The Council on General Education (CoGE) approved changes to the Common Curriculum (CC) Global Perspectives (GPS) Proficiency and Experience (P&E) rubric on November 11, 2023.
The CC Global Perspectives graduation requirement contains 5 experience criteria. Criteria three establishes how undergraduate students can achieve the graduation requirement via a co-curricular experience.
CoGE approved an update to the experience criteria to now read:
Student experiences must involve at least fourteen days of an immersive experience in a global culture or completion of an approved SMU Abroad program. An immersive context is one in which students live like members of the local population, following local customs, eating local food, taking local transportation, etc
This change was recommended since not all SMU Abroad programs are 14 days but may be shorter, ranging from 9 to 12 days. Since SMU Abroad programs have a curricular component or are SMU faculty-led, we believe the GPS student learning outcomes are being achieved via these vetted programs by the Education Abroad Council.
Students who do not enroll in a GPS-tagged course via the SMU Abroad program will be asked to complete the 1,000-word reflection as part of their re-entry experience. Therefore, these changes would permit SMU to say all SMU Abroad offerings achieve GPS. This change also enacts recommendations from the ACE Internationalization Steering Committee.
SMU Abroad and the Office of General Education are working to operationalize the collection of reflections beginning with the Spring 2024 abroad cohort during their re-entry experience. If you have questions about these changes, please contact the Office of General Education.
