Mission and History
CALIS is proud to be part of a USC tradition of leadership and service to pre-collegiate education. In our goal to help tranform social science teaching, grades 6-12, our mission is to adapt university research and theories (i.e. new knowledge and analytical frameworks) to serve public education. The guiding principle for all CALIS efforts is to connect USC—as a world-class university resource— to support the civic mission of schools.
Universities are a source of new knowledge and effective frames for analysis -- which are critical to advancing excellence and innovation in teaching and learning. Programs bring together USC faculty and students with high school faculty and students in annual teacher seminars and student conferences, and in the year-round work of undergraduate teams in local classrooms. This synergy is used to create, review, pilot and hone materials that are then made available online and promoted by the director and partner teachers at professional conferences across the nation.
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CALIS was established in July 2000
to conduct teacher training and USC student outreach to Los Angeles area schools. Initially, it served as a state resource center at USC for the California International Studies Poject.
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In 2005, CALIS received national recognition
from the Goldman Sachs Foundation Prizes for Excellence in International Education. Among a pool of 100 university programs nominated in the Higher Education category, CALIS was selected as one of the top three outreach programs in the United States.
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In 2006, we launched the
High School Case Teaching Initiative and recieved permission from National Public Radio to develop "case customized transcripts" for use in our pilot project. Case teaching has since become the basis of our curriculum development projects that apply analytical tools for problem-based learning.
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In 2007, we began promotion
of our resources and strategies at the National Council for the Social Studies annual conference and at our state conference for CCSS.
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In 2008, we incorporated
Marketplace from American Public Media as a new source for case teaching in Government and Economics.
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In 2009, we launched the
Four Worlds of History for middle school world history. This analytical model enables young students to explore the relevance of ancient and medieval times to present day issues and to their personal lives.
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And in 2010 ...
In our local service mission--our placement of USC volunteers in Los Angeles area high schools continues to expand to new teachers at new schools.
...In our global service mission--our online database collection of classroom materials continues to grow.
...In our strategic plan to achieve a new paradigm in teaching youth, we have started formal collaboration with a partner school to track our impact on student achievement.
Stay tuned...
- Center for Active Learning in International Studies
- CALIS is an outreach project of the School of International Relations.
- Phone: (213) 740 - 7794
- Email: calis@usc.edu