Trinity's Global Learning Sites Initiative strives to transform the ways in which undergraduates both understand and act upon the world. The program will give students a deeper grasp of a world that is profoundly different from that of the Cold War era, one that is colored by growing concentrations of people in urban centers, by profound population movements, cross-cultural influences, economic disparities, social fragmentation, technological sophistication, ethnic and political conflicts, and bio-environmental pressures. The experience will help students to understand the truly global character of contemporary life: from dietary patterns to dress, from market commodities to career options, from linguistic nuances to the construction of cultural identity. It will broaden their understanding of the profound influence of the cybernetic revolution on campus and cultures, and the dynamic role of powerful multi-national corporations in shaping local economies. In addition, it will sensitize students to the diversity of competencies required to function as globally-minded citizens, giving them the ability to work with peoples of all backgrounds, under all manner of constraints. At the same time, it will demonstrate how and why traditional learning, grounded in the liberal arts and sciences, when deepened by meaningful local community engagements where these same global forces are encountered in more familiar settings, offers talented undergraduates the best preparation for careers of achievement and service both at home and abroad.

The Global Learning Sites Initiative is one of several coordinated efforts that Trinity has undertaken in response to a pressing question: what is the role of the high quality, residential liberal arts college in an increasingly urbanized, competitive, technological, interconnected global economy?

The faculty has concluded a strategic curricular review that identified the urban, the global, and a collaborative paradigm of teaching and learning as distinguishing features of Trinity's conception of "liberal arts with a difference." This review led to a new strategic plan, approved in May of 1998 by the Board of Trustees. At the heart of the plan is the creation of a distinctive version of liberal arts education that responds to the challenges of the Information Age and to the changing global circumstances that affect local communities. With it, Trinity will build the linkages and connections necessary to create an "extended community of learning," a community that reaches beyond the ivory tower to enrich our curriculum through linkages with the larger city here in Hartford, Rome, San Francisco, and beyond.

Global Learning Sites will play a pivotal role in the realization of Trinity's innovative academic vision for the future. These distinctive sites will provide students with an off-campus learning experience that is demanding, coherent, and integrated into their overall Trinity education. At present, it is apparent that too many "study abroad" programs do not provide the intellectual and cultural challenges that our students need to stimulate fully their intellectual growth. With time, we anticipate that these linked foreign study venues will constitute a preferred model for many of the approximately 50 percent of Trinity students who currently elect to study abroad at some point in their undergraduate careers.

We are convinced that this new educational experience will produce leaders who are able to think and communicate clearly and imaginatively and who possess a strong sense of moral grounding and civic consciousness. In other current initiatives, Trinity is creating programs that carry students out of the classroom and into its neighborhood and city, programs that offer community and service learning components that deepen the impact of undergraduate education. Our goal is to draw our students into learning engagements that begin on campus, expand into the city, and then extend around the globe. This approach will deepen learning and has already begun to attract exceptionally talented and curious undergraduates to the College.

The program will provide undergraduates with a critical and distinctive asset as they choose careers for the 21st century. The College's network of global sites will give Trinity students the advantage of significant learning engagements that will lead to the acquisition of precious and reliable "local knowledge" of at least two urban cultures: first in Hartford, a small but ethnically diverse city, and the second in the global site of their choice.

Leaders for the 21st century will require first-hand knowledge that reaches far beyond our nation's borders, and skills that equip them to function with diverse people and in unfamiliar settings. Through the intense and illuminating experiences they will have during a semester at a Global Learning Site, our students will come to understand and appreciate global trends and forces as they play out in these new contexts. In the process, they will develop the cosmopolitan outlooks on which the next century will place a premium.