An Application from Skidmore College for a Grant from the

Undergraduate International Studies and

Foreign Languages Program

United States Department of Education

Funded June 1999

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Project Summary

• Part 1: Plan of Operation

  • A. Project Design

    • Literature Support

    • A Multidisciplinary Approach to Real World Problem-Solving

    • Faculty Development: Providing Support for the Academic Program

    • Responding to Student Interest

    • Responding to Outside Consultants

    • Spirit and Practice of Interdisciplinary Cooperation

    • Five Year Plan: 1997-2001

      • 1997-1998

      • 1998-1999

      • 1999-2000 and 2000-2001

      • 2001-2002

    • New Courses

      • 1999-2000

      • 2000-2001

    • Redesigned Courses

      • 1999-2000

      • 2000-2001

    • The New International Affairs Core Course and the Global Environment

    • Languages-Across-the-Curriculum

    • Opportunities for Study Abroad with an Environmental Focus

    • International Environmental Internship Opportunities

    • Library Acquisitions

    • Teaching Workshop Series

    • Faculty Training and Development

    • Colloquia and Guest Speakers

  • B. Plan of Management

    • Relationship of Project Objectives to Program

    • Use of Resources and Personnel to Achieve Project Objectives

    • Equal Opportunity

• Part 2: Quality of Personnel

  • Experience and Qualifications of the Project Directors

  • Experience and Qualifications of Teaching Staff

  • Commitment of Time by Project Directors and Teaching Staff

  • Nondiscriminatory Employment Practices

• Part 3: Budget and Cost Effectiveness – [NOT AVAILABLE]

• Part 4: Adequacy of Resources

• Part 5: Plan of Evaluation

  • Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes

  • Assessment at Skidmore College

  • Project Outcomes Assessment Plan

• Part 6: Commitment to International Studies

  • Skidmore's Strengths in International Affairs and Environmental Studies

  • Involvement of Faculty and Administrators

  • Institutional Commitment of Funds and Personnel

  • Financial Commitment to Program

• Part 7: Elements of the Proposed Program

  • Proposed Activities

  • Program Results

  • Continuation of Activities

  • Sharing of Materials and Results

• Appendix A: Library Acquisition in Support of Project Goals.

• Appendix B: Hudson Mohawk Consortium

• Appendix C: Experience and Qualifications of Teaching Staff

• Appendix D: International Affairs

• Appendix E: Environmental Studies

Skidmore College's 1996 Title VI-A grant galvanized faculty to develop and implement a new international affairs curriculum with stunning results: thirty professors introduced twenty-five new or revised international affairs courses, participated in intensive summer teaching workshops where they engaged in unprecedented fruitful exchanges on issues of international education not normally afforded them during the academic year, and were rewarded by their efforts with 1500 students enrolled in 80 IA courses in the 1997-98 academic year.

Building on a tradition of interdisciplinary education since 1911 and on the success of our last Title VI-A project, our students and faculty now wish to extend this tradition by lending an international aspect to the natural science curriculum and by infusing international affairs courses with global environmental content. We will attain these objectives through intensive cooperation between sister programs on our campus, International Affairs and Environmental Studies.

Students and faculty alike are struck by the powerful reasons for institutions of higher learning to offer young people a well-informed international environmental education. If faculty in natural science and environmental studies courses engage students in comparative, international, and global perspectives--and if faculty in social science courses in international affairs engage students in environmental perspectives, students will be better prepared to consider the causes and consequences of global environmental issues such as depletion of the ozone layer, deforestation, and climate change. Students will also be sensitized to the political, economic, social, cultural, legal, technological, and other contexts within which environmental policy is constructed and applied from local to international levels of concern. Skidmore's project linking international affairs and environmental studies will offer peer institutions a model that they may adopt or modify and will contribute to a deeper understanding of the necessity for interdisciplinary perspectives and problem-solving in society at large.

The International Affairs and the Environmental Studies faculties adopted a five-year action plan in 1997 to enhance the global environmental awareness of students. The goals of this plan are to equip students with the skills and knowledge they need to understand and analyze differences in environmental issues, contexts, and policy responses across national and cultural frontiers. Title VI-A support of our action plan will enable the College to:

    1. introduce nineteen new and revised courses in anthropology, biology, business, chemistry, economics, environmental studies, foreign languages and literatures, government, history, international affairs, liberal studies, mathematics, physics, and sociology that will fill gaps in or enhance our curriculum on the global environment;

    2. introduce a languages-across-the-curriculum project that helps students use their language competence to explore international and environmental issues in course-based research and in internships in international affairs and the environment;

    3. support implementation of this new curriculum with library acquisitions, faculty participation in training programs of the Environmental Literacy Institute and International Faculty Development Seminars, and guest speakers and project activities linked to campuswide theme years on international environmental issues;

    4. hold intensive workshops for natural science, environmental studies and IA faculties from Skidmore and peer institutions to engage participants in fruitful discussion on the teaching of international environmental issues on an interdisciplinary basis using state-of-the-art pedagogical methods, technologies, and techniques;

    5. reach out to the wider academic community by engaging the Hudson-Mohawk consortium of area colleges and universities through project workshops and guest speakers and by putting the Title VI-A project and each of the new and revised course syllabi on the internet; and

    6. continually assess project outcomes by holding regular faculty meetings to discuss the relationship between project objectives and accomplishments; surveying students taking project-related courses to compare our teaching objectives with the knowledge and perspectives gained by the students; publishing results on the project website and in appropriate journals; and participating in the meetings of the Title VI-A Project Directors.

In Skidmore's proposal, the spirit and practice of interdisciplinary cooperation to support international education and student demand for coursework in global environmental affairs are coupled with clarion calls from the international scientific and public policy communities for higher education to play a more proactive role in preparing students for the "century of the environment." Skidmore is uniquely positioned to implement the new action plan with Title VI-A support and to hold out to the wider academic community an unusual model of cooperation between faculties in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities in the pursuit of international environmental education.

Applicants who identify themselves as having a disability during the admissions process are considered for admission on the same competitive basis as other applicants. The Office of the Dean of Studies is glad to review available services with and provide advice to students with disabilities. Although no formal program exists at the College, Skidmore does employ a part-time disabilities specialist who acts as a resource for students in need of modification and accommodations on campus and in the classroom. If a student anticipates requesting services from the disabilities specialist, he/she should be prepared to provide the following information at the time of enrollment:

All enrolled students receive an application for accommodation for students with disabilities. Students with a documented disability should complete the application and return it with the required documentation to the disabilities specialist in the Dean of Studies Office. Using the information from the application and the diagnostic materials provided, the disabilities specialist will assist the student in developing an individualized system of support that is specific to the student's needs. After their arrival at Skidmore, students will then meet with the disabilities specialist. Among the most commonly requested accommodations are extended time on tests, alternate testing locations, permission to use tape recorders and laptop computers in class, peer tutors, and assistance with skills such as time management and organization.

Skidmore also provides an excellent range of academic support services for the general student population, services that may also be of help to students with disabilities. These academic supports include a writing center, a math and computer science laboratory, a foreign language laboratory, peer tutoring for most courses offered by the College, and a counseling center.

Applicants should bear in mind that all students must fulfill foreign language, expository writing, mathematics, laboratory science, and other requirements of the Skidmore curriculum. Since the curriculum represents Skidmore's definition of a sound liberal arts education, requirements are never waived. However, under a few exceptional circumstances, the College may consider substituting a course or courses for a curriculum requirement. In such instances, students must submit diagnostic documentation that confirms the presence of a specific disability that would prohibit them from achieving the goals of this requirement.

For more information, contact the disabilities specialist in the Office of the Dean of Studies: 581-580-5727.

In 1997 Skidmore College introduced a new initiative to build bridges between scientists and non-scientists engaged in teaching courses on international affairs and the global environment. This initiative responded to six observations and conclusions.

                    (2) student demand on the Skidmore campus for more courses on the global environment;

In the first U.S. State Department annual report on environmental diplomacy, U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright in 1997 stated that "environmental problems are often at the heart of the political and economic changes we face around the world… We would not be doing our job as peace-makers and democracy-builders, if we were not also good stewards of the global environment." More recently, Secretary Albright has asked the National Academy of Sciences to help determine "the contributions science, technology and health can make to foreign policy." Bruce Alberts, president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), describes the NAS goal to "create a scientific network that becomes a central element in the interactions between nations, increasing the level of rationality in international discourse while enhancing the influence of scientists everywhere in the decisionmaking processes of their own governments." Dr. Alberts expresses particular concern with regard to issues related to world population growth and global energy resources. He also emphasizes the potential for electronic communication, particularly the World Wide Web and electronic publications, to transform global communications and education. This potential is especially important in bringing technical information to developing countries.

