Global Studies Minor
The Global Studies Minor is a flexible, academic program open to students in any major that combines WWU courses and a study abroad program of your choice. Global Studies explores how people, places, and systems are connected across borders; and how those connections shape everyday lives.
You can tailor the minor to complement your major and interests. Areas of study may include global health, international business, human rights, migration, global inequality, politics, gender, sustainability, and arts and culture. Along the way you will consider how your own experiences, field of study, and future profession fit within a wider global context.
Please check out our program video to learn more!
Internationalize Your Degree
Climate change, public health, supply chains, migration, economic inequality, and cultural exchange all extend beyond national borders. They affect people and communities differently depending on their circumstances and position in the world, including you and your own community.
The Global Studies Minor helps you understand these connections from multiple perspectives, not just one, while building your intercultural communication skills and competencies.
Study Abroad
A study abroad experience is built into the minor. Western's Education Abroad office will help you fulfill this requirement and guide you along the way. Programs range in length from a few weeks to a quarter, semester, or academic year- your choice. Financial Aid and scholarships are available.
Global Studies and Study Abroad advising information can be found here.
Develop Skills You Can Use Anywhere
Global Studies can help you develop skills that you can use in the workplace as much as in your personal life.
- Communicating across cultural differences
- Resilience and adaptability
- Thinking critically and solving problems
- Holding more than one perspective at once
- Working well with people who see things differently than you do
- Building proficiency in a world language
- Acquainting yourself with professional practices abroad
Requirements for the Global Studies Minor
The Global Studies Minor is a 25-credit program with four components:
- GLBL 201: Introduction to Global Studies
This course also fulfills a Comparative, Gender, and Multicultural Studies (ACGM) General University Requirement (GUR). - Study Abroad
Check out the EdAbroad office’s Global Studies Minor Study Abroad page to get started and review sample programs. - Language Study
Complete coursework in a language other than English at the equivalent of the 103 level or above. Courses may be completed at WWU or another institution. An intensive language course completed abroad may also fulfill this requirement with prior approval. - Three Upper-Division Electives
Complete three approved courses with a global or transnational focus. Electives may be completed at WWU or abroad during your study abroad. A list of approved electives is available in the Global Studies Minor requirements in the university course catalog. Other globally focused courses may be considered with prior approval from Global Studies advisor Leah Lippman.
Affiliated Faculty
Leah Lippman is a Senior Instructor in Global Studies and the International Studies Minor Advisor at the Office of 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 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.
International Studies and Political Economy with foci on ethnicity & nationalism, the Middle East, and race, class & gender.
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.
Ready to Declare?
Students may declare a Global Studies minor at any time by submitting this eSign form. Please complete the top section of the esign form and route it to Leah Lippman (lippmal@wwu.edu) for approval.
Questions?
Contact Leah Lippman, Senior Instructor and Advisor for the Global Studies Minor within the Office of Global Engagement.