The GSC sponsors a variety of professional development activities for those who wish to improve their teaching/practice and understanding of crucial global issues. Opportunities include day-long and evening educator workshops for continuing education credit, Global Issues Through Literature Series (GILS), Global Literary Encounters book discussions; micro-courses, Consortium for Educational Resources on Islamic Studies (CERIS) book discussions, the new Global Studies Educator Certificate, and various funding opportunities. If you have questions about educator programming, please contact Global Studies Center Assistant Director for Outreach, Catherine Fratto
Upcoming Workshops
Shifting Global Orders: Teaching the Next 50 Years - A Mini Course for K-12 Educators
This free K-12 educator mini-course will explore the major forces shaping the global landscape over the next half-century including the role of a rising China, equipping participants with the tools to critically analyze and teach about transformative global trends. Through a multi-disciplinary lens, the weekend course examines how emerging technologies, demographic transitions, shifting economies, and global health and environmental challenges intersect to redefine power, security, and opportunity worldwide. This mini course will not attempt to predict how the future will unfold but will highlight some of the important issues of today that will transform the world on the global, regional, national, and local levels over the next fifty years.
This will be a hybrid mini-course, and you may choose to attend online or in person. We have a limited number of travel subsidies available for those outside of the Pittsburgh area who wish to attend in person.
All educators who fully attend and participate in the two-day mini-course will receive teaching materials and resources after the program.
Educators who attend In-Person will receive a free book!
Benefits include a Certificate of Completion and Pennsylvania teachers will also receive Act 48 hours.
Schedule:
Friday, April 17,2026 - 17:00 to Saturday, April 18,2026
Global Issues through Literature Series (GILS): The U.S. in the World
Past Workshops
Are you looking for innovative ways to engage your students in exploring the real-world factors that influence climate change and global policy-making? The Global Studies Center invites high school Social Studies and STEM teachers (grades 9–12) to a hands-on, 3-hour professional development workshop to learn about the EN-ROADS Climate Action Simulation and how your students can participate in this simulation.
This in-person workshop, held on the University of Pittsburgh campus, will equip you with tools to bring climate policy simulations into your classroom. A stipend is provided for participating educators.
A Mini Course for K-12 Educators
When: Friday, April 4, 2025 from 5:00-8:00 p.m. and Saturday, April 5, 2025 8:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
Location: 4130 Posvar Hall, University of Pittsburgh and Virtually
This two-day, K-12 mini course explores the Opium Wars of the 19th century, their causes, and far-reaching consequences, connecting historical events with modern global issues. Through examining the relationship between imperialism, trade, and culture, participants will gain insight into how the Opium Wars reshaped international dynamics, especially between China and Western powers, including the emerging empire of the United States. Sessions include presentations, activities and teacher-led strategies for curricular development.
When: April 11, 2025; dinner will be served at 5:30 p.m.; discussion will begin at 6:00 p.m. (Hybrid)
Where: 4217 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, University of Pittsburgh (Dinner); Hybrid (Discussion)
K-16 Educators are invited to participate in the bi-annual Consortium for Educational Resources on Islamic Studies Faculty Readers' Forum. Educators will receive 3 Act 48 credits. The book for discussion is Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World (2019; University of California Press) by Ussama Makdisi. He is one of three Makdisi’s hosting the popular Makdisi Street Podcast on YouTube.
About the Book
Ussama Makdisi's Age of Coexistence reveals a hidden and hopeful story that counters clichéd portrayals of the Middle East. It shows how a region rich with ethnic and religious diversity created a modern culture of coexistence amid Ottoman reformation, European colonialism, and the emergence of nationalism. Moving from the nineteenth century to the present, this groundbreaking book explores, without denial or equivocation, the politics of pluralism during the Ottoman Empire and in the post-Ottoman Arab world.
The discussion will be facilitated by M. Safa Saracoglu, Professor, Department of History, Commonwealth University and Ana Sekulic, Teaching Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Pittsburgh.
When: February 4, 2025 from 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Where: Virtual
Caitlyn Marentette, MIRS South Asian Studies graduate student, University of Michigan, will lead the discussion.
The World History Learning Community is open to all K-14 in-service teachers and community college faculty across the United States via Zoom. Expand your ability and confidence to teach world history! Connect with and learn from fellow educators and esteemed historians in a cohort setting; explore cutting-edge research and scholarship in the field of world history; receive free books.
When: Tuesday, October 29, 2024 from 5:00-6:30 p.m.
Where: Zoom
Using modern-day migration case studies, our presenters will share content and pedagogical strategies to help introduce or extend your current study of the topic of migration in the classroom. ACT 48 hours will be provided for PA educators as well as resources and materials for classroom use.
