All undergraduate Chapman students are required to complete a course with a Global Citizen designation in order to advance Chapman University’s mission, including through its academic curriculum, to help students learn about the world and issues around them and to lead inquiring, informed, ethical and productive lives as global citizens.
We do not anticipate the Global Citizen requirement to require students to take additional units to graduate.
Learning outcomes for Global Citizen courses
Courses approved for Global Citizen designation must demonstrate two or more of the following student learning outcomes are substantially present:
- Gain an understanding of how individuals and groups have identified, and been separated by, one or more protected characteristics, and how this has impacted their experiences in the realms of economics, politics, historical events, literature, philosophy, and/or politics.
- Describe how cultures, events, and/or individuals or group experiences (including their own) are shaped by the intersections of a variety of protected characteristics such race, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socio-economic background, age, and/or disability and/or other socially constructed categories of difference.
- Learn about different schools of thought, philosophies, and viewpoints concerning the complex elements of discriminatory treatment or impacts, or otherwise different experiences, in the realms of economics, politics, historical events, literature, philosophy, and politics, on a local, national and/or global scale, such as ethnocentrism, colonialism, slavery, democracy, and imperialism that may result from difference(s) between individuals and groups.
- Identify, analyze, and communicate regarding different viewpoints concerning the above, including the different experiences and biases that inform such viewpoints.
- Learn about how sociocultural factors and access to (or distribution of) resources are informed and impacted by one or more practices within historical, social, cultural, and economic systems.
Policies for Global Citizen course requirements
- This policy affects all new, incoming students under the 2025/26 Chapman Catalog.
- Students must satisfy a Global Citizen course requirement prior to graduation by completing a three-credit course that has been approved by faculty as meeting the requirements.
- Global Citizen courses address history, literature, schools of thought, philosophies, economics, politics, and international issues arising from individual differences, including protected characteristics, such as sex, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, race, ethnicity, medical condition, and disability.
- Courses that are used to meet the Global Citizen graduation requirement may also be used to meet other degree requirements, including major and/or minor core courses or electives, as well as general education (GE) requirements.
- Several programs have designed Global Citizen approved courses as part of their degree programs, and several GE courses are approved. Students may take a Global Citizen approved course at any time during their time at Chapman.
