In 2011, Uwe Brandenburg and Hans de Wit wrote that the internationalization of higher education had lost its way as its focus had shifted from the “why” to the “how.” A decade later—during a global pandemic, when international mobility has been severely restricted and higher education institutions have made herculean efforts to accommodate students in time zones that span the globe—global educators can benefit from re-investing our energies in the “why.” As Bryan McAllister-Grande and Melissa Whatley suggested in 2020, now is a valuable and necessary time to take stock of things like the “unintended consequences of mobility” and “access to and outcomes of participation…that do not involve international mobility” (p. 2).
Meanwhile, a lot has changed in the United States and the world since 2011. There is room to frameshift, even and especially during the challenging days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Keeping perspective helps. As the number of displaced persons has increased over the past decade due to wars, natural disasters, and climate change (UNHCR, 2019), populism has grown around the world (Hazelkorn, 2020), and the Biden administration has proposed to significantly increase the cap of refugees coming to the United States (Hauslohner, 2021). I have moved multiple times, domestically and internationally, as I have worked on international programs. Expanding my own worldview and supporting individuals in navigating cross-cultural experiences are my professionalraisons d’être. So, in 2019, when I moved back to Richmond, Virginia, after living and working in Rome, Italy, I was excited to reacquaint myself with my increasingly diverse hometown.
In a certain sense, as a global educator-global learner, I have been returning to the “why” since I moved back to the United States. Through the non-profit organization ReEstablish Richmond, in November 2019 I began tutoring ESL one-on-one to newcomers in Richmond and helping plan an annual volunteer summit in collaboration with a resettlement agency and other community organizations. Although my family and I have again relocated, a silver lining is that I continue to volunteer virtually through ReEstablish Richmond and now through Literacy Pittsburgh. I have found that staying connected to and establishing roots is important, as this grounds me both personally and professionally. Facilitating intercultural learning has been a common thread throughout most of my career path. Also, community engagement was an area that I wanted to focus on as I transitioned back to the United States and have sought both to give back to and to (re-)learn my community. Therefore, I have felt that I have something to offer through these experiences, but also something to gain.
We can all learn from each other, locally and globally, as I was humbled to share through co-presenting with my ESL student about building community and learning together at this year’s volunteer summit (Adli & McSweeney, 2021). This is especially true and necessary during a pandemic. As I have witnessed one of my students complete her ESL program at community college and another be accepted to graduate school, I have learned a great deal about the perseverance of my newest neighbors and the apparently not-so-foreign concept of icebreakers during orientation in Afghanistan.
It turns out that taking a hyper-local approach to my own “get out of your comfort zone” project, which began pre-pandemic, has offered a really valuable way to discover how community-university partnerships can serve to strengthen intercultural and global learning in an inclusive, just, sustainable, and ethical way, not only for mobility-based programs (Hartman et al., 2018). Students who may not have the means or desire to spend a period of time in another country may be more incentivized to actively engage in a curricular or co-curricular project-based learning experience in their local community, especially if it helps prepare them for a career. At the same time, pathways that offer students opportunities to support marginalized populations, for example, through which they share equitable roles and acknowledge asset-based contributions, can lend themselves to impactful relationship building where both groups have an investment. Exposing students (as well as faculty and staff) to global issues “at home” has the potential to spark an interest in pursuing a global engagement opportunity abroad in the future, whether through traditional study abroad, research abroad or with international colleagues, an internship (virtual or abroad in-person), a service-learning experience (virtual or abroad in-person), or a partnership. Virginia Commonwealth University, in fact, offers these types of opportunities through their living-learning program (Virginia Commonwealth University Global Education Office, n.d.).
Civic engagement can also be a component of local engagement with global issues.For example, while Radomir Ray Mitic (2019) has found that participation in education abroad increases first generation students’ voter participation, I would propose that the cultivation of civic dispositions is also possible locally, based on my own experience preparing a newcomer for her citizenship test. MetroLab Network (n.d.) offers additional inspiration about how local engagement might promote civic engagement, such as through Carnegie Mellon University’s Metro21: Smart Cities Institute (2021). Another outcome of the type of local engagement mentioned above is that students may choose to pursue an AmeriCorps position after graduation.
