Florida Political Science Association Annual Meeting, "Facilitating Globally Oriented Learning"

It was a pleasure to be back at the Florida Political Science Association Annual Meeting. This year it was held at the Honors College at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

I participated in a panel "Facilitating Globally Oriented Learning."

While I do teach a study abroad course to Moldova (you can see a video about the course here ), I strive to internationalize the curriculum and to provide opportunities for my students to become “global citizens" without leaving St. Petersburg.  

In my presentation I discussed examples such as my projects in Women and the Law in which my students worked together in groups with students at the Moldova State University’s American Studies Center on research projects related to human trafficking (more on this blog) and in Civil Liberties and Civil Rights in which my students working on comparative legal research papers about women’s rights in the Middle East were paired with a woman lawyer from that country (we partnered with the Women’s Lawyer Group in the Middle East) who mentored them on their projects (see www.womensrightsinmiddleeast.blogspot.com ). We ran this project in Women and the Law as well.  This semester  my students in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties partnered with a seminar at the Scoala Nationala de Studii Politice si Adminstrative in Bucharest, Romania, working in groups on legal research projects about religious freedom in the U.S. and in Europe (I am going to be updating this site with more information about the collaboration: http://europeancourtofjusticeproject.blogspot.com/ )

Since returning from my Fulbright in Moldova, I have been looking for ways to connect my students with students overseas to conduct research and to exchange ideas.  

Ours was a robust panel discussion, and I enjoyed learning about my colleagues' techniques for "facilitating globally oriented learned" -- including creative uses of international sources in the classroom, twitter, simulations, and exchange programs.  (I solicited articles to publish in the Political Scientist, of which I am editor, so we can share some of these ideas more broadly.)

The "Facilitating Globally Oriented Learning" Panel

It was also a pleasure to see my graduate student Marissa present her paper "The Democratic Peace: Achieving Liberalization and Stability in the Post-Soviet Space through Eastern EU Enlargement"

with my graduate student Marissa on a break. So pleased that she will be starting a PhD program in Political Science at Ole Miss in the Fall