Global Identity Course

What Is Global Identity?

Global Identity: Connecting Your International Experience with Your Future is an optional, 1-credit, online course that helps you process your international experience and apply what you've learned upon your return. The course helps you reflect on multiple layers of cross-cultural experience and market your time abroad to future employers.

Global Identity Helps You

• Articulate the value of your experience and the skills you've gained abroad to future employers, graduate or professional schools and scholarship committees.
   
• Demonstrate your intercultural development and competencies that can be used as part of a professional portfolio in a job search or application for graduate/professional school by preparing key essays/documents.
   
• Understand intercultural theories and interactions with cultural difference, as well as intercultural communication strategies. These skills help you to start to make connections between your study abroad experience and the broader range of skills connected with this experience, to become a competitive member of a global workforce.

Course Information

• Registration Instructions will be emailed to all students who are going abroad, via the Learning Abroad Center. 

• All course assignments build upon one another—use what you learned from previous assignments to complete subsequent assignments.

• You get out of the course what you put into it—the more thoughtful you are about the assignments, the more you are able to use what you have written later in your portfolio. Challenge yourself by digging more deeply into your responses. Coursework includes short readings from various texts (posted online), reflection about your experience abroad, and five journal/reflection assignments submitted via email. The first assignment is due one week before departure.

• There is no course fee for UofM and Non-UofM students participating on a Learning Abroad Center program.

• For students participating on an affiliate program (IFSA, CIEE, IES, Arcadia, CET, etc.) the course fee is $200 if you register by the priority deadline. Late registration will be considered on a case by case basis with a course fee of $503.00 (one-credit undergraduate tuition).

• Non-resident students pay the same rate as residents.

• To drop the course, you must email your request to Amy Garwood-Diaz.

• In accordance with the Learning Abroad Center's Cancellation and Refund Policy, if you drop the course within one week of your program start date, you will be issued a full refund.  If you drop more than one week after your program start date, you will not receive a refund.

• For Semester-long programs, you will have two weeks from your official program start date to request that the Global Identity course be dropped to avoid a "W" on your University of Minnesota transcript. If you submit your request after the first two weeks, the course will appear as a "W" on your transcript, if you have not already used your one-time late withdrawal. Please see the policy on the UofM's one-time late withdrawal policy. If you submit your request after the final ten-week drop period, you will not be allowed to withdraw, and you will receive the grade that you have earned for the course (A–F).

• You are not able to enroll in this course once you arrive onsite for your program because this course requires a pre-departure assignment. You must register for the course by the deadline. You will receive an email from the LAC Academic Services team with instructions for registering the term before your study abroad program. 

• Grading is on an A–F basis. You must complete all assignments in order to receive a passing grade for the course.

• This course is only available under the A–F grade base. If you register for it, you must select A–F as your grade base. If you select S/N, the Learning Abroad Center will change your grade base to A–F.

• For more information check the FAQ

Contact Amy Garwood-Diaz for questions about the course.