary discussions, surrounded by amazing minds from all over the world and the beautiful landscape of the Austrian countryside, it quickly became clear what global citizenship meant and how this should play out in our everyday lives. From the concise and informative sessions of Mapping Ethnocentrism and Mapping Globalization, to the insightful lecture regarding the dramatic migratory patterns of humanity, to the amazingly inspirational (and eye-opening) lecture by Najwa Gadaheldam on women in Islam and Africa, each session helped to solidify the concept of global citizenship while prompting edifying question and answer sessions.
My favorite moments of the seminar by far, though, have been the profound conversations I have shared with my fellow students and the faculty. Not only have I discovered kindred spirits that have further inspired and developed my ideals and future plans, but I have also been exposed for the first time to challenges that rarely transverse into my daily consciousness. My conversations with the students of Bennett College have, in particular, helped to develop my understanding of the problems of race and gender in our country as well as my understanding of the challenge of white privilege to equality and justice in the U.S. and the world as a whole; I have never before in my life had such weighty conversations that both influence my way of thinking and help me to understand the steps needed to confront these problems.
The first three days of the Seminar have already proven to be some of the most important of my life in regards to my intellectual and spiritual growth and have helped me to understand the need for cooperation in the confrontation of violence, hate, and injustice in our globalized society. As Mrs. Gadaheldam said, “Don’t think you can walk alone in this world and make a difference,” and it is with this powerful sentiment that I move forward to embrace the rest of the seminar.
Micah-Sage Bolden is a junior at King College in Bristol, TN, USA. He is majoring in history, political science and philosophy, concentrating on intelligence and security studies. He is the communications officer of the King Security and Intelligence Studies Group (KSI) and a member of the King World Awareness and Activation Campaign. He has served as the executive editor of King College’s Security and Intelligence Studies Journal; editor-in-chief of the Kayseean, a bi-weekly student publication; a member of the Board of Directors of the Appalachian Peace Education Center; and co-author of “Social Networking as a Paradigm Shift in Tactical Intelligence Collection” in the 2012 Mediterranean Council for Intelligence Studies. In the future, Micah-Sage would like work in diplomacy and social activism.