The world is rapidly globalizing, bringing exciting opportunities and daunting challenges. Global and International Studies, hereafter referred to as Global Studies, seeks to tackle this brave new world in all its complexity. Students are trained to be global citizens, global thinkers, and global problem-solvers, and prepare them for global careers in academia, business, government, and the non-profit sector, among others. A unique feature of the program is that students are trained in foreign languages. Language is the entry-point for understanding the world’s cultures and equips students for studying and working abroad.

Global Studies is a holistic and timely field of study whose scope is the whole Earth and whose eyes are on the future, aiding a global transformation toward healthy, just, peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable societies for all. The focus of the program is on the ‘big picture,’ international to global. Using multi-disciplinary, multi-perspective, local-to-global, and critical ways of thinking, students emerge from University of Northern British Columbia’s program with knowledge of the macro-level structures, actors, processes, ideas, issues, and events shaping our planet and its societies.

The curriculum is organized around four themes:

• Global environment and sustainability
• Global cultures and diversity
• Global governance and social justice
• Global political economy and development.

Students take courses in each theme, learn to integrate across themes, and can focus on one or more themes if they so choose. Special attention is given to British Columbia’s immediate international neighbouring regions: Asia-Pacific, Circumpolar North, and the Americas.