According to Professors at two of the United States’ top universities, the curriculum of the American University of Iraq-Baghdad’s (AUIB’s) College of International Studies (CIS) not only meets the high standards of a US higher education institution, but also has significant innovative aspects and a solid mechanism for quality assurance.
As part of an international review process requested by AUIB’s CIS, the College’s mission statement, as well as the structure, format, and course selection of the Bachelor’s degree program in International Relations and Security Studies (IR&SS) has been reviewed by the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of Kansas.
The evaluation of the curriculum, designed by CIS Dean, Dr. Troy McGrath, was found to be “consistent with the U.S. tradition for a liberal arts education in the social sciences”, as it “combines specialized training in international relations and security studies with a broader liberal arts education through exposure to history, geography, political science, and economics,” in addition to basic training in computer science; and the curriculum was also found to balance taught course work with guided self-study, “in line with increasing emphasis on the co-production of knowledge at all levels of higher education,” according to Erik Jones, Professor of European Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Innovation was also found to be a prominent feature of the curriculum, in that it “allows faculty and students to gain exposure to a wider variety of course materials than an older-style lecture and seminar format would,” wrote Professor Jones. For his part, Don Haider-Markel, Professor of Political Science at the University of Kansas, wrote that the curriculum “nicely blends specializations and core components in the social sciences. This redesign also provides innovative and diverse curriculum offerings that should be of great interest to students,” affirming that “the program meets the high standards of an International Studies program in the US system of higher education, such as those that the University of Kansas also strives to meet.”
Furthermore, the IR&SS degree program “will be bolstered by a strong quality assurance mechanism that will ensure that the written material achieves the kind of educational outcomes that both students and faculty would expect from a leading institution in higher education,” highlighted Professor Jones, expressing his trust that IR&SS “will be a successful degree program.”