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AU 694: Integrating Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Study Abroad
This is a culminating experience for students fulfilling GE Segment III through the cluster Study Abroad: Exploring Cultural, Ethnic, or Social Diversity from Multi-disciplinary Perspectives. It is not a traditional course, in the sense that there are no regular course meetings for which all students attend. It is for students who have returned from a semester or year studying abroad who have also already satisfied all of the other requirements for this cluster. The student works with a faculty mentor to complete a paper of ten or more pages that integrates disciplinary perspectives gained from studying abroad with the student's own experiences living in a different culture.
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Finding a Faculty Mentor
The first step is to find a faculty mentor. Please start this process the moment classes begin. The mentor can be any regular faculty member at SFSU. It does not have to be from your major or minor, and the mentor does not need to have experience in your host country. Think about professors whose classes you have enjoyed, who have an international emphasis in their classes, or with whom you have worked closely in the past when you are deciding which professor you will ask.
When you ask your professor to be your AU 694 mentor, please print out and bring a copy of this letter to give to the professor. This is a fairly new cluster, and not everyone has heard of it before. The letter will help explain and answer some of their questions. You may also direct them to the section of the OIP website that covers Segment III – there is a section for faculty mentors as well.
Please be polite when you ask a professor to be your mentor – you are asking her or him to donate their time to you. Also, be prepared that your first choice may say no – he or she may have too many projects that semester to participate. If your professor has more questions or wants to talk with someone about the program, please refer her or him to the cluster coordinator.
Once a mentor has agreed to work with you, go to Academic Advising (Admin 211) and ask for a Segment III Petition. Fill out the courses that you took for the Segment III while abroad and bring it to me to sign. Look at my homepage for office hours.
Once you have a mentor and the Segment III petition has been signed, I will give you a permit number that will allow you to add the class. You cannot register ahead of time for AU 694, but there is also no course limit. It is important that you find a mentor and get the petition signed early in the semester, before the add/drop deadline.
Once you are registered for the course, you and your faculty mentor will decide together how often you will meet, what deadlines you will have for your project, and what milestones you should turn in (thesis statement, draft, etc.).
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Paper Guidelines
The basic guidelines for the paper are that it should be a formal essay, which makes an analytic argument with a thesis statement, rather than a memoir or creative work. It should combine some of the material you covered in the coursework you did while abroad and some experiences you had while living in a foreign country. It needs to be at least ten pages long, but if you did not write at least twenty pages of work in your courses abroad, it will need to be longer. The total number of written pages for the cluster needs to be at least thirty.
Beyond these basic guidelines, you have the freedom to represent your experience as you like. You should discuss possible topics with your faculty mentor, and the two of you should agree together on the specific topic and argument of the paper. You and your mentor will decide together how often you would like to meet over the semester and whether you will turn in a thesis statment, outline, or draft before handing in the final version.