Cyrus Olsen, Ph.D.
Excellence in Advancing Global Learning
This award is given to a faculty member who has demonstrated noteworthy academic leadership in integrating international issues/perspectives into the curriculum and through whose efforts, students have acquired the competencies, attributes and insights required to meaningfully and successfully participate in an increasingly interdependent world. The recipient of this year’s award is Dr. Cyrus Olsen.
Dr. Olsen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, having joined the University in 2006 after earning a PhD from the University of Oxford.
Cyrus’s course, T/RS 295: Christianity in Africa is a significant contribution to integrating diversity into the curriculum, thereby enriching students' learning about Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in profound ways.
The course is an immersive travel experience during which students engage the Baganda people of the Kampala region, visiting schools, churches, and healthcare facilities. They then travel to southwest Uganda where they interact with the Batwa, a rainforest-dwelling tribe who became conservation refugees in the 1990s, spending time in their hospitals and schools. In both locations, students learn about sustainable farming while exploring the Queen Elizabeth National Park and the Bwindi Impenetrable rainforest. Cyrus has taught this course since 2016 and has helped over one hundred students make this culturally-enriching trip to Uganda.
In addition, Cyrus co-founded the Health Humanities Concentration which includes a significant global element, and has piloted a new course on “Medical Cultures in the Global South.”
His nominators commented that “Cy’s passion for global understanding and connectedness reaches all aspects of his life and work, impacts our institution and students in profound ways, and makes him a richly deserving recipient of this award.”
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