Oftentimes, what I have observed while supporting students on-program, while abroad, is that if the program component does not connect in a tangible way to the requirements of their program, or if it is not a checkbox that might help them get a job, they usually will not invest in authentically engaging the community. It is our job to connect the dots intentionally and to model these types of pathways. For instance, Marcy Sacks (2020) at Albion College has demonstrated that exposing underrepresented students to research archives in the United States can be a powerful way to effect structural changes. This could be tailored to a global learning opportunity in a local or virtual context, since sources and exhibits often include topics that are globally relevant and accessible online. For example, a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) course between a professor in the United States and Italy, or a guest lecture series by NGOs that focus on migration in different parts of the world, could add rich exposure to global issues that deepen students’ understanding of their engagement with the local community. Such place-based exposure to local-global issues, therefore, can open up the possibility for global engagement to be more diverse, inclusive, equitable, and accessible, and therefore more enduring and impactful.
As Amanda Sturgill (2020) explains, understanding our own environments can help us recognize barriers within our own communities, and this kind of border crossing “at home” can lead to an increase in equity. Perhaps even more powerful than crossing oceans to study in another country, where students’ stays are temporary, the kinds of local engagement mentioned here can support opportunities for even deeper shared learning, which can lead to what Dawn Michele Whitehead (2017) frames as shared understanding of essentially shared problems, and in turn can lead to shared futures. I, for one, am hopeful for the opportunities that had already existed but that were not fully recognized prior to the pandemic, and I am inspired by the possibilities that are out there as we chart the future of global education together.
REFERENCES
Adli, S., & McSweeney, M. (2021, February 9). Building community: Learning together through client-volunteer matches [summit session]. Refugee and Immigrant Volunteer Summit 2021, Richmond, VA (virtual event).
Hartman, E., Kiely, R. Boettcher, C., & Friedrichs, J. (2018). Community-based global learning: The theory and practice of ethical engagement at home and abroad. Stylus Publishing.
Hazelkorn. E. (2020). Higher education in the age of populism: Public good and civic engagement. International Higher Education, (100), 6–7.
McAllister-Grande, B., & Whatley, M. (2020). International higher education research: The state of the field. NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
MetroLab Network. (n.d.). MetroLab Network: A network of city-university partnerships. https://metrolabnetwork.org/
Mitic, R. R. (2019). Cultivating voter participation among first-generation college students: The relationship of study abroad participation to post-college voting behaviour. In R. M. O. Pritchard, M. O’Hara, C. Milsom, J. Williams, & L. Matei (Eds.), The three Cs of higher education: Competition, collaboration and complementarity (pp. 205–232). Central European University Press.
Sacks, M. (2020). Promoting inclusivity in academia: A case study in taking underrepresented students to research archives in the United States. In J. Gillespie, L. Jasinski, & D. Gross (Authors), Faculty as global learners: Off-campus study at liberal arts colleges (pp. 269–273). Lever Press. https://doi:10.3998/mpub.11923682.27
UNHCR. (2019). Global trends: Forced displacement in 2019. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. https://www.unhcr.org/5ee200e37.pdf
Virginia Commonwealth University Global Education Office. (n.d.). Service. Virginia Commonwealth University. https://global.vcu.edu/vcuglobe/service/Whitehead, D. M. (2017). Foreword: Global learning: Shifting from an option to a priority. In I. Nair & M. Henning (Authors), Models of global learning (pp. v–vi). Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Kyle Kastler, Senior Program Associate, Stevens Initiative, the Aspen Institute\
Haili Lewis, Senior Program Associate, Stevens Initiative, the Aspen Institute
An Introduction to AIDE in Virtual Exchange
As virtual exchange becomes more common (Stevens Initiative, 2020), it is imperative to contextualize this practice in terms of access, inclusion, diversity, and equity (AIDE) while providing educators and administrators examples of virtual exchange programs using promising AIDE strategies.
While a direct comparison of virtual and in-person exchange is not always useful, when considering AIDE, some issues overlap or offer an opportunity for a place to start. In-person exchange programs have long considered access to exchange when working to diversify their participants or serve communities who have traditionally been unable to study abroad for a variety of reasons including cost, family support, inflexible programs of study, etc. There are multiple other barriers, perceived as well as real, that impact access to traditional mobility programs (Loberg & Rust, 2014). Virtual exchange programs don’t confront many of these traditional access issues, but other challenges certainly come up. For example, not all young people have equal access to a reliable internet connection or sufficient hardware to participate in a virtual exchange. This “digital divide” can create new inequities or reproduce or perpetuate those that already exist (Ragnedda & Muschert, 2013). Importantly, the fact that a program is mediated by technology does not eliminate inequalities or power imbalances that exist offline (Helm, 2017). So although a virtual exchange might present a lower cost program to access, not all underserved populations are able to participate, or participate equitably, in a virtual exchange. This example is just one AIDE challenge that should be considered in the virtual exchange context.
