| Overview |
"For more than a decade EPIIC has provided our students with an opportunity to examine the most complex international issues which generate enormous amounts of partisanship. EPIIC has demanded only one thing: Learn when fact informs opinion, and when opinion informs fact...That has been the standard of the EPIIC programs: high intellectual engagement, passion and heat by necessity, and the capacity to educate with genuine objectivity...It is the cornerstone of our international relations education for the twenty-first century."
--- Sol Gittleman
Former Senior Vice President and Provost, Tufts University
EPIIC in the Media |
| The Boston Globe A Global View of Corruption Refreshing Thought The Tufts Route to Fixing the World's Rough Spots The Philadelphia Inquirer International Migration Review New Designs for Youth Development |
When education works, it not only instructs, it inspires. And when education embraces the complexities and consequences of global issues and brings students face to face with those suffering injustice, poverty, human rights abuses, dislocation, and human loss -- as well as with those directly involved in causing and confronting these issues -- it engenders a lifelong dedication to changing lives around the world.
The Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) program at Tufts University does just that...
EPIIC is a carefully integrated multidisciplinary program. Through its innovative and rigorous curricula and projects, EPIIC prepares young people to play active roles in their communities, whether at the local, national or global level. Many students consider their participation in EPIIC a profoundly formative experience: challenging them to reassess or even jettison prior assumptions or beliefs; expanding their understanding of how historical, cultural and ideological forces can affect both individuals and nations; and inspiring them to pursue careers in public service or international affairs.
As educators and practitioners lament the lack of informed involvement of the younger generations in their civic communities, EPIIC is working to promote the active engagement of young people in global and national issues and to create tangible, collaborative relationships within and among the academy, the general public, and the professional community.
EPIIC's main components are:
- an intensive, year-long academic COLLOQUIUM for both undergraduate and graduate students
- a global RESEARCH AND INTERNSHIP PROGRAM that includes multi-year integrated internships and capstone honors theses
- INDIVIDUAL PROGRAMMING
- an INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
- PROFESSIONAL WORKSHOPS
- a MEDIAFORUM for editors and reporters
- INQUIRY, a national high school global issues simulation program
- PUBLIC SERVICE initiatives
Each year, EPIIC's initiatives explore one central global dilemma, a broad theme that tests and transcends national sovereignty. The process provides the intellectual space where students can explore the complex issues emerging from these dilemmas and can create projects that enhance and invigorate the traditional curriculum.
It is student-centered education that promotes the linkage of theory to practice and encourages moral responsibility, life-long learning, and engaged citizenship.
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In the public realm, through its programs dedicated to presenting a continuum of viewpoints, EPIIC contributes to civil discourse and substantive debate. From its inception, its non-polemical setting has helped to move forward policy discussions at both the national and international levels. Diverse practitioners such as senior intelligence experts, human rights activists, journalists, and government officials, have noted that EPIIC affords them an open forum, critical to developing new ways of thinking and new initiatives.
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The EPIIC program was featured in the cover article "Educating Global Leaders" for the Winter 1999 issue of the magazine New Designs for Youth Development .
Reactions to EPIIC Mel Bernstein "The uniqueness of the EPIIC program flows from the opportunities it provides for our students to become fully engaged in the programming and planning activities of a series that has uncannily presented prescient, cutting-edge themes...EPIIC offers a unique way to share the excitement of intellectual discovery and freely exchange ideas. It brings students into contact with some of the great global thinkers and doers of our day, allowing them to interact and critique critical emerging issues and, in many cases, to help arrive at substantive recommendations." Landrum Bolling "EPIIC is a remarkable, interdisciplinary, multi-generational, international, intercultural learning adventure...I have no hesitation in saying that nowhere in American education is there a single, multi-level project in the field of international education that offers so intense, so impactful a learning experience as is found in EPIIC, year after year. It is truly an exemplary national treasure, as well as an enormously enriching, mind-expanding opportunity for secondary and college students and the general public." Jonathan Moore "Having been the director of the Institute of Politics for twelve years and having served on the faculty of its Kennedy School, it is easy for me to assess the EPIIC program at Tufts from an academic viewpoint and that of a competitor...And I do so with admiration and even envy." "...There are three characteristics of EPIIC which I would like to mention specifically. The first is the kind of research which the program's students are required to undertake, which is at the same time rigorous and relevant, analytically sound but requiring a political and cultural respect and a practical value. The second is the full-scope and full-bore engagement which this program invites of its participants, which apparently becomes irresistible, given their enthusiastic immersion, thirsty to apply the knowledge they are acquiring in their very high quality formal education to challenges of a human scale. The third is the confidence which the program instills in idealistic and spiritual commitment, the understanding that the joining of ideals with intellect and competence is to be pursued rather than shunned." Murray Gell-Mann Much mischief has been done in the world by trying to fit human beings into some neat scientific or mathematical idea, extrapolated beyond its validity. Nevertheless, it is worth making models of the future, but we have to regard them as 'prostheses for the imagination.' That's one of the theses emphasized here at EPIIC, and I couldn't be happier with this experiment in education." Mark J. Miller "...At a juncture when many institutions of higher learning are contemplating reform of undergraduate education and are experimenting with experiential learning as well as with innovative ways to teach about diversity and world affairs, EPIIC gave a lesson. The key is involving students in the organization of a symposium and seeing it through to a successful conclusion. In order to do this, students must learn their subject matter and then apply their knowledge. This is accomplished in an interdisciplinary way and requires a variety of skills of students ranging from public speaking to being able to work together in a group setting. What I saw accomplished at the symposium is what proponents of undergraduate educational reform dream about -- interdisciplinary study, learning in real world non-classroom settings, application of learning to critical issues of the day, engagement of students in ethical dilemmas, debate, study abroad, field research, and writing of high quality research papers which speak to important public policy issues for the U.S. and the rest of the world. Most of the educational techniques so skillfully woven together by EPIIC are within reach of all U.S. colleges and universities." Jack A. Goldstone "The EPIIC program at Tufts University is a most singular and remarkable program for developing future leaders. I have been associated with this program...for almost ten years. In that time, I have not seen a finer undergraduate program anywhere for inspiring students to seek creative solutions for the problems our society faces, today and in the future. Not only are the students bright...their ability to grapple with complex approaches is extraordinary." Roberta Cohen "Having addressed many students audiences in the past, in which a disheartening apathy toward international affairs was evident, it was a veritable pleasure to interact with students genuinely interested in complex international problems and in developing solutions for them. Their engagement, excitement and serious scholarship were clearly stimulated by the EPIIC program." Kenneth Roth "This year's series of public forums provided one of those rare opportunities for human rights activists and others concerned with human rights issues to sit down in a more reflective setting to debate the fundamental questions that too often are left unaddressed as we respond to the latest emergency. The significance of such probing and exploration cannot be minimized...I must add that what has touched me even more than the opportunity for intellectual exchange has been the engagement of the student members of the project. Without question, EPIIC has produced students far better prepared to grapple with the critical issues of their time than those who have never ventured beyond a more conventional format." |