Speakers:
Dr. Eleanor Gordon, “Migration, Conflict, Climate Change and Economic Inequalities: The Intersection of Crises and the Marginalization of Vulnerable Groups”
Dr. Eleanor Gordon has spent 25 years working in the field of conflict, security, justice and human rights. This includes 10 years working in UN peace operations in management and advisory roles, and a further 15 years as a scholar and consultant to various governments, international organizations and universities. She is currently the Director of Monash University’s Global Peace and Security research center (Monash GPS), which addresses intersecting threats to peace and security. Her research, teaching and practice focus on inclusive approaches to building security and justice during and after conflict. Her current research investigates barriers to the participation of women in peacekeeping and peacebuilding, including caring responsibilities as a driver of women's underrepresentation, funded by the Government of Canada as part of the Elsie Initiative for Women in Peace Operations
Dr. Piro Rexhepi is a research fellow at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL. He is the author of White Enclosures: Racial Capitalism and Coloniality along the Balkan Route (Duke University Press, 2023).
Dr. Meredith Oyen, “The Challenge of Chinese Migration across the U.S. Southern Border."
Dr. Meredith Oyen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Professor Oyen teaches courses on U.S. History and U.S. Diplomatic History. She specializes in the history of Sino-American relations, focusing her research on the role of migrants, transnational networks, and nongovernmental organizations in bilateral relations in the twentieth century. Before coming to UMBC, she taught for two years at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies. Her book, The Diplomacy of Migration: Transnational Lives and the Making of U.S.-Chinese Relations in the Cold War, was published by Cornell University Press in 2015. She has published articles in Diplomatic History, Journal of Cold War Studies, and Modern Asian Studies. Professor Oyen is currently at work on a project involving Jewish refugees in WWII Shanghai. Professor Oyen served as the first Faculty Veterans Fellow at UMBC in 2015-2016. She participated in an NEH summer institute on Veterans Studies in summer 2016. She won a 2017 Hrabowski Innovation grant for her project on creating a better environment for UMBC’s Student Veterans. She also won 2017 CAHSS Summer Faculty Research Fellowship (SFRF) from the Dresher Center at UMBC for her new project: Shanghai Survivors: World War Two’s Displaced Persons in Asia and the International Politics of Refugee Resettlement.
Dr. Innocent Badasu is a Visiting Assistant Professor of African Politics in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
As a scholar- practitioner, his teaching and research interests focus on Africa’s political history, African political economy, African agency in international politics, electoral politics and democratization, US foreign policy in Africa, migration and the Global south issues. He is also interested in protest movements, political violence, refugee studies and international security with emphasis on Africa. He is currently working on a book project titled Losers Consent in African Elections: Evidence from Ghana and Kenya. In this book, he seeks to explore the complex interrelated factors that shape the decision making of candidates and political parties in consenting to an electoral loss and how other political actors matter in preventing post-election violence.
Dr. Badasu earned his PhD and MA in International Relations from the University of Ghana; LLM in International Law from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland. He has taught at the graduate and undergraduate level in a number of universities in Ghana: University of Ghana, Lancaster University, Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration and the Ghana Armed Forces Staff and Command College.
March 20, April 10, and May 1, 2024 6:00pm - 8:00pm (ET)
Virtual
The University of Pittsburgh’s Alliance for Learning in World History and Global Studies Center will host a series of three virtual workshops for educators about using History for the 21st Century (H21) modules in the classroom. Each session will explore one peer-reviewed module created for the H21 website, facilitated by its creator. The H21 project offers complete modules for introductory world history classrooms that include student readings and primary sources, lesson plans, instructor guides, and discussion, activity, and assessments suggestions.
An NCTA & Global Studies Center Mini-Course
May 17 & May 18, 2024
Hybrid Mini-Course (In-Person at the University of Pittsburgh with Online Zoom Option)
ARRGH, Avast Ye Swabs! (or so pirates are supposed to say...)
Join us for a swashbuckling mini-course on historical bandits and pirates around the world. What are the myths? What are the facts? Faculty experts will discuss global piracy, representations of pirates in the media, piracy in the Atlantic world, and bandits in East Asia. We will also discuss curricular applications of pirates and bandits for the K-12 classroom. This two day mini-course is particularly applicable for teachers of World History, U.S. History, East Asia studies, Global Studies, Film Studies and World Cultures.
Keynote Speaker: Dr. James E. Wadsworth, Latin American and Comparative World History
Saturday, June 1, 2024 10:30 AM - 4:00PM
Virtual on Zoom
These days, educators at all levels are worried about technology in their classrooms. How can we help our students use it responsibly? How can we, as teachers, incorporate technology in our classrooms in ways that help students think about truth claims and the link between information and power?
While AI and ChatGPT dominate today’s discussions around these issues, concern about technology, authenticity, and authority have a long and global history. In this one-day virtual professional development workshop for educators at all levels, our three speakers will explore 500 years of “big data”, technology and political disinformation, and people’s fascination with the idea of “automatic writing.”
November 1st, 2023 5:30p.m. - 6:30p.m. EST
Zoom
This FREE online K-12 educator workshop examined the history, current status, and future of Africa and China's relationship and offered strategies and resources for classroom use. Act 48 hours and classroom materials were provided for participants.
This event was hosted by the Asian Studies Center and co-sponsored by the Global Studies Center.