Jane Lubchenco, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also urges interdisciplinary cooperation between natural scientists and policy makers. She calls on natural scientists to enter into a new "social contract" with society and to "devote their energies and talents to the most pressing problems of the day," particularly national, international and global environmental concerns. Dr. Lubchenco states that "during the last few decades, humans have emerged as a new force of nature. We are modifying physical, chemical and biological systems in new ways, at faster rates, and over larger spatial scales than ever recorded on Earth. Humans have unwittingly embarked upon a grand experiment with our planet." Dr. Lubchenco concludes that

2. Roy Ginsberg, Professor of Government and Director of International Affairs;

3. Judy Halstead, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Director of Environmental Studies;

4. Gary McClure, Associate Professor of Business; and

5. Patricia Rubio, Associate Professor of Spanish.

The International Affairs and the Environmental Studies Programs will submit a Title VI-A grant proposal to the U.S. Department of Education which will be published on the worldwide web. The two faculties will hold joint meetings.

During 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 the College will use Title VI-A and its own resources to

        1. introduce nineteen new and revised courses in anthropology, biology, business, chemistry, economics, environmental studies, foreign languages and literatures, government, history, international affairs, liberal studies, mathematics, physics, and sociology that will fill gaps in or enhance the curriculum on the global environment;

        2. introduce a languages-across-the-curriculum project to help students use their language competence to explore international and environmental issues in course-based research and in internships in international affairs and the environment;

        3. support implementation of the new curriculum with library acquisitions, faculty participation in training programs of the Environmental Literacy Institute and International Faculty Development Seminars, and guest speakers and project activities linked to campuswide theme years on international environmental issues;

        4. hold intensive workshops for natural science and IA faculties from Skidmore and peer institutions to engage participants in fruitful discussion on the teaching of international environmental issues on an interdisciplinary basis using state-of-the-art pedagogical methods, technologies, and techniques;

        5. reach out to the wider academic community by engaging the Hudson-Mohawk consortium of area colleges and universities through project workshops and guest speakers and by putting the Title VI-A project and each of the new and revised course syllabi on the internet; and

        6. continually assess project outcomes by holding regular faculty meetings to discuss project objectives; surveying students taking project-related courses to compare our teaching objectives with the knowledge and perspectives gained by the students; publishing results on the project website and in International Studies Quarterly; and participating in the meetings of the Title VI-A Project Directors.

The first post-project year will be the last year of the five-year plan. During this year, the College will evaluate project outcomes when measured against objectives and put into effect improvements to strengthen the International Affairs and Environmental Studies Programs. By internationalizing the environmental studies-based science curriculum and by bringing scientists and nonscientists together in new and exciting ways to advance the quality of international education at Skidmore, the International Affairs Program will be able to extend the minor in international affairs into a major. The new major in international affairs will be staffed with a faculty well-trained to teach global environmental issues and with students and faculty enthusiastic about the enhanced place of international environmental affairs in the Skidmore curriculum.

The curriculum is at the heart of the proposed project. New and revised courses will be introduced into the permanent curriculum and thereafter supported and staffed by the College. The new and revised courses will allow faculty and students to compare and contrast related environmental issues across national and subnational borders, account for different cultural, political, commercial, developmental, and historical factors that shape environmental issues and standards, and to understand the need for global cooperation in environmental decisionmaking. All new and revised courses developed within the context of the project will have websites and will employ outcomes assessment and evaluation techniques during and at the end of the courses. Faculty workshops, required of all curriculum development grantees, will include sessions on incorporating information technology and outcomes assessment techniques.

Michael Ennis-MacMillan, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, will introduce a new 100-level course entitled "Political Ecology." This emerging interdisciplinary field of study focuses on the interaction of culture, ecology, and politics in comparative and global contexts. The students will examine the ways in which in various nation-states' access to and control of natural resources are shaped by stakeholders with competing interests based on class, ethnicity, and gender. Case studies will include tropical forest preservation and logging in Indonesia, agricultural production in Central and South America, and water management in Mexico.

Steven Fry, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, will introduce a new 100-level course "Environmental Chemistry" that will examine chemical aspects of a variety of global and international environmental issues. In this context, the course will examine how and why environmental problems are translated internationally (e.g., why burning coal in China produces acid rain in Japan), chemistry-based solutions that individual countries use to combat environmental problems, and the effect of international policy on environmental problems. Topics in this course will include the atmosphere, water issues, and energy consumption. In addition to providing an environmental science-based course with an international/global perspectives, the course will be available to non-science students wishing to fulfill Skidmore's science requirement.

Tim Koechlin, Associate Professor of Economics, will introduce a new 200-level course entitled "Environmental and Resource Economics: National, Comparative, and Global Perspectives." The course will

train students to analyze contemporary local, national, and global environmental and resource problems through the use of economic theories and techniques of evaluation. The course will explore the role of markets and governments in generating and solving environmental problems and will survey current topics in national and global environmental issues, including sustainable development and trade and the environment.

William Standish, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Physics, will introduce a new course entitled "Nuclear Radiation and the Environment" in which students will study the role of radiation in the global environment. This interdisciplinary course will focus on issues related to the generation of electricity through nuclear power, the disposal of nuclear waste, and the nature of radiation and its effect on the environment. The scientific principles necessary to understand these issues will be discussed. However, since nuclear power and nuclear waste disposal are approached in very different ways by different societies using the same scientific principles, a major portion of the course will be on economic and political factors. Issues such as the availability of materials, access to waste disposal sites, access to alternative energy sources, the ability to finance power generation facilities and waste disposal will be compared and contrasted across international borders.

Una Bray, Associate Professor of Mathematics, will introduce "Disease and the Environment." Students will be introduced to such classical diseases as malaria, sleeping sickness, schistosomiasis, yellow fever, and cholera, and to the relationships between these diseases and environmental decisions and issues. Students will also examine modern diseases potentially linked to environmental issues, e.g., mad cow disease, cancer from radiation, lyme disease and control of the deer population, and diseases related to air and water pollution.

Michael Ennis-MacMillan, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, will introduce a new course entitled "Global Environmental Health," a cross-cultural analysis of health issues associated with global environmental change. This course will draw on medical anthropology, medical ecology, ecological anthropology, and the biological sciences. Global health issues related to overpopulation, urbanization, famine, water pollution, deforestation, and species extinction will be critically examined. Students will learn about the interrelationships of culture, adaptation, and health in the context of global political and economic processes and explore how various cultures view the relationship between humans and the environment. Special attention will be given to how poor and powerless social groups bear a disproportionate burden of environmental health problems in various societies.

Roy Ginsberg, Professor of Government, will introduce a new 300-level course entitled "International Political Economy and the Environment of the Capitalist World." The course will test main concepts and theories of international political economy, explore and debate policy issues, and examine institutions related to the structure and function of the global political economy. It will emphasize the relationship between international politics, economics, and the environment of the capitalist countries and the European Union. Case studies, simulations, media projects, debates, and policy briefs related to international environmental issues will engage students in a hands-on approach to policy analysis and problem-solving.

Vasantha Narasimhan, Professor of Biochemistry and a native of India and Una Bray, Associate Professor of Mathematics, will team-teach an interdisciplinary course entitled "Seeds of Change: Perspectives on Global Food and Nutrition." This course will use case studies that will allow students to investigate the biological role of food and nutrients in diverse geographical and social areas. Throughout history, food has been important for numerous reasons beyond the biological necessity. The influence of social, economic, political, medical, and religious factors on food choices in different parts of the world and in different times will be examined. The use of food as a tool to enforce cultural dependence and independence, religious or political beliefs, and societal norms will be examined as well as issues such as famine and hunger, the green revolution, global interdependence, rain forest destruction, the organic food movement, and food safety.

Patricia Rubio, Associate Professor of Spanish, will introduce new sections on the perceptions and actions of Spanish and Native Americans with regard to the natural environment in her course, "Spanish American Culture and Civilization" (FS 332).

Mao Chen, Associate Professor of Chinese, will revise her course "China and the West: The Myth of Order" in order to introduce case studies concerned with such problems as overpopulation and large-scale industrial production. Dr. Chen will focus on the Three Gorges Dam project that will soon affect a tradition of farming dating back to pre-classical times and requires a balanced relationship between man and nature.

Gary McClure, Associate Professor of Business, will revise his course "International Financial Management and Banking"(BU 345) in order to introduce the effects of international economic development on the physical environment and to identify the responsibilities of economic and business decisionmakers to protect the future of the earth while supporting this development. By introducing physical environmental issues to the course, students will be more aware of the implications of business decisions on the environment and will be encouraged to make more informed and wise decisions when they are in a position to do so.

