The Global Citizens Project (GCP) is a university-wide global learning initiative
at the University of South Florida, aimed at enhancing undergraduate students’
global competencies through curricular and co-curricular experiences. The GCP
uses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework
for these experiences. Understanding the SDGs allows students to expand their
ideas on issues that exist in the world and how we might respond to the challenges.
The purpose of this article is to provide a case study showing how the GCP has
introduced students from all disciplines and undergraduate degree programmes
to the SDGs through interdisciplinary workshops, with the aim of helping them to
better understand the SDGs and connect global issues to their academic goals,
professional objectives and everyday experiences. To determine whether the aims
of the workshops were met, qualitative content analysis is employed to analyse
the constructed responses of students who attended them. The results of the
study suggest that the SDGs provide a relevant and sufficiently robust framework
for guiding undergraduate students in their thinking about global issues as well as
their relationship with these issues
