LGU teaches global issues as a minor at La Salle

By Carrie Caine
Collegian Staff
April 26, 2006

With a growing number of students and faculty involved in the program, the Leadership and Global Understanding (LGU) minor has expanded to a growing network of people interested in the issues that confront us as global citizens.

LGU is a six-credit minor with an introduction class in the beginning, a capstone at the end and cultural studies courses in the middle. In addition, there are attractive travel-study classes that incorporate a number of different disciplines and visit such exotic locales as Guatemala, India and Ireland, to name a few.

“I enjoy learning about global issues—-political to social. LGU has allowed me to cement myself in a foundation of global perspectives,” junior Diego Hill said.
Members of the program enjoy a student-centered pedagogy where professors ask thought-provoking questions and leave the answers to be discovered or constructed by the class through research and reflection.

Service learning and community-based projects round out the curriculum so that students experience the issues they consider firsthand and apply some of the solutions that they hypothesize in the classroom.

The program emphasizes the importance of different angles to every situation.  
“LGU has taught me the value of looking at the entire issues from all perspectives. It is important not only to value my own opinion, but others’ as well. When you speak on an issue, for example the Wal-mart situation, ask yourself, ‘What lens am I looking through?’

Am I looking from social point of view, an economic, or political? Each lens will present a new variable that you may or may not have thought about,” senior LaSella Hall said.

The interaction between culture and globalization is an issue at the forefront of many of the program members’ minds. One of the ways that classes prepare for travel experiences is through cooking foods from other countries each week in the introductory class, which makes students more open to trying new foods when they’re traveling.

Freshman Aisha Abdullah recently took her first LGU trip to Berlin over Spring Break, and talks about how she shied away from trying some of the food served in German restaurants.

“Before I entered as an LGU minor, I thought that I accepted things that were different than what I was used to, but then I was challenged when I went to Germany to try the food and I did not,” she said. 

“I missed out on a part of German culture.  Everything makes up a culture from food to dress, and since I did not accept the German food, it was like I was not accepting the culture. So I am, in one kind of way, not very different than the people who find it hard to accept things that are different than them.”

One of the strongest features of the LGU program is the way that course material connects to every other major or field of work, because it provides a different way to approach the world rather than teaching a specific trade or discipline.

“The LGU program has been the most challenging and rewarding part of my educational experience at La Salle. I have been able to connect course and practicum work from my majors to my minor,” education/special education junior Michael Farrell, said.

Members of the program, as well as co-directors Dr. Marjorie Allen, Dr. Robert Vogel and Louise Giugliano strongly feel that the LGU minor will continue to grow and develop in the La Salle community.

The recent registration process has left many people within the program excited for the next generation of potential program graduates and the new perspectives that they will develop about the problems that concern members of the global community.

cainec1@lasalle.edu