Community

Community programs

The Center for the Study of the Middle East (CSME) supports a broad range of activities aimed at the K-12 community, including sponsoring language programs, as well as outreach involving the history, culture, music, art, and other aspects of studying the Middle East. The Center also sponsors educational programs in community colleges. All of the lectures and events sponsored by CSME are free and open to the public.

CSME’s affiliates take their outreach obligations seriously and are proud to take part in the Bloomington Lotus Blossoms Festival, the annual conference of the Indiana Council for the Social Studies, the International Festival of Indianapolis, the Midwest Conference on International Education, as well as the Social Studies Workshop for K-12 teachers.

CSME has developed a core of local community members who consistently attend our events, and we continue to find ways of engaging and expanding this core group.

Community colleges

The long-term goal of this initiative is to create a global consortium of teachers skilled in training students in an arts- and culture-based approach to conflict studies, justice-based reconciliation, human rights awareness, and cultural heritage policy in virtual and face-to-face learning environments. We are interested in bringing to the foreground cultural practices and policies that promote an understanding of the tensions as well as the commonalities among communities in contention.

Food, music, folk healing, liturgical practices, language and visual arts provide doorways through which teachers can help students understand the national, religious, and interethnic issues at play globally. The Center for the Study of the Middle East has been working with the Navajo Technical University.

The Global Learning Across Indiana Initiative is funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language (UISFL) program. Ivy Tech has been partnering with the Center for the Study of Global Change at Indiana University since January 2013 in this three-year initiative for the internationalization of the Ivy Tech curriculum and the development of a Global Learning Certificate which will be available at Ivy Tech campuses throughout the state. CSME has developed an Arabic curriculum and supported the teaching of Arabic.

Indiana University Bloomington and Ivy Tech Bloomington are engaged in a four-year collaboration to develop faculty learning communities that will work toward designing global learning experiences for all students. CSME is a partner in the project and works with Ivy Tech. CSME has taken part in the Ivy Tech International Education Week which took place from November 16 until November 19, 2015.

Visit the Center for the Study of Global Change