Aldo Vacs, Professor of Government, will add sections on international environmental negotiations in his course "International Diplomatic Negotiations" (GO 338) given the increasing importance of multilateral negotiations in the last few years as governments and organizations have come to realize the impossibility of environmental problem-solving at the national level. For examples, international rivers and oceans pollution and depletion of resources, acid rain, deforestation and land erosion, and ozone layer deterioration can only be adequately addressed through multilateral negotiation processes aimed at promoting international cooperation. Preparations for redeveloping the course will allow Professor Vacs to concentrate on collecting, developing, analyzing, and updating materials related to international environmental negotiations and to include usage of audiovisual aids, especially computer simulations, to more effectively present the main challenges and opportunities faced in these negotiations.

James Kennelly, Assistant Professor of Business, will revise "Foundations of Business in the International Environment" (BU 205) in order to bring the environment back into the study of business given the inextricable and intimate connections between business enterprise and the natural environment. Kennelly will introduce students to these connections and to the ways that international business enterprise may take a leading role in the protection and restoration of the natural environment.

Catherine Berheide, Professor of Sociology, will revise "Women and the Global Economy" to incorporate more material on women and the global environment, an objective consistent with the increased focus on environmental issues in the field of gender and development. The environmental focus of gender in development asks whether men and women respond differently to the environment and if so how this difference affects conservation, pollution, land use, and other critical environmental issues globally. Professor Berheide will introduce into her course the following dimensions of women's relationship with the environment: gender divisions of labor; property rights; knowledge and strategies for sustainability; environment and social movements; and policy alternatives. Berheide's goal is to prepare students to ask not just which alternatives improve the status of women but which give women a central role in solving ecological problems that have resulted from previous development practices.

Judy Halstead, Associate Professor Chemistry and Director of the Environmental Studies Program, will substantially modify her course, "Environmental Concerns in Perspective," which is the foundation or core course for Skidmore's Environmental Studies Program. This course is an interdisciplinary, multiple perspective approach to the study of environmental concerns. Students study the interaction of human beings and their social, political, and economic institutions with the natural environment. Issues such as air pollution, water pollution, recycling, superfund sites, pesticides, and land management are discussed from the perspectives of the natural and social sciences. The course currently consists of one-third topic-oriented student debates on specific environmental issues. For these debates, students are divided into small groups and read two articles on opposing sides of an environmental issue. The students are then assigned positions either for or against the central question addressed in the assigned articles. After a period of time the students are told that they may switch to debating based on their own personal opinions. In the past, these cases have involved primarily the United States. In revising her course, Dr. Halstead will develop new cases to include issues of importance in several regions of the world, particularly Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. In the lecture/discussion component of the course, some of the environmental concerns addressed will be examined by including examples and case studies from several countries. The variations in cultural, scientific, social, and economic perspectives on the issue under discussion and how these factors affect appropriate solutions in various countries will be discussed. For global environmental issues, such as global climate change and ozone depletion, the social, political, and economic perspectives of various countries will be introduced.

Mehmet Odekon, Professor of Economics, will revise "Developmental Economics" in order to introduce sections on global environmental issues. Odekon will introduce students to the impact of rapid growth in less developed countries--fueled by economic liberalization and globalization--on the environment. He plans to incorporate case studies on development and the environment. Country and industry cases and simulation exercises--with students engaged in problem-solving through role playing--will be used to enable students to better understand the relationship between development and the environment.

Monica Raveret-Richter, Associate Professor of Biology and an ecologist with extensive research experience in Costa Rica, will substantially modify Skidmore's Conservation Biology course. This course focuses on developing students' critical understanding of population and community dynamics in an evolutionary context and on using this theoretical perspective to address current issues and case studies in conservation biology. The course will be revised and enhanced by having students compare specific conservation studies in temperate and tropical regions. Many tropical areas, e.g., part of Central and South America, have high species population growth, often coupled with poverty and social and political instability. According to Professor Raveret-Richter, "In temperate regions, e.g., the Northeastern U.S., we start out with a less diverse biota and we have developed similarities and differences in the biological aspects of the temperate and tropical conservation issues. The social, economic, and political context within which we must address these issues as well as the ethics and values that different cultures bring to the discussion will also be addressed."

Aldo Vacs, Professor of Government, will revise and update his course "International Political Economy of the Third World" to examine more comprehensively the environmental impacts on developing countries of globalization, industrialization, commercial agriculture, the rise of market economies and transnational investment and finance, the emergence of new economic integration initiatives, civil wars, forced migrations, the importance of implementing adequate strategies for sustainable development, and the decline of the role of the state in each of these new trends. Professor Vacs will incorporate usage of case studies, debates, audiovisual material, and other interactive approaches to generate more in-depth student understanding of environmental issues from the perspective of developing countries.

The new core course in International Affairs, an outcome of Skidmore's 1996-98 Title VI-A grant, was introduced for the first time in Spring 1999. The IA and ES faculties wish to infuse the new course with a major focus on the global environment and to introduce students to the important interplay between science and policy, culture, economics, and politics in the causes and effects of--and solutions to--global climate change. Two faculty members per project year will work as a group to enhance the global environmental content of the IA core course, research and select global environmental problem-solving exercises, attend the core course lectures, prepare to participate in the teaching of the core course, and work closely with the International Affairs and Environmental Studies Program Directors and the Assistant to the Dean of the Faculty for Outcomes Assessments to develop and implement measures to evaluate the course, both during various junctures in the course and at the end of the semester. The following professors will form the project year one team: Catherine Berheide, Professor of Sociology and James Kennelly, Assistant Professor of Business. The following professors will form the project year two team: Gary McClure, Associate Professor of Business and Marc-Andre Wiesmann, Associate Professor of French.

Skidmore requires all students to achieve intermediate competence in a foreign language. Although this requirement is unique among many of its peer institutions, the college needs to do a better job in encouraging students to use their foreign language competence in their non-language courses, especially their students returning from study abroad. Forty percent of Skidmore students study abroad. The objectives of the Foreign Languages-Across-the-Curriculum Project (LAC) are threefold: to integrate foreign languages into the delivery of a cross-cultural, globally oriented curriculum; to enrich students' intercultural and international experience by encouraging them to engage materials in a foreign language; to foster students' use and further development of their foreign language skills while taking courses outside of the Foreign Languages Department with particular focus on global environmental and international studies. Multilingual study of international and/or global issues, as those explored by most courses within the International Affairs curriculum and the Environmental Studies Program, fosters a richer academic experience and a more comprehensive understanding of such issues. Access to multilingual materials in a class taught in English promotes comparative study and analysis otherwise limited when restricted to English only. In terms of language development, students will both expand and solidify their linguistic skills by continuing to use the foreign language of their choice and by addressing discipline specific materials usually absent from foreign language courses which by their nature tend to privilege grammar, literature and culture.

Skidmore's IA Program is uniquely poised to implement a LAC initiative. Its requirement of above intermediate competency recognizes the need and value of at least one foreign language for the exploration, research and understanding of cross-cultural and international studies. The implementation of LAC as a pilot program within IA first, and at a later time to extend it to disciplines outside of IA, will allow students to engage original materials, thus enhancing their understanding of particular societies or cultures, political issues, historical events, environmental problems, or documents and artifacts produced in linguistic, cultural, political and economic contexts different from their own. Furthermore, the Skidmore IA/ES faculties maintain that engagement of original materials in a foreign language allows for a wider range of perspectives and comparative study, not necessarily represented or possible by materials available solely in English. LAC also enriches students' ability to understand foreign cultures and to function in an ethnically diverse world and in an increasingly global economy.

The success of a LAC program depends on two primary factors: the recognition of participating departments of the educational value and pertinence of foreign languages to their disciplines and a solid understanding of the possibilities and limitations of resources of both the Foreign Languages Department and other participating departments. The 1996 Title VI grant solidly established, within the IA program, the centrality of foreign languages to the study of international affairs. The present work of Prof. M. Raveret-Richter (Biology Department), in Caribbean ecosystems, and the completion of foreign study in Costa Rica by Biology students with high intermediate Spanish competency, demonstrate the importance of LAC to the pursuit of Environmental Studies within the IA program. Both instances reveal the recognition in IA participating departments and Environmental Studies of the centrality of foreign languages to the achievement of the educational mission of the IA program.

We propose to implement the LAC "Binghamton Model,"

which was introduced with great success at the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1991. Since 1991, the Binghamton program has extended to all SUNY campuses contributing to the internationalization of their curricula, and fulfilling the needs of those students who wish to continue to develop their language skills while taking non-foreign language courses. The Binghamton model focuses on reading and the acquisition of vocabulary for students in the areas of business, political sciences, anthropology, history, economics, and environmental studies. Students meet once a week for one hour with a Language Research Student (LRS) who has been previously trained and whose responsibility is to aid the students in reading and understanding the foreign language materials assigned by the professor of a particular course. This additional hour is non-credit bearing; it is the professor's responsibility to properly weigh the work completed in the foreign language by the student and to decide the manner in which the student will integrate it into his/her work for the course.

