About Us

Founded in 2003, International Studies is committed to educating students to become active global citizens. The Department is an integral part of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies and offers Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees as well as graduate degrees. We focus on the interdisciplinary and comparative study of international issues and prepare students to assume leadership positions in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.

Mission Statement

The Department of International Studies is dedicated to educating students to be at home in the world of the 21st century. Departmental degrees investigate global structures (cultural, economic, environmental, health, legal, and political) that promise, with varying degrees of success, to serve as common bases for worldwide human interaction. Yet we also emphasize the particularity of place and identity: territorial states and their boundaries, national and ethnic loyalties, religious conviction, systemic economic disparities, health and environmental challenges, gender identities, and the persistent use of political violence to resolve disputes. Through interdisciplinary instruction, language training, overseas education, and internship opportunities, we prepare students for occupations in both the public and private sectors: governmental agencies and NGOs, philanthropic organizations and multi-national corporations, public relations and cultural events management. Above all, we encourage our students to be thoughtful, reflective citizens of their respective communities and ethical participants in the global life that awaits them.

The department seeks to train students in useful skills – proficiency in multiple languages, acquaintanceship with disciplinary research methodologies, the understanding of business and political practices, and knowledge of global governmental and non-governmental institutions. Moreover, we aspire for the university to be the place where faculty and students can exercise their intellectual curiosity and their increasing need to understand the world from the perspective of a second home, a linguistic, cultural, and territorial region in the world that quite simply opens the mind to the previously unimaginable.

International Studies History