How UNC’s TransAtlantic Masters (TAM) became truly transatlantic for me
TAM student Salim Fayeq reflects on collaborative online international learning (COIL) course POLI 733, taken in fall 2020 with Prof. Dr. Christiane Lemke.
Before beginning TAM at UNC, my excitement and anticipation to spend my second year of the program in Berlin, Germany was already burning. I had spent a semester abroad in Germany during undergrad, and I’ve been studying German since high school. Being able to take my academic and personal interests to the graduate level and spend time overseas again was a huge deal for me.
I didn’t realize, however, how transnational TAM became for me shortly after starting the program, while still in Chapel Hill.
One of my core classes, European Integration Theory, was taught by Visiting Professor Dr. Christiane Lemke of Leibniz Universität Hannover. Dr. Lemke is also a career politician, having served in a high-level political position in a German provincial government.
About three-quarters into the course, the class sessions merged with a class from Dr. Lemke’s home university, totaling to a little over 40 students in attendance. The borderless learning environment was referred to as the transatlantic seminar. This of course includes the four non-German international students in my TAM cohort at UNC: 3 students from Sweden and one from The Netherlands.
During the first couple sessions, I was entranced by the overseas students’ eagerness to get involved. In my perspective, I assumed that there would be an intimidation factor to attend a class with students from the US, with English as the language of instruction. To the contrary, all the Hannover students appeared very involved and forthcoming. We started out with an extensive icebreaker that was designed to allow us to get to know each other in a unique way. We were broken up in groups of about 5–6 students, and within each group we came up with a few similarities amongst us, as well as differences. The approach highlighted how easy collaboration can be despite distance, national background or a language barrier.
The project was an extraordinarily neat way to get exposure to the different visions and insights on political issues that indeed have a global impact.
I especially admired the way in which the academic project as part of the transatlantic seminar took place. Each group, having remained the same from the icebreaker activity, was assigned a policy area or subject of political nature to investigate and examine from both the US and EU perspective. While composing a group essay, we also designed a presentation to give on the final day of the seminar.
The project was an extraordinarily neat way to get exposure to the different visions and insights on political issues that indeed have a global impact. In my group, our policy issue was climate change. We divided our paper in sections and each group member took up a section to complete. I became inspired by the approach a German student in my group took for the “Policy Recommendations” component of the paper. The student explained the use of a ‘twin city’ program, whereby municipal governments across Europe partner to combat the climate crisis, jointly devising solutions to climate change together. This inspired me to take on a similar course of action in my section, which was the policy recommendations for the US. I then chose to discuss how federalizing a response to climate change in the US is needed in order to see the bold and actionable change needed to fight its immense, growing threats. I then spoke of the importance between national and subnational coordination, citing an example in Pennsylvania where a township created a climate change resolution that they then integrated in the decision-making process in every subsequent policy meeting. This allowed for climate action to receive the proper attention and regard that it deserves. The US national government could then follow suit by incorporating such policies into a national framework and adopt certain techniques that are seen to be effective in some areas across the country, while recognizing that each jurisdiction’s needs differ widely based on geographic location.
It was really fascinating to see how the minds and skills from either side of the Atlantic were able to meet in the middle for a highly pertinent subject in today’s political and economic climate. The transatlantic seminar showed me that now more than ever, in the middle of a pandemic, physical travel isn’t a requirement to engage in meaningful, multinational work. Just in my first semester of TAM, I’ve realized that modern technology and collective drive, from any corner of the earth, can be synthesized to fulfill any item on the agenda.
