Global studies integrates the waning importance of regional borders and disciplinary boundaries in the world today and fosters the academic debates over globalization and their policy implications in both the global and local contexts. The graduate certificates are designed for students who desire a deeper understanding of social and economic inequality in transnational context and facilitates the contextualization of the student’s major within the dominant political and economic trends. Students obtaining the certificate are equipped to lead lives of impact, as well as have the analytical tools and 21st century professional skills necessary to effectively navigate their future.
The Center offers three different certificates for graduate students depending on the student degree plan:
- A Graduate Certificate in Global Sustainable Development that requires no language study.
- A Certificate in Global Studies for students enrolled in one of Pitt's eleven professional schools, requiring 12 credits of multidisciplinary and intermediate low-mid proficiency of a language other than English
- An Advanced Certificate in Global Studies for students pursuing a doctoral degree, requiring 18 credits of study and intermediate high language proficiency
Enrollment
To enroll please click here and complete the survey. If you would like to receive further guidance, please contact Elaine Linn to schedule a meeting.
Graduate Certificate in Global Sustainable Development
Contacts: Schedule an appointment with Elaine Linn, Global Studies Center, or contact Renee Kidney, GSPIA at rkidney@pitt.edu.
The Global Studies Center and Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) offer this new certificate linking GSPIA expertise in global sustainable development, with GSC’s expertise offering interdisciplinary credentials across schools, departments, and fields of study.
The Certificate provides graduate students with tools to engage with complex challenges of global sustainable development. Global sustainable development involves the pursuit of a better world for all through the elimination of chronic poverty, discrimination & injustice, and environmental degradation, in order to ensure a sustainable future of well-being for the earth and its peoples. Worldwide, a common framework used to pursue sustainable development is found in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which promotes 17 inter-related, comprehensive, and universally applicable sustainability goals spanning economic, social, political, and environmental issues. This Certificate provides theoretical knowledge, interdisciplinary approaches, and practical skills needed to tackle chronic problems and achieve sustainable development goals on issues including poverty, hunger, health, inequality, gender empowerment, the environment, peace and justice, governance, NGO and civil society participation, and global cooperation. Learn how to solve global problems in comprehensive, sustainable, and ethical ways appropriate to diverse national and regional realities, capacities, and priorities.
The curriculum provides in-depth theoretical understanding of global sustainable development as well as practical skills to engage with complex challenges targeted through the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, which encompasses the “5 P’s”: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnership. Certificate courses address a wide range of SDG topics including poverty, hunger, health, education, gender inequality, the environment and natural resources, water and sanitation, energy, employment, development planning and management, global inequalities, peace/inclusion/and justice, governance and global partnerships.
Requirements:
- 12 credits (6 credits in GSD foundation courses, and 6 credits of approved GSD electives), as well as a Digital Portfolio which can be shared with future employers and graduate schools. See the detailed Plan of Study and course list below.
- Students may take up to 2 approved Certificate courses (6 credits) that simultaneously fulfill other Degree requirements. Students may take up to 2 approved courses outside GSPIA. Please note that not all elective courses listed are offered every year. Students may propose a course for review as an approved elective course.
- Minimum of grade of C or higher required for all Certificate courses. Certificate courses may not be taken on S/NC basis.
As of September 2024 the following courses will count towards the certificate. The course list will be updated each term.
Plan of Study
Two of the following Foundation Courses (6 credits):
- PIA 2501 Development Policy & Administration (3 cr.)
- PIA 2510 Economics of Development (3 cr.)
- PIA 2448 Political Economy of Development (3 cr.)
Digital Portfolio: Meet with Elaine Linn to create your Digital Portfolio using the Digication platform, due the semester of graduation.
Two approved elective courses (6 credits):
- PIA 2115 Environmental Economics
- PIA 2117 Program Evaluation (offered online)
- PIA 2125 City & Regions: Theory & Practice
- PIA 2164 Natural Resources Governance
- PIA 2307 Human Security
- PIA 2310 Markets & States
- PIA 2448 Political Economy of Development (if not taken as Foundation Course)
- PIA 2473 Strategies of Global Inquiry (with approved research topic in GSD)
- PIA 2476 Nonviolent Resistance Movements
- PIA 2478 Asylum Policy & Politics
- PIA 2496 Governing Technology
- PIA 2501 Development Policy & Administration ((if not taken as Foundation Course)
- PIA 2502 Environmental Policy Local to Global
- PIA 2507 Human Rights & Social Change
- PIA 2508 NGO Advocacy & International Coalitions
- PIA 2510 Economics of Development (if not taken as a Foundation Course)
- PIA 2512 Poverty & Inequality
- PIA 2519 Comparative Governance (offered online)
- PIA 2522 Climate Policy Local to Global
- PIA 2526 Micropolitics: NGOs, Civil Society & Development
- PIA 2529 Political Economy Analysis (offered online)
- PIA 2531 Human Rights & UN Sustainable Development Goals
- PIA 2551 Gender & Development
- PIA 2552 Managing Organizations in Development
- PIA 2553 Global Health Policy
- PIA 2590 Local & Global Food Policy & Sustainability
- PIA 2715 GIS for Public Policy
- PIA 2740 Planning & Analysis for Sustainable Regions
Other schools (up to two approved elective courses may be taken outside GSPIA):
- CEE 2610 Engineering & Sustainable Development
- ENG 2007 Sustainability Capstone (with permission & approved topic)
- ENG 2905 Current Issues in Sustainability
- PUBHLTH 2025 Concepts & Methods in Global Health (2 cr.)
- PUBHLTH 2033 Managing the Natural Environment
- PUBHLTH 2173 Transforming Global Health Education into Action
- BFIN 2043 International Financial Management
- BSEO Managing the Natural Environment (1.5 cr.)
