Print VersionA Sampling of CIBER-Funded Curriculum Development
Fall 2002 Spring 2003 Fall 2003 Spring 2004 Fall 2004 Fall 2005 Spring 2006 Spring 2007 Fall 2007 Spring 2008 Fall 2008
Baytunaa: An Undergraduate Residential Community for Students of Arabic
Dustin Cowell, chair and professor of Arabic, UW-Madison
The International Learning Community at UW-Madison is a residential community housed within a single residence hall. Dedicated to enhancing cross-cultural understanding, it helps prepare undergraduates planning to study abroad and provides students returning from study-abroad experiences the opportunity to maintain the language proficiency they acquired. An Arabic section was inaugurated in the fall of 2006 to complement the previously established sections for German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. The Arabic section, called Baytunaa, Arabic for “Our Home,” comprises a group of students of Arabic committed to improving their oral proficiency by active use of the language in cooperation with a live-in Arabic language coordinator and satellite access to Arab television broadcasts, both supported in part through CIBER. In Baytunaa, residents find a collegial atmosphere with specific Arabic-oriented programming.
Greening Business—Involving Consumers: 21st Century Environmentalism and the Transatlantic Partnership
Elizabeth Covington, executive director of the European Studies Alliance and associate director of the Center for German and European Studies, UW-Madison
The University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Bonn have partnered to develop “Greening Business, Involving Consumers,” a three-year program on transatlantic environmentalism focused on the role of consumers and the business sector in environmental governance. By uniting faculty and graduate students from business, environmental studies, human ecology, history, sociology and other disciplines from both universities with NGOs and corporations, the program will facilitate productive dialogue between 20th-century policymakers and environmental leaders and the next potential generation of experts on the environment. It will incorporate discussion between businesses, policymakers and consumer groups, emphasizing the role of civil groups in influencing policy change and the power of consumers to effect change in the way business deals with environmental questions.