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What is the Experiential Liberal Arts? A continuous cycle of learning, acting, and reflecting both inside and outside the classroom. Our approach begins with familiar liberal arts skills, which are deepened and extended through integration with the three ideas here.

Experiential Academics

#1 EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING: Whether it's a co-op at the Library of Congress or study abroad at the London School of Economics or research in our Violence and Justice Research Lab, experiential learning is at the heart of CSSH.

#2 NEW PROFICIENCIES: Our classes, combined majors, and minors enable you to integrate new research methods such as data visualization, geocoding, and text mining into your studies.

#3 LOCAL & GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT: CSSH students have studied abroad in 83 different countries in the past 3 years. Dialogues of Civilization, which was developed in CSSH, has now expanded to all Northeastern colleges.

You’ll do more than study abroad—you’ll live, research, work, and immerse yourself in new experiences. Our students studied in over 30 countries last year. Here are just a few of them:

The Twenty-First Century City: Tokyo and Kyoto

in Japan

Led by

Interdisciplinary Global Public Health, Politics, Culture and Swahili

in Kenya

Led by

Ireland, Literature and Film

in Republic of Ireland

Led by

Global Refugee Crisis: Rome and Palermo

in Italy

Led by

We teach the next generation of leaders how to take action in the face of ambiguity.

Chinma Nnadozie-Okananwa

  • Law school is a big investment. That’s why Chinma was attracted to NU and the co-op process, which has allowed her to experience the legal environment before committing to the practice.
  • Chinma’s long-held love of reading and writing, specifically poetry, led to her to decision to major in English for her undergraduate education.
  • In her first year, Chinma took Early African American Literature with Professor Nicole Aljoe. It was the first time she had a Black professor and the opportunity to share lived experiences in a new way.
  • Chinma took Contemporary Poetry with Professor Eunsong Kim which explored readings that Chinma still uses today. She learned how poetry and art can affect real change, like through the Black Arts Movement.
  • Chinma is co-president of Our Voices: Women of Color, which is run through the Social Justice Resource Center and the Center for Intercultural Engagement and allows her to facilitate vital conversations.
  • Through Our Voices: Women of Color, Chinma attended Northeastern’s EMPOWER conference for students of color in 2019, where she gave a presentation about intersectionality.
  • In her second year, Chinma took Intro to Law, Policy, and Society with Professor Daniel Urman, which gave her the chance to explore the intersection between current events and law, furthering her interest...
Northeastern student Yasser Aponte works at The Food Project to help deliver fresh food to local communities in Dorchester, Massachusetts.

Yasser Aponte

  • Yasser was in the Foundation Year program at Northeastern. The program was a rigorous deep dive into core subject classes that helped Yasser bridge the gap between the high school and college experiences.
  • Initially indecisive, Yasser’s interest in traveling and experience exploring different religious texts in high school led him to a double major in international affairs and religious studies.
  • Yasser took Issues in Cities and Suburbs with Professor Erin Graves in Fall 2018. As someone deeply invested in urban life, he found the course was an enlightening look at the problems endemic to cities.
  • Yasser’s first co-op was at the Boston Beer Company as a Program Operations and Event Assistant. He worked on inventory, public relations, directed brewery events, and maintained workspace organization.
  • Yasser went on a Dialogue of Civilizations to Europe in Summer 2019 and took Engineering Principles in Nature with Professor Sandra Shefelbine.
  • Yasser implemented and maintained community gardens all over Boston on deserted plots of land during his time as the Northeastern Campus Director for the campus’ United Nations Millennium Fellowship.
  • Yasser began working at the Food Project and at a farm in Dorchester, he maintained the farm, harvested crops, distributed produce through donations and food markets, and worked on overall logistics...

Benjamin Cooper Gould

  • Cooper’s dialogue, Challenges in Coastal Sustainability, and the course Ethics and Evolutionary games with Prof. Smead have been very impactful to him.
  • As part of a class with Prof. Kelting on harm and aid he was able to write and submit real anti-racist curriculum for pre-schools in Boston.
  • Cooper has been a PPE Peer Mentor, and he has also served as the PPE representative on the CSSH Student Advisory Council for three years.
  • Cooper spent much of the summer in 2019 in Hong Kong and Malaysia on dialogue, exploring challenges for coastal sustainability.
  • Cooper has had two co-ops, the first at Boston After School & Beyond, and the second at Dynasty Financial Partners, in New York City.
  • He has conducted independent research projects with the Marine Science Center, for which he received a grant, as well as in philosophy.
  • After graduation, Cooper is hoping to specialize in education justice, first by pursuing a Master’s in Education before teaching, and ultimately going into policy...

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