Language Research Students at Skidmore will be students returning from foreign study, upper level native speakers, and the four visiting language researchers we host each year from Spain and France. This model is entirely in consonance with other academic programs at the college drawing on student aid for its delivery: the drilling program in the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department, the tutorial program administered by the Dean of Studies Office, the tutorial program in the Writing Center, and the peer tutoring in the Liberal Studies program, all of which engage upper level or particularly skilled students in helping other students to practice, strengthen and further develop their skills in a particular area. Eight student LAC projects are planned for each of the project years.

LRS will be directed and monitored by a LAC Coordinator, Patricia Rubio, Associate Professor of Spanish, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, whose main tasks will be to:

The International Affairs and Environmental Studies Programs both appreciate the rich educational experiences available to students studying abroad. At Skidmore College, the Office of the Dean of Studies provides an extensive range of Study Abroad opportunities. Currently (during the spring semester of 1999) 142 Skidmore students are studying in foreign countries including Africa, Australia, Austria, Brazil, the British West Indies, Chile, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Samoa, Scotland, Spain and Tibet. In addition, eight Skidmore College students are currently studying foreign policy in Washington D.C.

Although approximately 40 percent of Skidmore College students spend a semester studying off campus at some point before graduation, neither the International Affairs program nor the Environmental Studies program has had a formal mechanism in place for encouraging their students to take advantage of the many Study Abroad programs available that provide experiences relevant to the IA or ES programs. Representatives from many foreign study programs visit campus but no effort has been made in the past to coordinate the visits of representatives from programs that offer opportunities that are likely to be of particular interest to IA or ES students. In addition, there has been no coordinated effort for students returning from abroad to communicate about their experiences with fellow students or Skidmore College faculty.

During each of these project years we plan to introduce an International Environmental Opportunities Workshop in which representatives from selected study abroad programs and appropriate off-campus U.S. study programs describe study options related to international environmental concerns. In the same workshop Skidmore College students who have returned from off campus study related to international environmental concerns will give slide presentations and poster sessions about their experiences. We anticipate students and faculty from both programs will attend these workshops. Faculty will develop an increased familiarity with student experiences in relevant Study Abroad programs. This increased familiarity will enable faculty to provide experiences in the classroom that will both help prepare students for their international experiences and enable returning students to more fully draw upon those experiences when they return to Skidmore College from their studies elsewhere.

Skidmore College already has some formal affiliations and several less formal connections with programs in the U.S. and abroad that expand and concretize students' understanding of international and global environmental issues and concerns. Some of these programs explore environmental science through laboratory and fieldwork; others are directed more toward the political and cultural context in which environmental concerns must be addressed. Our plan is to make these programs more visible to IA and ES students, to fashion tighter links with some specific programs as described below and to foster a smoother connection between the students' educational experiences on and off campus.

Skidmore College has sent a number of students to the School for International Training (SIT). SIT programs are centered primarily on policy and cultural dimensions of environmental work and combine field explorations and research and language study with formal seminars. In the past students have studied ecological issues in Botswana, Brazil, and Ecuador and coastal issues in Kenya. This program is among those that we plan to more fully highlight in coming years. The Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) and the School for Field Studies (SFS) both focus primarily on scientific aspects of national and international environmental issues. Our Biology Department faculty members are already very familiar with OTS. Professor Monica Ravert-Richter has functioned as a faculty member for OTS. For a number of years, Skidmore College students have participated in the excellent environmental field studies programs sponsored by SFS in, for example, rainforest studies in Australia, wildlife management in Kenya, and marine resource studies in British West Indies. As part of our program to increase the visibility and accessibility of international environmental studies opportunities we anticipate pursuing formal affiliations with OTS and SFS.

Skidmore College has a formal affiliation with various International Education of Students (IES) programs in Europe, Asia and Latin America but, to date, Skidmore College has no experience with the excellent environmental science facilities at Stockton, a campus of the prestigious University of Durham. We plan to pursue a stronger, more visible connection with both the Stockton program and the University of Adelaide Natural Resource Science and Environmental Science Faculties.

Opportunities for studying international environmental issues within the United States that are currently available to Skidmore College students include the program at Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA and the Washington Semester at The American University in Washington, D.C. The Washington Semester program includes the "International Environment and Development Semester." Skidmore has long been affiliated with the Washington Semester but has not yet highlighted this opportunity available to students interested in international environmental policy.

During each of the project years, the IA and ES programs will initiate a series of activities to encourage students to participate in off-campus study related to international environmental concerns. These activities will include the workshops described above and the development of written material focused on international environmental off-campus study opportunities. As faculty develop an increased understanding of student off-campus experiences, a more cohesive educational program integrating on-campus and off-campus study can be delivered.

In addition to the rich selection of study abroad opportunities available to Skidmore College students, an extensive range of internship experiences are also available. For example, for some years, we have been sponsoring visits from the Internships in Francophone Europe (IIFE) program. Students in this language intensive program can, for example, use internships to make connections to compare and contrast agricultural policy in France and the United States or study the founding and current activities of the European Environmental Agency. Skidmore College has a strong program of its own in Paris. International environmental internship opportunities can be extended by linking the Skidmore College program with the IIFE program. Skidmore College students also routinely participate in programs sponsored by Boston University (BU), one of the most capable providers of internships in various parts of the world. As part of the international environmental project we plan to highlight the language intensive BU tropical ecology internship program in Ecuador. Project directors will also engage in a dialogue with the Office of the Dean of Studies to investigate the opportunities available through the United Nations Outreach internship program.

Skidmore's library collection of holdings in international environmental subjects reflects the high level of student and faculty interest. Skidmore's Scribner Library has 1,213 titles in environmentally-related subjects. A sampling of the collection reveals approximately 94 titles in the Environmental Sciences classification, GE 1-350, and 221 titles in Human Ecology/Anthro-geography classification, GF 1-900. There are approximately 18 titles in the reference collection in the Environmental Technology classification, TD 1-1066. The collection is spread among a variety of subject headings and geographical areas of concentration. Of the top forty books ranked in The Environmentalist's Bookshelf, Scribner Library has thirty five or 88 percent. Scribner Library subscribes to twenty three environmental journal titles and to a number of online databases that provide access to environmental information. Since 1964, Scribner Library has been a United States Federal Depository Library.

Library acquisitions in support of project goals are listed in Appendix A. These requests, all directly related to classroom teaching and student research, go substantially beyond the college's budget for maintaining the existing collection and thus the majority of them are not slated for purchase without Title VI-A funding. Title VI-A funds are seen as a facilitator of improvement in library holdings and support project-related teaching.

Although the above overview of the College's holdings in international environmental studies indicates the library's strengths, funding is requested to further strengthen holdings in support of the new and revised courses in the International Affairs-Environmental Studies Project.

To support the introduction of new and revised courses, use of new and effective teaching methods, strategies, materials, and information technologies, and outcomes assessment/evaluation techniques, the Project Directors will plan for, organize, and hold in each of the project years three two-day teaching workshops. The workshops will be open to faculty in the Hudson-Mohawk Consortium as part of the Project's outreach. Appendix B lists member institutions of the Hudson-Mohawk Consortium.

The workshops will serve an integration function for the project. Faculty will have multiple and continuing opportunities to share knowledge and techniques and to build a new culture of cooperation among natural and social scientists engaged in global environmental studies.

All Skidmore faculty introducing new or revising existing project-related courses will be required to attend, participate in, and present to the group for feedback on their course projects. They will also be required to infuse their courses with information technology and outcomes assessment techniques introduced and discussed at the workshops. Faculty with more general interest in global environmental studies will also be invited to participate in the workshops. Outside consultants and guest speakers will be invited. Workshop sessions will cover presentations by

1. curriculum development grantees of their new/revised courses for feedback;

2. in-house faculty and outside consultants of information technology techniques and outcomes assessment/evaluation techniques to be incorporated into new/revised courses;

3. in-house faculty and outside consultants on effective teaching methods to engage student in the study of global environmental studies, including usage of case studies, problem-solving techniques, simulations of international negotiations, policy briefs, and debates;

4. consultants from undergraduate colleges/universities with proven records of achievement in international and environmental studies and in supporting and evaluating languages-across-the curriculum initiatives; and

5. faculty on scholarship related to project goals.

Faculty workshops are not the only vehicle for faculty training in global environmental studies. In each of the two project years, two faculty members from International Affairs and Environmental Studies will either participate or enroll in

1. the Environmental Literacy Institute (ELI) of the Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future;

2. the International Faculty Development Seminars of the Council for International Educational Exchange;

3. Faculty Development Program of National Science Foundation (NSF) Short Courses for College Teachers; and

4. foreign language courses at Skidmore College.

