By Abdullah Al-Tekreeti
UNIVERSITY CITY, SHARJAH – Students from the American University of Sharjah met with students from Dickinson University in an online meeting On Sept. 5 to begin their virtual International Relations exchange program.
The collaboration is part of AUS’s Transformative Sustainability Project, which aims to help students change their local perspectives into global ones to better understand the United Nations’ sustainability development goals.
The project is supported by the Stevens Initiative, which is described on their website as “an international effort to build global competence and career readiness skills for young people in the United States and the Middle East and North Africa.”
Dickinson’s Dr. Ed Webb and AUS’s Dr. Sammy Badran briefed the students about the tasks they were required to collaborate on. They were then put into AUS-Dickinson mixed groups to get to know each other.
Their tasks include creating blogs and updating them throughout the semester, as well as creating a full podcast discussing several of the U.N.’s SDGs.
According to Badran, the mix of overseas and local perspectives is crucial as students “will get an international perspective on issues we study in International Relations.”
For more information regarding the initiative visit https://www.stevensinitiative.org/project/american-university-of-sharjah-transformative-
sustainability-project
