Our History
In 1991, a group of students received approval from the University to organize a new International House in Dorchester Hall to bring together international and domestic students at the University. Students organized events that encouraged cross-cultural understanding including the first Cultural Explosion in 1992—a showcase of international students' talents and a campus tradition that continues to this day.
The International House formally joined other living-learning programs in 2001 as a global competencies program and changed its name to Global Communities in 2002. Courses and programming focused on intercultural communication skills and brought together international and domestic students, exchange students and transfer students from all disciplines and cultural backgrounds.
With the launch of the university's Global Studies Minors in 2011 the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences partnered with the Provost to sponsor a stronger global studies program headed by academic director, Dr. Virginia Haufler. The program expanded in size, staff, resources and ambition. Global Communities became an invitation-only program for academically talented students, combining the original program’s focus on developing intercultural sensitivity with new interdisciplinary courses on globalization and global issues.
Honors Global Challenges & Solutions (HGLO) formally joined the Honors College in Fall 2022. This marked the transition from its previous iteration within the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS) known as Global Communities (GC). This move coincided with the appointment of Dr. Sarah Croco as the new faculty director, who started her role in January 2022. Initially, the transitional cohort from Global Communities had the option to pursue the Honors College citation. From that group, 14 opted for the Honors citation, while the others completed the requirements for the Global Communities notation.
The incoming class of Fall 2022 marked the start of HGLO's newly designed curriculum. Aside from HGLO 100 (formerly BSGC100 under Global Communities), all HGLO courses were newly designed from scratch. The program’s course offerings are larger than GC’s. HGLO has two tracks, Academic and Internship, and consists of 6 courses totaling 16 credit hours.