In project year one, Professors Halstead (Environmental Studies) and Kennelly (Business) will enroll in the intensive course on environmental literacy offered by the ELI at the University of New Hampshire. In project year two, Professors Raveret-Richter (Biology) and Odekon (Economics) will enroll. ELI brings together university educators from around the world in an interactive exploration of environmental and developmental dynamics. ELI participants experience a variety of instructional methods, including team teaching, multimedia techniques, discovery learning, and experiential cases. Case studies focus on the exploration of the interrelated roles of science and policy in sustaining communities in this country and abroad. Utilizing an experiential, case-based format, ELI links environmental literacy concepts with the theory and practice of teaching, learning, and institutional reform. Skidmore participants are expected to leave ELI with knowledge, tools, and resources to integrate the campus, community, and classroom into a new and revised curricula in global environmental studies. They will not only incorporate the knowledge gained from their ELI education into their project-related coursework but they will make presentations of their case studies to the Skidmore faculty at project workshops.

In project year one, Professors Narisimhan (Chemistry) and Chen (Chinese) will enroll in "Sustaining the Masses: Environmental Protection and Economic Development in China" offered by the Council for International Education Exchange. In project year two, Professors McClure (Business) and Frey (Chemistry) will attend the seminar. The seminar offers a unique opportunity to approach the leaders shaping China's environmental program and to discuss the environmental problems of the world's most populous nation with leading Chinese authorities. The goal of the seminar is to develop a more thorough understanding of China's natural and human environments, the economic and political changes shaping them, and the prospects for an environmentally sustainable future, not only for China but for the whole of the developing world. Skidmore participants will incorporate the knowledge gained from the seminar into their project-related courses and share their knowledge with faculty at project workshops.

In project year one, Professors Vacs (Government) and Standish (Physics) will enroll in the short course on "Nuclear Proliferation" offered within the context of the Faculty Development Program with support from the National Science Foundation Division of Undergraduate Education. In project year two, Professors Ennis-Macmillan (Anthropology) and Bray (Mathematics and Computer Sciences) will enroll in the short course on "The Loss of the World's Marine Biodiversity." Faculty will incorporate knowledge gained in their project-related courses and share their knowledge at project workshops.

In project year one, Professors Berheide (Sociology) and Ginsberg (Government) will enroll in intermediate French at Skidmore. In project year two, Professors McClure (Business) and Hockenos (History) will enroll in intermediate Spanish at Skidmore. These faculty members commit to working closely with the LAC project to increase student usage of foreign languages in IA and ES courses in close cooperation with the LAC coordinator.

Together the International Affairs and Environmental Studies Programs will undertake a number of pedagogical activities outside the classroom that will provide integrating experiences for their students and serve a much wider audience of students in the Hudson-Mohawk Consortium and the general public.

Each project year, the IA and ES faculty will invite three prominent guest speakers for multiple day visits to the Skidmore College campus. These speakers will deliver interdisciplinary lectures to International Affairs and Environmental Studies students and faculty. The general public and members of the Hudson-Mohawk Consortium will be invited. A theme will be identified for each project year's lectures. The theme project one year will be "International Environmental Economics and Policy." The theme for project year two will be "Sustainable Development in a Global Community." Speakers will meet with classes and individual groups of students and faculty.

The project directors have already identified and, in some cases, contacted and invited appropriate speakers for the topics proposed. For project year one we will invite Professor William Moomaw, co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University; Professor Beth DeSombre, a Colby College faculty member who specializes in international environmental law and policy; and David Wheeler head of the World Bank program on innovative strategies to control pollution in developing countries.

For project year tow, Konrad von Moltke of the Dartmouth European Environmental Affairs program will be asked to lead off a year long campus discussion on "Sustainable Development in a Global Community." We also anticipate asking Attila Klein, Brandies University and Chris Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute to address issues in sustainable development. Other speakers for the second year theme include: Professor David Pimental at Cornell University, a nationally recognized expert on global food security and Professor Robert Costanza, University of Maryland, an economist well known for his work on the value of the world's ecosystem.

The Project Directors are responsible for the efficient planning and implementation of the project as outlined in this proposal. They have carefully selected faculty members who have reputations for teaching excellence, reliability and commitment to international studies. They will closely monitor and evaluate all project activities as they relate to program objectives and will produce written reports at the end of each project year. The Directors will be assisted by a project administrative assistant who served in the same capacity during Skidmore's first Title VI-A project and thus has familiarity and experience with project planning and reporting. The Directors will report to the Project Planning and Evaluation Committee which will be responsible for oversight of the Project Directors. Members of the Project Planning and Evaluation Committee are listed on page 9.

Skidmore's commitment to a first-rate undergraduate education in international affairs and environmental studies is best captured by the following passages selected from the Skidmore College Vision Statement:

The Skidmore College Environmental Studies Program seeks to help students become environmentally-literate world citizens. As we respond responsibly to the environmentally related challenges of the coming century, society will increasingly require environmentally literate citizen as parents, consumers and voters. Effective study of environmental concerns depends heavily on a balanced understanding of both natural science and social science perspectives. Emerging environmental concerns are increasingly complex. Understanding their trajectories requires knowledge that flows from many disciplines and from cooperation among those disciplines. Student understanding of contemporary environmental challenges will be greatly enhanced by the increased emphasis on global and international concerns provided by this project.

Skidmore's International Affairs Program places student learning of the global environment firmly in the center of its own mission statement. The goal of the I.A. Program is to

The project will

1. offer the IA Program new and revised courses on global environmental issues;

2. provide I.A. faculty with development and training opportunities to improve their skills and thus enliven the I.A. classrooms with global environmental issues; and

3. open up new opportunities for interactions between natural scientists and social scientists and humanities professors interested in undergraduate teaching in global environmental studies.

Skidmore is endowed with a committed faculty and staff keenly interested in and capable of carrying out project objectives. Skidmore's hallmark is teaching excellence. Faculty recognize the urgent need to better prepare their students for careers and further education in fields that are fundamentally affected by international affairs and the natural environment. The College has no shortage of faculty members interested in and capable of delivering new and revised courses in global environmental affairs. It also has the resources with which to introduce new and revised courses into the permanent curriculum and to service those courses with information technology and library support. What it lacks is the seed money necessary to begin the project initiative. A marriage of external seed money with indigenous resources and personnel is necessary to bring forth and carry out the proposed project.

In its Policy on Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, Skidmore College pledges to prohibit discrimination against any individual or groups of its students, prospective students, employees, or prospective employees on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, disability, age, national or ethnic origin, or sexual orientation. Skidmore values its long traditions of academic and personal freedom. The College is enhanced and strengthened as a learning and working community by the diversity of its members. Therefore, the College affirms the right of all individuals to equal opportunity in education and employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, disability, age, national or ethnic origin, or sexual orientation. The College has established informal and formal mechanisms to provide prompt, fair, and impartial consideration of any complaint of discrimination.

Roy H. Ginsberg is Professor of Government and Director of the International Affairs Program. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science in 1985 from The George Washington University. He came to Skidmore in 1986 after having served in several posts in the federal government between 1977 and 1986: the Foreign Agricultural Service, the Department of Commerce, the Office of Management and Budget, and the International Trade Commission. In 1981-82 he was a research fellow at the European Commission and in 1993-94 he was a Fulbright Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. Prof. Ginsberg was chairman of the European Community Studies Association in 1988-89 and 1990-92. A former Title VI-A Project Director (1996-98), Professor Ginsberg has served as a reader of Title VI-A and other government grants programs (1994-97), has presented oral and written congressional testimony on transatlantic relations (1989, 1992), and has given briefings on the European Union at the State Department (1993, 1994, and 1998). He is coauthor of European Union-United States Relations in the 1990s: The Elements of Partnership (Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies, 1994) and The United States and the European Union in the 1990s: Partners in Transition (London: MacMillan, 1996). His most recent work, "Conceptualizing the European Union as an International Actor: Narrowing the Theoretical Capability-Expectations Gap," will appear in the Fall 1999 issue of the Journal of Common Market Studies. At Skidmore, Dr. Ginsberg teaches international and comparative politics. He is interested in infusing his courses with global environmental perspectives and in comparing U.S. and European Union environmental policies at national and global levels.

