Mitchell, O’Toole present at international conference

salvetoday Posted On October 31, 2019
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Dr. James G. Mitchell, professor and chairman of the Department of Modern Languages, and Dr. Laura O’Toole, professor in the Department of Cultural, Environmental and Global Studies, recently presented at the 41st annual conference of the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, hosted by the University of Amsterdam.

“This was the first time the conference was held at an international location, hosted by Dutch colleagues who have been attending the conferences in the U.S. for many years,” O’Toole said. “There was an amazing international representation, including colleagues from across Europe, South America, Africa and Asia.”

Mitchell and O’Toole were accepted for a new conference format – “Posters, Pitches, Parcours” – that asked participants to create a poster and also prepare a short presentation about it for a regularly scheduled session.

Their poster and presentation, “Place-Based Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Curricula: Toward Solving ‘Wicked’ Glocal Problems,” explored University initiatives that connect study abroad and community engagement to form student-citizens capable of problem-solving with cross-cultural and collaborative capacities.

Mitchell and O’Toole focused on Salve Regina’s minor in Spanish for the health and service professions, which incorporates community engagement modules in Rhode Island and abroad, along with the integrated Cultural, Environmental and Global Studies curriculum that requires students majoring in environmental studies, global studies and sociology and anthropology to take a series of common courses and includes opportunities for project-based community engagement and problem-solving connected to issues in the broader world. They also illustrated the power of external funding to create innovative curricula.

“Both seek to connect global and local populations and issues across disciplines to form student-citizens with abilities to connect their personal experience to larger global concerns beyond their doorstep,” Mitchell and O’Toole wrote.