SUNY at Stony Brook - Federated Learning Communities Program - FLC 302 Globalization Seminar
(Spring 2002) Wednesday 6-9 p.m. SBS-N403
Professor: Hermann Kurthen (hkurthen@notes.cc.sunysb.edu, phone: 632-7717)
Office Hours: Wednesday 4-6 p.m. & by appointment at SBS-S443
TA: Faiyyaz Alloo (falloo@ic.sunysb.edu); Office hours: Tue/Thu 3:30-4:30 p.m. at SBS-S443

The Federated Learning Community (FLC) is a program which focuses on an issue of major societal importance and leads to an academic minor. The program enables students to register for a cluster of courses arranged around a specific issue. The program seminar focuses and integrates the material of the federated classes in a small community setting of about 25 -30 students. Students may earn a minor in Globalization (GLS) by completing 24 credits in a sequence of their own choice, including both program seminars FLC 301 and 301, plus any six of the other courses with a grade of C or better. The prospective topic for Fall 2002 is Human Rights, Terrorism, and Transnational Movements, and for Spring 2003 Global Economics, Development, and Political Governance.

A goal of the FLC is to engage students in a holistic way that touches their personal lives as well as their academic interests and allows them to gain a hands-on experience combining theory and practice, including a variety of extracurricular activities. The objective is to practice skills, such as writing (class questions, briefing handout, mid-term essay, conference report); group research projects, oral presentations, webpage design, collaboration with and peer mentoring of high school students to prepare a student conference, visiting the U.N. headquarters, organizing field trips and events (movies, plays, conference, pizza parties), and meetings with scholars.

In the FLC program seminar the SBU undergraduate students will
- collaborate in small groups which are organized around topics covered in the program course.
- submit at the beginning of each class 3 typed questions based on the required reading.
- Each group prepares a 20 minute class briefing (copied handout to all students, including 5 questions) based on the reading for a topic (see for briefing examples‡ http://www.sunysb.edu/flcglobal).
- A short and task-oriented open-book mid-term essay will cover all readings/discussions of the first half of the semester.
- During the semester the groups will engage in an extracurricular project related to their topic, such as doing a research or case study project, setting up a web page, interviewing an expert or writing an article for a student paper, organizing a student conference etc. The projects have to be agreed upon by the instructor no later than March 1.
- For the student conference, each group will present a theoretically and empirically informed conference report of about 10-15 pages which will count as a collaborative term paper. Ideally, the report ties together the group's prior class briefing, the ensuing class discussions and collaborative efforts with high school students or other extracurricular activities, and the group's research interests. The topics of conference reports have to be agreed upon by the instructor no later than March 10.

A typical class will start with a group's class briefing and the discussion of selected questions submitted at the beginning of class. After a short break, the high school students will join us and a guest speaker from a federated course will arrive and give a 30-40 minute lecture, followed by a group discussion with SBU and high school students.

STUDENT EVALUATION
- Individual class participation and class attendance based on the attendance sheet 15%
- Three reading related, analytical questions (typed) handed in to the instructor
by each student at the beginning of each class 15%
- One group briefing handout (3-5 pages) with 5 reading related questions 10%
- One mid-term essay based on all required reading before March 13 10%
- One extracurricular group project (agreed upon by the instructor by March 1) 20%
- One printed group conference report & presentation at the student conference.
The topic needs to be agreed upon by the instructor no later than March 10 30%

If you have a physical, psychological, medical or learning disability that may impact on your ability to carry out assigned course work, I would urge that you contact the staff in the Disabled Student Services office (DSS), Room 133, Humanities, 632-6748v/TDD. DSS will review your concerns and determine with you what accommodations are necessary and appropriate. All information and documentation of disability are confidential.

Class reader distributed by the instructor