- BSEO 2578 Sustainable Business Strategy (1.5 cr.)
- BSPP 2328 The Business of Humanity – Strategic Management
Graduate Certificate in Global Studies Requirements
- 12 credits of coursework
- 6 credits can overlap with student’s major
- 6 credits must be outside of the student's major/department
- PIA 2473 Strategies of Global Inquiry (3-credit course that counts towards the 12 credits)
- 2 years college level language (Intermediate-low in a Less Commonly Taught Language or intermediate-high level proficiency in a commonly taught foreign language)
- Completion and approval of digital portfolio
- A minimum of three credits taken over degree requirement. The credits may come from language courses.
Advanced Certificate in Global Studies Requirements
- 18 credits of courses in a chosen global concentration
- 6 credits can overlap with a students major
- Total of 12 credits in at least two departments other than the student’s primary department (excludes language courses)
- PIA 2473 Strategies of Global Inquiry (a 3-credit course that counts towards 18 credits)
- 3 years college level language (Intermediate-low in a Less Commonly Taught Language or intermediate-high level proficiency in a commonly taught foreign language)
- Completion and approval of digital portfolio
- A minimum of three credits taken over degree requirement. The credits may come from language courses
- Critical World Ecology and Sustainability
- Politics and Economy
- Cultural Dynamics
- Peace, Conflict and (In) Security
- Health and Well-Being
Global Concentrations
The following descriptions emphasize overarching themes and concerns; students might pursue a wide variety of questions, contemporary or historical, within these concentrations. Think of these concentrations as doorways into global studies, rather than as separate silos within it. We encourage a flexible and individualized approach to studying what interests you within this broad framework.
Cultural Dynamics explores the diverse ways people understand, evaluate, and feel about the world around them and how these shape and reflect people’s involvement in complex new forms of social interaction related to globalization. Students might study the processes producing increasing cultural sameness and growing cultural difference, identity formation and challenges of intercultural communication and understanding, or people’s engagement with these processes through the arts, film, literature, performance, and other forms of creative expression.
Critical World Ecologies: How do humans shape nature, and how does it shape us? Critical World Ecologies explores the broad transnational and historical processes that affect how humans think about and exploit nature as well as the contemporary social, cultural, economic, and political relations through which “nature” and “the environment” are continually reproduced. Students might study how colonialism, migration, and globalization shape and reshape the dynamic interrelationship between humans and (the rest of) nature, or they might focus on how these interactions affect differently situated people, highlighting (e.g.) slow violence, environmental intersectionality, environmental (in)justice, and the efforts of people acting collectively to ensure that democracy, human rights, and social justice prevail in ecological struggles about our present and future.
Health and Well-Being explores the relationship between global health, social suffering, and the processes that connect and divide people around the world. Students might study how globalization affects people’s susceptibility to physical and mental illnesses, their access to appropriate kinds of care and, more broadly, their well-being (enjoyment of a healthy, secure, and satisfying life) and capacity for “living well” (belonging to a community in which people live harmoniously with one another and with nature).
Peace, Conflict, and (In)Security addresses contemporary challenges of conflict and (in)security and the prospects for peace and social justice by examining how major conflicts and emergencies arise, are addressed, and are sometimes averted. Students might study the relationship between state sovereignty, international law, and armed intervention; the meanings of human rights and (human) security in a diverse and conflictual world; terrorism and counterterrorism, global and domestic; the roots of insecurity in in racism, patriarchy, ethno-nationalism, climate change, hunger, poverty, and other sources; processes of peace building, peace keeping, and reconciliation, including through social movements and at local levels; and, the work of the UN, NGOs, and other non-state actors, including as it relates to the work of social movements and local actors.
Politics and Economy focuses on the organization and workings of power. It highlights the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and how these processes relate to one another in producing global connections and divisions; it also highlights how states and other actors interact as they attempt to manage these processes. Students might study changes in the character and reach of capitalism, models of sustainable development, interactions among states, empires, social movements, and other political entities, or systems of inequality organized geopolitically and by factors such as class, race, gender, and sexuality.
Language
Students must demonstrate proficiency in one (or more) foreign languages through one of two assessment models:
(a) a total of two or three years current or prior college-level study (depending on certificate type); or
(b) an ACTFL ranking of at least 2 (Limited Working Proficiency) in at least one language.
Click to view the regularly offered foreign language courses at the University of Pittsburgh (fall term / spring term). The Global Studies Center offers Foreign Language and Area Study (FLAS) fellowships in nine languages. Graduate students may apply at the beginning stages of language study in one of these languages.
GSC Tuition Remission For Graduate Students Studying Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL)
To encourage students to study a language deemed of critical importance by the U.S. Department of Education, the Global Studies Center is pleased to announce a supplemental tuition remission program available to full-time graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh. Apply Here!
Courses
Students should select applicable courses from the appropriate Global Studies course list and meet with the Global Studies academic advisor Elaine Linn for approval before registering. With careful planning, most students find they can satisfy certificate requirements.
Digital Portfolio
This capstone requirement helps students reflect on, synthesize, and communicate their knowledge garnered through the certificate. The e-portfolio is similar to an online resume and can be shared with employers, and graduate schools. The digital portfolio is due the semester the student graduates.
A Network of Global Studies Scholars
There are numerous opportunities for GSC graduate students to engage with faculty and their peers across campus, during monthly discussions, colloquiums, and at events designed specifically for our graduate students. To facilitate inclusion into an international network of global scholars, GSC graduate students are automatically enrolled in global-e, an electronic newsletter produced at University of California, Santa Barbara. If you would like to know more about Graduate Alumni Statistics, please click here.