Judith Halstead is Associate Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Environmental Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 1979 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Before joining the Skidmore faculty in 1987, Dr. Halstead taught at Williams College and Russell Sage College. Prior to her teaching career, Prof. Halstead was an Environmental Research Scientist for the State of New York. She is author or coauthor of more than two dozen scientific and pedagogical articles in such journals as Atmospheric Environment, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Journal of Chemical Education, Journal of the Electrochemical Society, and Journal of Physical Chemistry. Dr. Halstead is also author of two book chapters on the kinetics of reactions at a solid-gas interface. She has served as a reviewer for the Journal of Chemical Education, Journal of Electrochemical Society, Journal of Physical Chemistry, and for the web-based journal Chemical Educator. She has reviewed grant proposals for the National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society's Petroleum Research Fund. An elected councilor for the Council on Undergraduate Research, Dr. Halstead currently authors a column that appears periodically in the Journal of Chemical Education. At Skidmore, Professor Halstead teaches Environmental Concerns in Perspective, the core course for the Environmental Studies Program, and Field Studies in Environmental Science as well as upper level physical chemistry courses. She plans to develop new cases for the Environmental Studies core course including environmental issues of importance in several regions including Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Dr. Halstead is especially interested in mentoring other faculty interested in introducing significant environmental content and in interdisciplinary perspective into new or existing Skidmore courses.

The Project Directors will each commit 10 percent of their time to ensuring the successful implementation and evaluation of the project. Patricia Rubio, the Languages-Across-the-Curriculum Coordinator, will spend ten percent of her time administering the LAC initiative and supervising the Language Resource students. Christine DeLucia, the Project's Administrative Director, will spend 20 percent of her time on the project.

Faculty committed to introducing or revising project-related courses will spend the summer months preparing and developing those courses. Once developed and approved, the faculty, the faculty member's department chair, and the College are each committed to the incorporation of the course into the permanent curriculum. Each project-related course will be taught no less frequently than once every other year. Most will be taught at least once per year. During the life of the project, curriculum development grantees will spend at least three months preparing for a new course or six weeks to redevelop an existing course. Each grantee will spend at least one sixth of an academic year on delivering the course.

The project evaluation committee will work closely with faculty, staff, administration, students, and outside consultants to ensure that the evaluation of the project will be comprehensive. These members will spend five percent of their time on overseeing and assessing the project.

Skidmore College pledges to prohibit discrimination against any employee or prospective employee on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, disability, age, national or ethnic origin, or sexual orientation. The College affirms the right of all individuals to equal opportunity in education and employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, disability, age, national or ethnic origin, or sexual orientation.

[NOT AVAILABLE]

In recent years, Skidmore has strengthened its capacity to support the study of international affairs and environmental studies in several ways:

        1. With the aid of external and internal funding, we have modernized the design and operations of our Foreign Language laboratory. We have installed a network of desktop computers that serve students interactively, integrated this digital technology into new foreign language pedagogies, and used these resources to strengthen student abilities to read and write in foreign languages. This project has also aided faculty development by engaging them in the creation of new web-based teaching and learning environments that have been developed in cooperation with faculty at other Colleges, most notably, Middlebury. These resources are affording new opportunity for faculty to engage students in a broad range of cultural matters, including those of international environmental issues.

        2. In the last year, the College has invested heavily in a new on-line library catalog system to complement our traditional holdings, and to strengthen our information retrieval capacity. Our students and faculty employ these resources increasingly as they research international and environmental policy issues discussed within our own growing collection, and within other libraries here and abroad. As with its investment in the FL&L laboratory, this strengthening of our capacity to store, retrieve, and explore electronic forms of information is aimed at providing our students and faculty with rapid, efficient access to information essential for providing modern liberal education, of which international affairs and environmental issues are an integral part.

        3. To facilitate interaction with these resources, the College places a networked computer on the desk of every faculty member, provides Ether net connections for all students in the dormitories, and manages clusters of networked computers in several locations (including the library) on campus.

        4. A recent survey (1997) of the faculty reports that half of our faculty are using the web to support their teaching, and that 70% of the faculty use e-mail to sustain communications with their students about course-related activities. Our faculty and students are making increasingly effective use of the information technology we deploy, and the International Affairs/Environmental Studies program we propose will prosper greatly because of these resources.

        5. While the information technology resources of our campus (traditional and electronic) will support effectively the mission of our project, it is the commitment and capacities of our faculty that assure this initiative will proceed in timely and effective manner toward its educational objectives. We have assembled eighteen faculty from a wide span of academic departments who have already described particular courses and specific ways in which they will engage this project. The result is an extraordinary on-going conversation among natural scientists and social scientists that will enrich our curriculum and help our students understand the multidisciplinary character of problems and policy in international affairs and in global environmental issues.

This proposal is aimed fundamentally at providing resources and time for faculty to cross-fertilize two of the premier interdisciplinary programs at Skidmore, International Affairs (IA) and Environmental Studies (ES). Two measures of success of the project will be the development of the proposed nineteen new and revised courses on global environment issues and the participation of IA and ES faculty in intensive curriculum development workshops on international environmental issues from interdisciplinary perspectives. All faculty participants will be asked to provide feedback on the efficacy and utility of the curricular workshops for formative assessment purposes. Ultimately, however, the project success is measured in terms of the outcomes for student learning of the implementation of these curricular initiatives, and it is student learning which will be the basis of the assessment plan for this grant. The project directors will invite two outside consultants per project year to help evaluate project outcomes.

In 1997, the Skidmore Institutional Planning committee approved a mission statement for Skidmore College. This document, approved by the faculty, defined the outcomes of the liberal arts education to which the College is committed and articulated the core abilities expected of all Skidmore College graduates. These core abilities include: communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, valuation, cross-cultural/global perspectives, social interaction, and citizenship skills. Subsequently, all academic programs at the College have been asked to develop mission statements and assessment plans that articulate the relationships between the College goals for students and the particular goals and anticipated outcomes of the program. Interdisciplinary programs are included in this process, and we anticipate that the assessment of student learning outcomes of the proposed project would take place within this broader context.

Interdisciplinary programs, an increasingly predominant component of the Skidmore curriculum, support the College's mission of enhancing students' critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. By their nature, they require of students depth and breadth of knowledge and synthetic abilities fundamental to critical thinking and problem solving skills. That is, students successfully completing interdisciplinary courses of study should be able to draw on a range of technical information, methodologies necessary for analyses of a given problem, work with a wide information base and organize disparate sources of information around a particular topic, differentiate disciplinary perspectives and methodologies, and devise solutions based on holistic understanding of factors and forces relevant to the topic (AAC, Reports from the Fields, "Interdisciplinary Studies," 1991). Assessment efforts in interdisciplinary programs are aimed at documentation of these critical thinking, problem-solving, and synthetic skills.

The missions of IA and ES support the acquisition of these core abilities through their respective content areas. The integration of global environmental issues into the two programs which is the aim of this proposal would even more closely tie the anticipated outcomes of the two programs to Skidmore's mission by deepening students' understanding of cross-cultural/global perspectives, fostering the development of ethical approaches to scientific and public policy initiatives affecting the environment here and abroad, and encouraging responsible decisionmaking and participation as citizens of the world.

The success of the project will be assessed by a mix of qualitative and quantitative methodologies tailored to particular project goals.

To assess the degree to which IA and ES students have developed critical thinking, problem-solving, and synthetic skills requisite for in-depth analysis of global environmental issues, each year a sample of student papers or projects focusing on these issues will be reviewed by a team of IA/ES faculty assessors. Projects will be rated on the following criteria, and will be assessed in the aggregate to identify strengths and weaknesses of students' understanding of global environmental issues and critical thinking, problem-solving, and synthetic skills:

1. Range of knowledge, disciplinary perspectives and methodologies utilized.
2. Organization of broad knowledge base on both technical environmental and international issues into coherent whole.
3. Clarification of relationships among disparate perspectives and core problem.
4. Clarity of conclusion based on holistic understanding of interactions among disparate knowledge bases and methods.

Skidmore offers 100 International Affairs courses taught by 45 full-time faculty members across a dozen academic departments and programs and offers 46 Environmental Studies courses taught by 23 faculty members across ten academic departments and programs. The two programs together have 60 declared minors and service 1800 Skidmore students per academic year who enroll in these 146 courses. The two programs also service 80 students per year who enroll in the core courses in international affairs and environmental studies. The two programs are administered by full-time teaching faculty members. The two Program Directors each teach five three-semester hour credit courses per academic year and provide leadership for their respective programs and students. They also participate in monthly meetings of the academic staff (department chair and program directors) which is chaired by the Dean of the Faculty.

The International Affairs Program formed in 1995 after two years of faculty and student discussions about the need for and shape of a new minor program. The Program requires eight international affairs courses of which two are in the student’s major. It requires students to take one foreign language course above the College’s intermediate-level competency requirement and to enroll in the new International Affairs core course.

