Global Studies Minor
New Student Advising
Welcome new WWU students! If you're interested to learn about the Global Studies minor, please check out our program video (video).
What is the Global Studies Minor?
The Global Studies Minor is an interdisciplinary academic program that invites students from any major to learn about the complexities facing humanity on a global scale and how to contribute to sustainable change. Topics may include global citizenship, transnational migration, globalization, climate change, global justice, human rights, global health, gender equity, and sustainable development and can be adapted to align with your major.
Study Abroad Requirement
One special element of the Global Studies Minor is that it has an applied component—it requires a study abroad experience while pursuing your degree program at Western. The university’s Education Abroad office can help you find programs that are cost-effective and that align with your academic, personal, and professional goals. Programs range in length from a few weeks to a quarter, semester, or academic year—your choice. The Education Abroad team will help prepare you for this experience. Attend a Western Abroad 101 information session to learn more.
Why is Global Studies Important?
We live in a deeply interconnected world, and we face challenges that will require us to act locally and globally. If we can’t communicate well with each other and don’t understand each other, then it’s less likely we’ll be able to tackle our challenges collaboratively, with humility and mutual respect. The Global Studies Minor provides you with tools to better understand the world, to engage in constructive intercultural communication, and to contribute to greater peace through coursework, study, and people-to-people academic exchange.
Who Do I Contact to Learn More?
Contact Leah Lippman, Senior Instructor and Advisor for the Global Studies Minor within the Institute for Global Engagement.
Requirements for the Global Studies Minor
The Global Studies Minor is a 25-credit program, consisting of the following.
- 5 credits: Introduction to Global Studies (GLBL 201)
- 5 credits: Non-English language at the equivalent of 103 or above
- 4 – 8 credits: Study abroad experience
- Three upper division electives focused on intercultural/transborder content
- A list of approved elective courses is under construction; in the meantime, please consult with Global Studies Minor Advisor, Leah Lippman.
Want to Declare an Global Studies Minor?
An Global Studies minor can be declared upon successful completion of GLBL 201, Intro to Global Studies. Students can initiate minor declaration with this eSign form.
AFFILIATED FACULTY
Leah Lippman
Leah Lippman is a Senior Instructor in Global Studies and the International Studies Minor Advisor at the Institute for Global Engagement. Her work and teaching focus on multi-dimensional poverty and inequalities, globalization and culture change, transnational migration and displacement, gender and family, race and ethnicity, cultural responsive and critical pedagogy. Leah serves on the board of the Institute for Village Studies.
Babafemi Akinrinade
Babafemi Akinrinade is a Professor of Human Rights at Fairhaven College. His teaching and research areas of interest include International Law, International and Regional Human Rights, The Holocaust and Mass Atrocities, Human Trafficking and Smuggling, Transitional Justice, and the Political and Socio-economic relations of African States. He is currently the Fairhaven College Faculty Coordinator of the World Issues Forum and teaches in the Law, Diversity and Justice Program of the College. He previously taught in the University of Chicago's Human Rights Program and Center for International Studies and was a Lecturer in Law at the Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He also was Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow, Sawyer Seminar on Comparative Truth and Reconciliation Processes, Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago. He is the author of Human Rights and State Collapse in Africa (Eleven International Publishing) and completing another book manuscript, Atrocity Crimes, Atrocity Law and Justice in Africa.
Liz Mogford
Liz Mogford is a Professor in the Sociology Department at Western and an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington. Her research and teaching focus on the social and structural determinants of health, global citizenship, critical pedagogy, and education abroad. She is a leader in WWU's faculty led programs abroad and has led Western students on eleven trips to four countries: Kenya, Rwanda, India, and Nepal. She is a co-founder of the non-profit Just Health Action and serves on the boards of Health Alliance International and the Institute for Village Studies, organizations that view health and education abroad through a social justice lens.
Niall O Murchu
Specific Areas of Interest:
International Studies and Political Economy with foci on ethnicity & nationalism, the Middle East, and race, class & gender.
Sarah Zimmerman
Dr. Sarah J. Zimmerman is an Associate Professor of history at Western Washington University. Her research focuses on the experiences of women and the operation of gender in West Africa, French Empire, and the Atlantic World. Her first monograph, Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers' Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire (Ohio UP, 2020), historicizes militarization, marriage, and colonialism by focusing on tirailleurs sénégalais households in West Africa and across French Empire. Her new research attends to the gendered production of history and memory on Goréé Island--a UNESCO World Heritage site in Senegal. She has published articles in the International Journal of African Historical Studies and Les Temps Modernes.
Dr. Zimmerman offers a range of topically-, thematically-, and chronologically-organized courses broadly related to the history of Africa and African Diasporas. Please visit the history department website for more information.