From the first time you stepped on campus, you’ve been hearing a lot of buzzwords, such as “interdisciplinarity” and “knowledge in service to society,” but what do all those things mean, exactly? Why should they be important to you? Here we attempt to decode some of Duke’s top educational values, but you should note that the “definitions” we give are just a starting point. There are many ways to understand these concepts. As you shape your collegiate experience, you’ll need to decide what these terms mean to you and what you value.
We interpret “global” in the broadest sense possible. There’s a tendency to equate “global” with “international” and while the term certainly has a spatial component, that spatial dimension could be local, national or international. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, a problem facing a community in Durham could be very similar to a problem faced by a community in Ghana.
As the world’s peoples become ever more mobile, all of us are exposed to more and more cultures that differ from our own. We have a wonderfully diverse community at Duke, with people from various social, political, religious, socio-economic, and environmental backgrounds. The cultures represented here will likely be different than those you encountered at home. Venturing off campus will provide an even richer variety of cultures from which to learn, be they on the other side of the globe or the other side of Durham.
Global learning involves place, culture, and social and environmental issues and can take place on campus, in Durham, in your hometown or in a country you’ve never before visited.
Duke wants to prepare its students for lives as citizens of the world, which means instilling in students the knowledge, skills and attitudes allowing them to thrive in today’s global society. When you leave Duke, you will have knowledge of significant contemporary issues and their global scope, skills allowing you to engage positively with and learn from people of different backgrounds and from different environments, and self-awareness as a community, national and global citizen.
One of Duke’s key strategic goals - using knowledge in service to society - involves taking what you’ve learned in the classroom and applying it to real world problems. By bringing together theory and practice, Duke students use their education to make a difference while simultaneously preparing themselves for the types of questions and problems they will face in their careers after Duke.
Duke broadly defines civic engagement as working for the public good. When you participate in civic engagement opportunities, you develop a sensitivity to the world's problems, gain an understanding of them and work to address them through collaboration and commitment.
Service-learning is a special type of civic engagement experience that integrates community service directly with academic study to enrich learning, teach civic responsibility and strengthen communities.
When you explore a subject via an interdisciplinary approach, you are crossing the boundaries of the traditional academic departments. Such an approach is essential for understanding and addressing complex social challenges. For example, tackling the issue of renewable energy involves more than just a thorough knowledge of the science behind the problem. Expertise in engineering, law, policy, business and human behavior will also be needed. By stressing interdisciplinarity, Duke encourages students to approach issues with creativity, flexibility and a curious mind.