| Program description | The International Affairs Program, housed in the Government Department, is designed to provide students interested primarily in the fields of international relations and comparative politics with a body of knowledge, perspectives, and critical skills for understanding the political, economic, historical, and socio-cultural relationships and issues shaping today's global community. It offers a thoughtfully integrated and relatively flexible interdisciplinary set of courses in the social sciences leading to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs. The goal of this major is to provide students with a solid foundation in the liberal arts for employment and/or advanced study in an international field. The program of study provides students a choice of two concentrations - one in Global Studies and another in Area Studies (currently Asia or Europe). The interdisciplinary curricula of both concentrations afford students the opportunity to acquire an understanding of competing theoretical perspectives, to grapple with economic, political, and social linkages between and among global and domestic actors and events, and to utilize this knowledge and comprehension of complex global processes to analyze a wide range of issues. IA students learn to consider issues broadly, to see interconnections amongst processes and geographic regions, and to engage in critical and creative thinking about them. The IA major prepares students for employment, lifelong learning, and life enrichment, and fits Eastern Washington University's larger purpose of providing quality liberal arts education with meaningful career preparation. |