On Friday, September 14th, the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College will select roughly forty-five to fifty freshmen out of 150 plus applicants as “Great Issues Scholars.” With the arrival of Daniel Benjamin, current Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State who took over in January as the director of the Dickey Center, this year’s program schedule and lineup of speakers is a must-watch.

The program is intended to expose young minds to the day-to-day issues of the global community and prepare them to use their voice to conjure bold solutions to these problems. The interactive events encourage the Great Issues Scholars to take part in the struggle for peace, climate stability, and public health security.

Over the course of their first year at the College, the Scholars will take part in roughly three to five major events per academic term. The overarching theme of the program changes every quarter, where Scholars will assess conflict and community tensions in the fall, environmental controversies in the winter and global health and development challenges in the spring.

The program “opens up the door to face-to-face conversation with award-winning leaders, Nobel laureates, and political and civic-minded scholars and activists,” Alexander Lopez ’15, a former Scholar, said.

Carla Sung-Ah Yoon ’15, also a former Scholar and now Great Issues Scholars Mentor for this year’s program, said the program is an “an opportunity to meet like-minded people who are passionate global learners and citizens.”

For students interested in global issues, the Dickey Center offers several other programs to get involved in, Lopez said. For example, Lopez spent this past summer in Mpumalanga, South Africa with ThinkImpact, a program focused on asset-based community development and implementation of sustainable social businesses, with funding from the Dickey Center.

For more on the Dickey Center’s student opportunities, check out its website.