Shared Futures: Global Learning and Social Responsibility

General Education for Global Learning

Overview

Shared Futures: General Education for Global Learning is a curriculum and faculty development network that combines the best theory and practice of general education reform with the transformative promise of global content. In 2005, with support from the Henry Luce Foundation, AAC&U created a network of sixteen colleges and universities working together to use global learning goals as organizing principles for general education programs and to prepare students for citizenship in a world of global change and interdependence.

In October 2006, AAC&U received a two-year grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) to expand and extend the work of the Shared Futures network. Through summer faculty institutes, curriculum development, and coordinated assessment of global learning across courses and schools, the participating institutions and AAC&U seek to:

• Make science requirements a more central part of global general education curricula
• Use general education to help students understand the connections between global learning and ethical citizenship.
• Use global learning categories and courses to assess key liberal education outcomes