ICIS Home: About ICIS: Mission & Strategic Plan
Mission and Strategic Plan
Global Citizenship in a Plural World
The strategic mission of ICIS is to promote global citizenship in a plural world. This goal entails scholarship and outreach to understand societies and cultures and to help reduce inequality and injustice -- both across the world and in our international community at home. Our mission entails recognition of and interchange with foreign scholars, students, and immigrants as well as the promotion of international scholarship and foreign experience among Emory faculty and students. Through targeted strategic growth, Emory courts nationally recognized excellence by combining rigorous understanding of cultural and social diversity with experiential application and comparative analysis. This initiative links student training with faculty research and international collaboration.
Emory's commitment to ethical understanding of international diversity is reflected in faculty strength across a broad range of humanistic and social scientific perspectives. The College has a mid-sized faculty who are devoted to both research excellence and undergraduate teaching; this underscores the opportunity for collaborative work that involves students and international scholars from diverse world areas and across disciplinary boundaries. The Institute for Comparative and International Studies (ICIS) provides an effective structure for linking high-profile scholarly events and research seminars on campus, area studies programs, study abroad initiatives, and foreign language training.
Existing programs require strategic coordination and planning to promote the larger goal of global citizenship in a plural world. (Features and principles of global citizenship are delineated in Appendix A(see further below).
ICIS program themes are selectively initiated and are rotated over time to stimulate wide-ranging student and faculty interest. Strengths in area studies, study abroad, and comparative social science are cross-fertilized and integrated by targeted support for curricular development, theme-related faculty research, and outreach. Global citizenship is promoted in teaching, scholarship, and outreach both at home and abroad, making international studies at Emory ethically informed and collaborative as well as of the highest and most forward-reaching academic caliber.
Larger Context
Emory’s development in international and comparative studies is thrown into relief by tensions at many colleges and universities between mainstream scholarship and marginalized or diasporic experience, on the one hand, and between humanistic perspectives that stress cultural relativity and social scientific perspectives that stress comparative explanation, on the other. These tensions resonate with the structure of large universities in which international perspectives are often separated into distinct or competing units and scholarly communities, and also with smaller universities and colleges, where bridging conversations often develop in the absence of cutting-edge research. Given its history and its strengths, support for international studies in Emory College is designed to transcend these divisions and be established as a national leader in promoting global citizenship through the articulation of research, teaching, and international experience.
A study by the American Council on Education (2003) emphasized both the increased need for graduates with international skills and the deficiencies of U.S. universities and colleges in language training, cross-cultural understanding, and comparative comprehension. Existing deficiencies are abetted by “a low level of commitment to internationalization, as evidenced by the low percentage of institutions that included internationalization in their mission statement or as a priority in their strategic plan” (p. viii). A deeper reason for this lack of commitment is contention within the academy concerning the methods, ethics, and ultimate purpose of international scholarship, especially from the respective perspectives of poorer versus richer nations and peoples. Against this background, the strengths and potentials of international studies at Emory deserve signature status and prime specification in strategic planning.
The Institute for Comparative and International Studies (ICIS) provides Emory College a strong institutional structure for international studies. Facilities include a dedicated building, a full time staff of approximately 23 employees, and a substantial budget supported by the tuition success of the Institute’s undergraduate study abroad programs. The divisions and programs of ICIS include diverse world area studies, a language center, a community outreach program, study abroad programs that presently services approximately 40% of Emory undergraduates, an internationally oriented student residential program, and funding support for faculty and student travel and research abroad. Approximately 50 faculty are members of ICIS advisory committees, and 112 Emory college faculty (23%) are formally affiliated with one of the College’s area studies programs.
Appendix A: Global Citizenship*
A global citizen is a person who:
- is aware of the wider world and has a sense of her or his own role as a world citizen;
- respects and values diversity;
- has an understanding of how the world works economically, politically, socially, culturally, technologically and environmentally;
- explores and promotes solutions to social injustice;
- participates in and contributes to the community at a range of levels from local to global;
- is willing to act to make the world a more humane, equitable, and sustainable place;
- takes international responsibility for his or her actions.
Principles of global citizenship:
- Valuing and interacting with people from different social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds
- Analyzing and combating social inequality in formal and informal settings
- Cultivating ethically progressive values, attitudes, and education
- Learning from the experiences of others around the world
- Actively engaging and responding to local and global problems
- Developing and affirming a sense of broad understanding and identity
- Ethical holism: A progressive ethical sensibility that crosses diverse aspects of life