LIU Global

LIU Global offers only one degree-granting program, culminating in a B.A. in Global Studies. However, LIU Global also offers semester-long or year-long study abroad options for visiting students (approximately 20 transfer and/or visiting students are accepted per year[2]).

All incoming freshmen are required to complete their first year of study at LIU Global's Costa Rica Center, which is based in Heredia, Costa Rica with excursions to Nicaragua and Panama. In the second year, students participate in LIU Global's Europe Program which, in the fall, is based in Alcalá, Spain, with excursions to London and Berlin. In the spring the Europe program is based in Florence, Italy, with excursions to Vienna, Budapest, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Juniors can choose to spend a year at the China Center in Hangzhou, China which offers excursions to Beijing, Shanghai, Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces in Western China; Hong Kong; and Taiwan. They may also travel with the Asia-Pacific Australia Program to Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand in the fall and Australia and Bali in the spring. The final year of the program begins with the International Research and Internship Semester (IRIS), an independently designed research project centered around an internship at the LIU Global Center or Program of the student's choice. This culminates in a semester in New York City, where students complete a series of capstone experiences, a second senior-year internship, and a senior thesis.[3]

LIU Global was founded in 1965 as Friends World College through an initiative of New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Originally conceived as an international Quaker seminary, FWC's first campus was located on an abandoned airport, Mitchel Field, near Hempstead, NY, where the College's programs occupied unused barracks and hangars. In the early 1970s, the College acquired the Livingston estate in Lloyd Harbor, New York through a bequest, and by 1972, it had relocated its North American center there, and in accordance with its vision for international education, had established satellite campuses in England, Kenya, India, Guatemala and Japan. Later, it established campuses in Costa Rica, Israel, and China.

In order that its students might qualify for federally-guaranteed student loans and other Federal programs, the College dropped its formal Quaker affiliation in the mid-1970s and became nominally non-sectarian. However, the President at that time, Dr. George Watson, had already established a Quaker meeting on campus, and this remained until shortly before the College merged with Long Island University.

By the mid- to late-1980s, the College had encountered financial difficulties, and the sudden failure of its Israel program, plus the loss of a US student to malaria in Kenya, helped bring about the Trustees' decision to accept an offer for merger from LIU. The Dickinson Campus was sold to provide a much-needed cash influx, and re-christened 'Friends World Program', the North American campus was moved to LIU's [Southampton College] during the 1991–1992 academic year.[4][5]

In the Fall of 2005, the program moved to LIU's Brooklyn Campus; thus the New York City Center was established. During this period the name 'Friends' was dropped, and the College became known as 'Global Studies LIU'. In March 2007, the name Global College was adopted.[4]

In January 2012, LIU launched an institution-wide 're-branding campaign', and Global College became LIU Global.[6] Around 70-90 students are currently enrolled at their centers and program sites worldwide.

• Paloma Criollo, Class of 2015
  • During her LIU Global journey, Paloma Criollo G’15 documented the rich, colorful, and passionate experiences through the lens of her camera. Beginning in Costa Rica, she conducted an independent study in sustainable technologies, traveling across the mountainous terrain of the country to farms, villages, and power plants. She explored the comparative religions of Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and India, where she studied the Indian art of Banethi and learned how to capture the movement of fire through a lens. In China, Criollo learned Mandarin and interned at Social Entrepreneurial Institute, an incubator for nonprofit and NGOs in Shanghai, as well as Dragon Studios, a production company in Hangzhou. Here she also developed a passion for the relationship between the environment and visual arts, participating in an International Youth Environmental Conference.[7]
  • Criollo conducted her Senior Independent Study in Limpopo, South Africa, where she produced a documentary while interning at the Global White Lion Protection Trust. “I worked alongside the local Shangaan Peoples of the Timbavati learning the ancestral knowledge, and assisted anthropologists and scientists working towards sustainability,” she said. “I will never forget the nights we would all sit by the fire after a long day’s work, under the stars in the middle of the bush, surrounded by zebras, wildebeest, impalas, and white lions. From the ecologist's theories to Shangaan elders stories, we all were listening and absorbing the profound knowledge and importance.”[8]

• LIU Global website