Students must take courses in at least three different disciplines within international affairs and they must attend and participate in twice-yearly colloquia on international topics. The Program is expected to introduce a major in international affairs in 2001 and is currently building a foundation of support from across the College for a new major. The Program envisages the International Affairs-Environmental Studies Title VI-A project and its objective of internationalizing the natural sciences and bringing environmental perspectives into international affairs courses to be prerequisites for building support for and excitement towards a new major. Its 1996-98 Title VI-A facilitated the new international affairs curriculum which resulted in the introduction of twenty five new and redesigned International Affairs courses. It also brought together, through workshops and colloquia, faculties and students from the six constituent departments of the I.A. Program--Anthropology, Business, Economics, Foreign Languages and Literatures, Government, and History—in new, exciting, and mutually beneficial ways that endure in the post-project years.

The International Affairs Program now wishes to export its own contagious interest in internationalizing the curriculum to the natural sciences. The next phase of the International Affairs Program’s development is to build new ties with the natural sciences to start up and enhance coursework in global environmental affairs, recognizing that in the "real world" science and policy and science and culture interact in dynamic ways for which our students must be prepared. The International Affairs Program’s requirements, faculty, and courses are listed in Appendix D.

The Environmental Studies Program was founded in 1992. It offers students the opportunity to pursue an interdisciplinary minor degree program. Effective study of environmental concerns depends heavily on a balanced understanding of perspectives from the natural and social sciences and from the humanities. The Program requires students to enroll in the Environmental Studies core course and to take two courses from the science cluster and two courses from the policy cluster. One additional course is selected from either cluster and students must take an environmentally-focused independent study/research internship course at the 300-level. The ES Program’s requirements, faculty, and courses are listed in Appendix E.

The academic departments which anchor the International Affairs Program are the departments necessary for the delivery of the social science and humanities courses necessary for the Environmental Studies Program. At Skidmore, recent hirings of new faculty with expertise in environmental issues in the departments of economics, anthropology, and sociology reflect the College’s continuing commitment to the International Affairs-Environmental Studies Title VI-A project.

The Environmental Studies Program now wishes to enliven and enhance its natural science and other course offerings with international perspectives and to contribute to international affairs courses a higher level of knowledge of and appreciation for scientific and other perspectives on global climate change, ozone depletion, acid rain, and the impact of globalization/industrialization on the natural environment.

Many of the faculties in International Affairs and Environmental Studies are involved in the five-year action plan and Title VI-A project. Of the members of the project planning and evaluation committee four are faculty (Professors Ginsberg, Halstead, Rubio, and McClure) and one is an administrator (Professor DeSieno who is the Assistant to the Dean for Faculty Development and himself a leading advocate for the project) .

Another administrator, Associate Dean of the Faculty Fran Hoffmann, is extensively involved in guiding the planning and evaluation committee to carefully incorporate outcomes assessment and evaluation techniques into the project. Dean of the Faculty Susan Bender’s commitment to the project is outlined in her cover letter to the project proposal.

Skidmore has been cognizant of its place in the world whether in the intermediate foreign language it requires of all students, the range of International Affairs and Environmental Studies courses available, overseas research of the faculty supported by faculty development assistance, participation in the work and scholarship of international and regional studies associations, or the premium placed on study and internship abroad for its students. Forty percent of Skidmore students study abroad. The College’s commitment to International Affairs and Environmental Studies is evidenced by the resources it allocates to both programs, the course releases it offers the program directors as well as the administrative support it contributes. Skidmore’s personnel is fully committed to the project. The Administration is fully committed to introducing and sustaining the new and revised courses. All project-supported courses become part of the College’s permanent curriculum and will be taught either y early or once every other year. All course syllabi will have their own websites accessed via the College’s homepage and the web pages of both the International Affairs Program and the Environmental Studies Program. Thus the College does not lack long-term commitment. What it does lack is the funding to bring the International Affairs and Environmental Studies Programs to their next stage of development which is the intent of the proposed project: building bridges between scientists and nonscientists who teach or wish to teach global environmental affairs.

The College supports both programs in numerous ways. The Program Directors each receive a one-course reduction in their teaching loads and are supported by Program Administrative Assistants and Student Assistants. Each program has annual budgets to cover the costs of colloquia, guest speakers, supplies, and equipment. Each program has been generously supported with computers for student-faculty interactive research usage as well as with information technologies and library resources. The College funded a one-day workshop in academic year 1998-99 to bring to campus consultants on languages-across-the-curriculum models. It has also devoted considerable resources to updating and improving the foreign language laboratory and to improving the international holdings of the newly expanded Lucy Scribner Library.

The proposed activities will contribute to higher quality programs than would otherwise be possible and will create new and enduring links between faculties and students across the natural and social sciences and the humanities. Course development stipends will result in new and redesigned courses in global environmental studies. Teaching workshops will bring together faculty members in the natural and social sciences and humanities who will have unique opportunities to build collegial and pedagogical bridges. The teaching of new and revised courses will be supported by the purchase of new library resources and by the visits to campus of distinguished experts in global environmental affairs. Consultants will help guide the development of new courses and provide insights into how other undergraduate liberal arts/science institutions teach global environmental affairs.

B. Program Results

The two programs are ready and eager to rise to the next stage of their joint development. Both are popular interdisciplinary programs whose students are demanding coursework that no longer segments the study of international affairs from the study of the natural environment.

C. Continuation of Activities

Skidmore is fully committed to program activities after federal funding has been terminated. Skidmore will continue to offer courses developed or redesigned with federal funds and to maintain library resources initially purchased with federal funds in post-project years.

D. Sharing of Materials and Results

The Project Directors will prepare for publication in International Studies Notes and other appropriate teaching journals an account of the establishment, development, evaluation, and evolution of Skidmore’s project and will attend and participate in panels concerned with undergraduate teaching in international affairs and environmental studies at the meetings of the International Studies Association and the Northeast Environmental Studies Group. Skidmore will invite faculties from area institutions to participate in project workshops. The Project Directors will also put up and maintain on the internet the project website and report on its evolution and evaluation.

The following titles would enhance the current reference collection. These titles were compiled using American Reference Books Annual (ARBA) 1994-1998. (Total acquisition cost for all listed below is $1705.)

                    Douville, Judith A., compiler. Environmental Studies Reviews. Middletown, CT: Choice. 1995. $34.

Scribner Library does not have the following 5 titles from The Environmentalist's Bookshelf Top 40 Books, listed in rank order. Acquisition costs will be absorbed by the library's routine budget and are not reflected in this proposal.

                    World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future. New York: Oxford                                     University Press. 1987.

                    Miller, G. Tyler. Living in the Environment.- Concepts, Problems, and Alternatives, Belmont, CA:                                     Wadsworth. 1990.

The following list of periodicals was compiled using Ulrich's Political Directory and Katz's

Magazines for Libraries. (Total subscription cost for all listed below is $3120.)

Asian Environment. $30.00.

Developments in Environmental Economics. (monographic series, price varies),

Ecological Economics. $1092.00.

Ecology, Economy, & Environment. (monographic series)

Environment and Development Economics. S 126. 00

Environmental Conservation. $268.00.

Environmental Periodicals Bibliography (current awareness sufficient contents)

Global Environmental Change. $408.00.

Human Ecology, Online, $395.

International Journal of Environmental Studies. $350.00.

International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology. $145.00.

Journal of Human Ecology. $60.00.

Journal of Tropical Ecology. $232.00.

We have identified several electronic resources that would enhance the current collection.

(Total acquisition cost for all listed below is $3225.)

                    Columbia International Affairs Online (Columbia University Press), Web site, wivw.ciaoiiet.org, $595./yr.

Hudson Mohawk Consortium

of Colleges and Universities

Patricia A. Myers

Associate Executive Director

Project Director for the Educational Leadership Corps

Albany College of Pharmacy

Albany Law School

Albany Medical College

The College of Saint Rose

Empire State College

Hudson Valley Community College

Maria College

Massachusetts College for Liberal Arts

Regents College

The Sage Colleges

Schenectady County Community College

Siena College

Skidmore College

SUNY/Cobleskill

Union College

The University at Albany/SUNY

Fulton Montgomery Community College

Columbia Greene Community College

Adirondack Community College

Catherine Berheide, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Women's Studies Program, teaches courses in sociology and women's studies, including Women in Modern Society and Work, Family, and Organizations. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University in 1976. Dr. Berheide is coauthor of Women, Family, and Policy: A Global Perspective (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994) and author of many articles and chapters including "Gender in A Case Study Approach to Social Problems" (forthcoming). Her teaching and research have become more international/comparative since arriving at Skidmore in 1979. Dr. Berheide plans to infuse her course on Women in the Global Economy with perspectives on women in the environment and is an active contributor to the new core course in international affairs and infusing that course with global environmental issues/case studies.

