New MA Program in Global & International Studies

A NEW GRADUATE PROGRAM AT UCSB offering a Master of Arts in Global & International Studies will be launched in the coming academic year. The two-year M.A. degree will provide an academic background for students seeking leadership roles in all sectors of the new global civil society, including non-profit organizations, business, journalism, and government agencies. The program will focus especially on leadership of international service and human rights organizations that are playing an increasingly important role in the rapidly-globalizing world.

Applications will be accepted during 2005-06 with the first cohort of entering students admitted in the fall of 2006. Up to 25 students are expected to be enrolled in the first year, with around 50 students in the program once it is fully established.

The new MA will be the first global or international studies degree program in the nation that will focus primarily on leadership in international NGOs—non-governmental non-profit organizations. This vital and vibrant sector of global society encompasses a wide range of voluntary associations, charities, social movements, and non-profit organizations. These agencies play leading roles in such diverse areas as environmental protection, labor and human rights, disaster relief and humanitarian aid, peace and conflict resolution, family planning, health, and education.

The program aims at providing an academic background that is culturally sensitive, historically aware, politically concerned and socially responsible. It will also provide practical skills. 

The two-year curriculum of the MA program is similar to the international affairs degree programs offered by such prestigious institutions as Harvard’s Kennedy School, Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and UCSD’s School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. While all of these schools prepare future leaders for international careers in the public and private sector, the new Global & International Studies program at UCSB will differ from them in several crucial respects.

According to Prof Richard Appelbaum, chair of the planning committee for the new MA program, the differences are more than just a matter of focusing on leadership roles in international NGOs. According to Appelbaum, the curriculum is built on “a global paradigm, rather than an international one.”

Similar to the undergraduate global studies major at UCSB—which was one of the first in the nation and which now has 800 majors—the MA will focus on the increasing globalization of the world’s economy and society. Ten new courses will be designed and taught especially for the graduate program.

According to Appelbaum, these courses will recognize that “the world is in an epochal transitional stage” in which it is “increasingly a single interactive system, whether one is talking about global corporations, environmental changes, religious movements, terrorist organizations, or MTV.”

Along with the standard skills provided by other international affairs programs, the new MA program will emphasize the importance of training students to have an understanding of different cultures, including the ability to communicate across cultures. Students will learn not only about such topics as micro and macro economics, global trade and finance, and transnational political institutions, but also about theories of intercultural understanding as well as specific cultural regions. The humanities and social sciences will be combined in policy-oriented graduate training.

Practical training and experience will be emphasized as well as academic knowledge. Students will spend the summer and fall quarter of their second year studying abroad and in internships. They will also take two policy-oriented workshops designed to simulate real-life decision-making situations. If appropriate to their career objectives, they will learn about such practical matters as writing proposals to foundations and other sources of funding, tracking organizational finances, or constructing websites.

The program was made possible through the generosity of Paul Orfalea and the Orfalea Family Foundation. Their gift provides support in the form of student fellowships and internships, visiting professorships, and staff. It also supports the establishment of the Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies, whose mission is to promote and advance global and international studies at UCSB, and which will sponsor interdisciplinary conferences, seminars, and public programs as well as provide funding for the new MA program.

The planning committee for the M.A. degree is chaired by Appelbaum and includes Mark Juergensmeyer, Giles Gunn, Gurinder Singh Mann, Dominic Sachsenmaier, and Benjamin J. Cohen.

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