Essential Question:
All aspects of the curriculum and all seminars are driven by the following Essential Question:
How can I be a proactive agent of change?
Guiding Questions:
Throughout the program, students engage a set of Guiding Questions critical to understanding the complexity of and their relationship to the Essential Question. These questions are interwoven into daily seminars as
they relate to each of the curricular components.
- What is "development?"
- Who am I?
- Is everyone in the world interconnected?
- What do we assume about others and ourselves?
- Who is responsible to develop whom?
Seminar Format:
TBB seminars focus specifically on challenging students to explore their
daily experiences during the program and place them in the context of international development. Seminars take various forms, including formal lectures and discussions with local experts, presentations of new
concepts, debates, and informal conversations over meals. Students
complete readings that address the curricular themes and the current
context of the trip.
Curricular Components:
1. Development Theory and Practice: What is “development?” Students explore the economics, politics, and social structures of development processes. Examining a broad range of models, the examples of practice, and a deep questioning of the assumptions underlying both creates a foundation of understanding upon which students will build throughout the program.
2. Natural Resources and the Environment: What does it mean to be “environmentally responsible?” Students examine the human systems of production and consumption holistically, examining their personal impact, cultural assumptions that lead to destructive acts, and technological possibilities for a sustainable human civilization.
3. Education & Economic Growth: How can education empower people as proactive agents of change? Students engage a broad range of issues related to the purpose, equitable distribution, economic potential, and oppressive potential of education.
4. Sustainable Agriculture: What does food mean to society? Students investigate the culture, economics, history, and technology of agriculture and food to determine why some models fail while others offer sustainable means of feeding the world’s population.
5. HIV/AIDS and Public Health: Why are so many nations failing to effectively address HIV/AIDS and protect public health? Students study policy successes and failures, the economic and political roots of health crises, and the present challenges of getting existing health care technology to those most in need.
6. Social Change: How can I affect change? Students analyze models of change, tools for organizing, and their personal strengths to determine how best to impact the world proactively.
7. Presentations of Learning: How can I be a proactive agent of change? Students prepare formal presentations that reflect their learning during the program. Presentations articulate an understanding of issues of international development and personal growth. Students share these presentations with schools and philanthropy groups around the US.