Una Bray, Associate Professor of Mathematics, came to Skidmore in 1985 shortly after completing her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Polytechnic Institute of New York. Dr. Bray had previously taught at Smith College, Lewis and Clark College, and the University of Wisconsin. She has lectured publicly on such topics as "Women in Mathematics," "Mathematics in the K-8 Classroom," "Epidemiology as an Interdisciplinary Course," and "Epidemics and Society: Introducing Liberal Arts Students to the Use of Statistics." She plans to introduce a new course under the Title VI-A project entitled "Seeds of Change: Perspectives on Global Food and Nutrition" with Professor Vasantha Narasimhan.

Mao Chen, Associate Professor of Chinese, came to Skidmore in 1993. She teaches courses in Chinese language, culture, and civilization. Her course, "China and the West: The Myth of Order," will be revised to include environmental perspectives given the importance of China's environmental policies to the rest of the world.

Robert P. DeSieno, Assistant to the Dean of the Faculty for Faculty Development and Professor of Computer Science, received his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of California at Davis in 1966. He joined the Skidmore faculty in 1983 as Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Dr. DeSieno previously taught at Davidson College, Westminister College, and the University of California at Davis. Dr. DeSieno teaches computer science and liberal studies courses relating technology to public policy. In recent years, he has devoted much of his professional energies toward his interdisciplinary teaching, encouraging both students and colleagues to understand and appreciate the relationships between the natural and social sciences. His recent publications include: "Science, Technology, and National Security," in Journal of College and Science Teaching and "The Opportunities of an On-Line Sabbatical," in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Dr. DeSieno is a member of the working group dedicated to planning and implementing the Title VI-A project.

Steven Frey, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, came to Skidmore in 1996. After receiving his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Pennsylvania State University in 1994, he served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University. An inorganic chemist with numerous publications in such journals as Inorganic Chemistry and Chemistry and Biology, Dr. Frey developed an interest in environmental chemistry and interdisciplinary issues while teaching Environmental Studies 101, Field Studies in Environmental Science, during Dr. Halstead's sabbatical. He has taught all three versions of general chemistry offered at Skidmore, an honors course in chemistry, general chemistry for science majors, and general chemistry for non-science majors.

Matthew Hockenos, Assistant Professor of History, arrived at Skidmore in 1998. He teaches courses in modern European and German history. Dr. Hockenos received his Ph.D. in History from New York University in 1998 and will participate in teaching the new core course in international affairs and infusing that course with global environmental perspectives and exercises.

Kenneth Johnson, Professor of Geology, came to Skidmore in 1966 as the founding Chair of the Department of Geology. He received his Ph.D. in Sedimentology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1968. Dr. Johnson served as Director of the Environmental Studies Program at Skidmore from 1992 to 1998. His course, Human Land Interaction, is a model of cooperation between the natural and social sciences and has been an International Affairs-designated course since 1996.

Michael Ennis-MacMillan, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, arrived at Skidmore in 1998. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Michigan State University in 1998. Dr. Ennis-MacMillan is author of "A Paradoxical Privatization: Challenges to Community-Managed Drinking Water for Systems in the Valley of Mexico" in Managing the Gift from Above and Below: Privatization of Water Rights and Management in Mexico (San Diego: University of California, 1998). He teaches Cultural Anthropology, Peoples and Cultures of Latin America, and Medical Anthropology and will introduce a new course on environmental anthropology.

James Kennelly is Assistant Professor of Business, having arrived at Skidmore in 1996. He received his Ph.D. in International Business and Management from the Stern School of Business at New York University in 1996. He teaches Foundations of Business in the International Environment, Business in the Natural Environment, Ethics and Society, and Manufacturing Strategy and International Competitiveness among other courses. He is author of "Shifting Paradigms for Sustainable Development" in the Academy of Management Review and "Beyond Eco-Efficiency: Toward Socially Sustainable Business" in Sustainable Development. Dr. Kennelly's research and teaching focus on the intersection of international business and firm-level social and environmental performance.

Timothy Koechlin is Associate Professor of Economics. He came to Skidmore in 1988 and received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Dr. Koechlin teaches International Political Economy, International Economic Theory, and Introduction to Macro- and Microeconomics, among other courses and is author of "Liberalization and Mexican Labor Markets" in Economic Liberalization and Labor Markets (Greenwood: 1998) and "The Limits of Globalization" in Political Economy of Globalization (Boston: Kluwer, 1997). Professor Koechlin will teach a new course on environmental resource economics.

Tadahisa Kuroda, Professor of History, came to Skidmore in 1969. He received his Ph.D. in History from Columbia University in 1970. Dr. Kuroda is author of "The Origins of the Twelfth Amendment: The Electoral College in the Early Republic, 1787-1804"(Westport: Greenwood, 1994) and numerous articles and monographs. He teaches courses in American history from the colonial period through the Civil War and reconstruction within the context of the international setting. Dr. Kuroda is actively contributing to the teaching of the new core course in international affairs and in incorporating global environmental perspectives/case studies into that course.

Gary McClure is Associate Professor of Business. He came to Skidmore in 1991. Dr. McClure is actively contributing to the new core course in international affairs and in incorporating global environmental perspectives/case studies into that course.

Vasantha Narasimhan, Professor of Chemistry, came to Skidmore in 1980. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the State University of New York at Albany and her M.S. in Biochemistry from Madras University in India. She teaches upper level biochemistry courses for chemistry majors and a general education nutrition course for non-science majors. Dr. Narasimhan's research includes work on the conformational dynamics of DNA and the consequences of its interaction with radiation, environmental pollutants, carcinogens, and mutagens. She plans to team-teach the course, Seeds of Change: Perspectives on Global Food and Nutrition, with Professor Una Bray for the Title VI-A project.

Barbara Norelli, Social Sciences and Government Documents Librarian, came to Skidmore in 1993. She received her Master of Library Sciences at the State University of New York at Albany. Ms. Norelli has held positions at the law libraries at Albany Law School and Santa Clara University. Her research interests are currently focused on the information seeking behavior of undergraduates in the digital library. Ms. Norelli was actively involved with the international affairs faculty in Skidmore's last Title VI-A grant project.

Mehmet Odekon, Associate Professor of Economics and Chair of the Department of Economics, came to Skidmore in 1992. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the State University of New York at Albany in 1978. Dr. Odekon teaches macroeconomics, international economics, and development economics and is coeditor of Economic Liberalization and Labor Markets (Greenwood, 1998). He will revise his development economics course in order to take into account global environmental issues.

Monica Ravaret-Richter, Associate Professor of Biology, came to Skidmore in 1990 after having received her Ph.D. in Behavioral Biology from Cornell University. Her research focuses on the behavioral ecology of the temperate and tropical social wasps, bees, and other arthrods. Professor Raveret-Richter is fluent in Spanish and has taught biology field courses in Costa Rica in Spanish. Her research publications appear in journal such as Ecology, Animal Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Sociobiology, and Annals of the Entomological Society of America. Dr. Raveret-Richeter plans to modify her course, Conservation Biology, to include a more international perspective for the Title VI-A project.

Patricia Rubio is Associate Professor of Spanish. She came to Skidmore in 1983 after having received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Literatures from the University of Alberta in 1982. Dr. Rubio teaches Business Spanish, Culture and Civilization of Spanish America, and Spanish American Women Writers among other courses. She is author of Gabriela Mistral ante la critica: bibliografia anotada (Santiago: Direccion de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, 1995), "Los Discursos de la Memoria en la Prosa de Margorie Agosin" Taller de Letra (Santiago: 1997), and numerous articles and monographs. Professor Rubio will introduce a segment on environmental issues in her Culture and Civilization of Spanish America course.

William Standish, Associate Professor of Physics and Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Physics, came to Skidmore in 1983. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the State University of New York/Binghamton in 1978 and was a professor at the State University of New York/Albany from 1978 to 1983. Dr. Standish will introduce a new interdisciplinary course, Nuclear Radiation and the Environment, for the Title VI-A project.

Aldo Vacs, Professor of Government and Chair of the Department of Government, came to Skidmore in 1986, the same year he received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh. He teaches Latin American politics, United States foreign policy, and international diplomatic negotiations. Professor Vacs will infuse environmental perspectives and case studies into his courses on diplomatic negotiations and international political economy.

Marc-Andre Wiesmann, Associate Professor of French, came to Skidmore in 1993 after receiving his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California/Los Angeles. He teaches a wide variety of French courses including French for Business, French Medieval and Renaissance Literature, and Seventeenth Century French Literature. He is author of numerous articles, book reviews, and translations including "Intertextual Labyrinths: Ariadne's Lament in Montaigne's: Sur des vers de Virgile," in Renaissance Quarterly. Dr. Wiesmann will participate in the teaching of the I.A. core course by introducing global environmental content and exercises into that course.