Two dozen Marysville High School students will begin a new journey Thursday,Oct. 27, when they take part in a session at Franklin University as part of the Columbus Council on World Affairs Global Scholars Program.

The program began in 2012 to help central Ohio students gain global fluency.

This is the first year Marysville students will be involved.

“I would love for it to become sort of like an impact group where they’re not just talking amongst themselves but they’re bringing back what they’re learning and sharing it,” principal Thomas Cochran said.

The program is a three-year program that allows high school students to earn a Global Scholars Diploma.

One of the group advisers, Luke Sundermeier, teaches social studies at Marysville High School. He said the idea to take part in the Global Scholars Program began a few years ago.

“I remember hearing about this in graduate school at Ohio State in the global ed department when they were doing a lot of the same curriculum. It didn’t have a name yet,” Sundermeier said.

Sundermeier said he and his colleagues presented the program to the social studies classes at the high school this year, concentrating on sophomores because the program is a three-year program.

“We kind of left it up to the students to see what their interests were. We had enough people show interest we didn’t have to go out and hand-pick any students or provide any kind of cut off as far as grade-point averages or anything,” Sundermeier said. “We really just wanted to cast that net and see how many students we could get.”

Cochran said the program’s goal is to advance students after high school.

“The idea is we want to promote it to the students saying this is something that is growing every single year and when you put this on your resume it’s more than just checking boxes,” Cochran said. “It’s someone that’s gone through this three-year program and have fluency and have become marketable because now they have better understanding of how things work, not only across Ohio but, across the globe.”

The program allows students to choose projects to earn the number of points required to complete each year/level of the program.

For example, students must earn 200 points in the first year by June 15, 2017.

Face-to-face experiences make up 100 points. The face-to-face sessions include a cross-cultural event, global issues event, global careers event and a culminating event: each worth 25 points.

The enrichment experiences make up the next 100 points. Students have a variety of ways to earn points but can use in-school assignments or projects to address the requirements.

“One of the things we like about it is kids may already be doing this in their class. And they can tag that assignment. Say they’re writing a paper in their English class or writing a current events paper in their social studies class and that can count as part of the process,” Sundermeier said.

Global Scholars have to earn 25 points in each of four domains: investigate the world, recognize perspectives, communicate ideas and take action.

“If you have a student who is a fine arts-inclined student that wants to study arts around the world and how that has an impact on social culture, they can really go with that and they can be part of the global studies program,” Cochran said. “So it doesn’t have to be for everyone who wants to be a politician or pre-law. It’s not pigeonholed like that. It really can be any domain or interest the student has.”

Both Sundermeier and Cochran believe the new program is about developing students, and they hope to add 25 new students every year.

“I want them to be able to extend their knowledge base but also leave high school with a set of goals that will instantly make them marketable to a wide range of employers or institutions, whatever it is they want to do after high school,” Cochran said.

“That’s something we really try to do in all of our classes, but to give them these experiences and give them a unique way to challenging themselves outside the classroom and developing this global perspective,” Sundermeier said. “The world really is bigger than Marysville, Ohio.”

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