INTEGRATIVE INQUIRY FOR THE GLOBAL EXPLORER

The Integrative Inquiry is a requirement that encourages you to engage with questions and acquire skills that enable you to communicate effectively and act responsibly in a world of diverse languages and cultures.

In order to complete the requirement, you need to take 4 courses, representing 16 credits outside the major disciplinary base.

These courses will require you to engage in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary inquiry on problems related to aesthetic and creative expression, difference and cultural boundaries, and civic and ethical problems at both the local and global level.

FirstBridge

As a new student, you will fulfill two of your Integrative Inquiry course requirements by taking FirstBridge, a set of two courses from different disciplines focusing on enduring questions and compelling controversies.

Learning Outcomes

• Information Literacy: Students will comprehend how information is produced and valued in order to discover, evaluate, use, and create information and knowledge effectively and ethically. In FirstBridge, students will demonstrate the conversational nature of scholarship, and recognize their potential role and responsibilities as contributors to that conversation. For each discipline taught in FirstBridge, students will identify reference works, journals, databases and/or major works in history, in order to start effective research in the field. 
• Life at University: Students will acquire the study skills, time management, and interpersonal skills needed to meet the demands of university-level academic work at a Liberal Arts College individually or as a team. Students will value the multiple meanings of place through experiential learning at AUP and beyond in the Parisian or global context. 

Two Integrative Inquiry courses

In order to complete the integrative inquiry requirement, you will need to take two courses outside your major, coded CCI, representing 8 credits. These courses will contribute to the achievement of at least two of the following learning outcomes:

(Note: A French course beyond FR1200 would fulfill one of these course requirements.)

Learning Outcomes

• Local and Global Perspectives: You will enhance your intercultural understanding of languages, cultures and the histories of local societies, and the global issues to which these relate.
• Aesthetic Inquiry and Creative Expression: You will engage with artistic or creative objects (eg visual art, theatrical works, film) in different media and from a range of cultural traditions.
•  Exploring and Engaging Difference: You will think critically about cultural and social difference. You will identify and understand power structures that determine hierarchies and inequalities relating to race, ethnicity, gender, nationhood, religion or class.
• Civic and Ethical Engagement: You will demonstrate awareness of ethical considerations relating to specific societal problems, values or practices (whether historical or contemporary, global or local) and learn to articulate possible solutions to prominent challenges facing societies and institutions today so as to become an engaged actor across various levels of our interconnected world.

Experiential Learning

During your time at AUP, you must complete at least one experiential learning opportunity (coded CCX). These experiences are not credit-bearing. They enhance your academic, personal and professional development, and could include:

• any course with a course type CCX;
• an internship (credit-bearing or for zero-credit) registered with AUP, and if zero-credit, registered before or during semester of completion of final degree requirements;
• completion of the Global Professional Skills Certificate Program (GPS).

Learning Outcomes

• You will enhance your understanding of the complexities and challenges of real-world concerns and your creative capacity to address them.
• You will interpret intercultural experience from the perspectives of more than one worldview and demonstrate the ability to initiate and develop interaction with cultural difference.
• You will be able to position yourself critically in relation to these concerns, considering the efficacy, consequences and ethical dimensions of your actions in a given place and context.
• You will engage in the self-assessment, reflection and analysis of this experience, preparing you for future success, and will be able to articulate this to future educational and professional interlocutors.