In this article, we will connect effective AIDE practices, with an emphasis on equity, in virtual exchange to efforts we have seen implemented in Stevens Initiative programming, pointing towards specific virtual exchange programs or Initiative-led efforts that model these effective practices. While we focus here on three general themes, the Stevens Initiative has taken steps towards developing and improving in these areas going forward in collaboration with others in the virtual exchange and study abroad fields.
Developing equitable institutional partnerships for virtual exchange programming
Long cited as an area in international education where good practices can start, developing equitable partnerships in virtual exchange programs looks different than partnerships for traditional mobility opportunities. Practices include engaging partners that reach underserved youth and planning for mutual benefits from the project inception for all partners and youth participants.
Virtual exchange programs must redefine partnership portfolios to include partners that reach all demographics. Including Minority-Serving Institutions and community colleges in the US and institutions in other countries where the main language of instruction is not English is one way to do this. The Initiative encouraged this practice in our recent grant competition, prioritizing the inclusion of participants from these institutions through our application review criteria. Institutions were given additional points if their programs committed to serving communities that included young people of color or of different abilities, for example, and monitoring that inclusion.
Equitable partnerships don’t end at engaging with institutions that reach underserved communities. Those partners need to be meaningfully included in project development and implementation. This means providing space for all partners to share goals for their participants, develop programming that meets unique needs, and ensure that the benefits of participation are not one sided. This type of partnership development takes time, effort, and good faith on all sides to arrive at a space where all stakeholders in a program feel heard and seen.
Acknowledging and disrupting traditional power dynamics
Power dynamics that cause marginalization and underrepresentation can be reproduced through program structures and learning content. Acknowledging that those power dynamics exist and creating opportunities to disrupt them can be a powerful opportunity for change. The versatility of these programs and the multidirectional learning and connections possible in virtual exchanges create multiple ways to improve equity and inclusivity.
For example, as participants become more comfortable sharing with their international peers during an exchange program, implementers should prioritize the inclusion of activities that explore social issues and justice topics as a part of the exchange dialogue. Creating space for participants to discuss issues of privilege and oppression in their local context is an invaluable learning opportunity for all sides of the exchange that can increase empathy, solidarity, and ultimately action. These conversations should be appropriately planned and facilitated to ensure a space that is conducive to the sharing of diverse perspectives and equitable participation. Multiple Stevens Initiative awardees include these topics as a part of their exchange activities, including Soliya’s Connect Global: US-MENA. This dialogue-based exchange includes conversations on global and social inequality, religion, stereotypes and cultural misunderstandings, and more. These conversations empower participants to confront inequities in their communities.
When virtual exchange programs use project-based learning pedagogies, they can be designed to serve all participating communities, rather than the community of the leading or funding partner. This can happen by finding common issues to confront or customizing projects for local realities. IREX’s Global Solutions Sustainability Challenge selects an issue that is relevant to all participating communities and encourages participants to discuss how those challenges manifest in their local communities. For example, one team of participants created a sustainable lifestyle brand that recycles used clothing into garment options customized to the needs of internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, and homeless people while supporting employment opportunities. World Learning’s The Experiment Digital builds enough flexibility into their small grants program that funds can be used to solve unique local problems, rather than an issue framed from a US-centric perspective.
As virtual exchange programs are developed and become more common at an institution, it is important for leadership to prioritize the creation of resources, training, and support for program implementers and exchange facilitators. The Initiative is committed to supporting the field in these areas by sponsoring research to investigate AIDE issues in the field and creating resources that practitioners can use in their programming. One concrete step the Initiative is taking is to track data on the diversity of our participants and inclusion in our programs.
Confronting the digital divide
One very tangible equity issue in virtual exchange programming is the digital divide, or the lack of access some participants might have to software, hardware, or internet connectivity. In our grantmaking, the Stevens Initiative helps support grantees to confront this challenge by supporting equity focused practices: use of stipends to support connectivity, purchasing hardware and software when necessary, and thinking about what tech to use to ensure equitable access as implementers plan for exchanges. As international educators turn to virtual exchange to connect young people and assume that tough AIDE issues go away because no one is traveling, the digital divide and ways to confront it should be top of mind.
Conclusion
While virtual exchange can be an accessible global education tool, there are still significant gaps in AIDE practices. Education and exchange leaders must design and implement programs that consider all areas of AIDE, including the issues of equity outlined above. Doing so will ensure that every young person has the same opportunities for a meaningful virtual exchange experience.
References
Helm, F. (2017). Critical approaches to online intercultural language education. In S. L. Thorne & S. May (Eds.), Language, Education and Technology: Encyclopedia of Language and Education (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Springer.
Loberg, L. & Rust, V. D. (2014). Key factors of participation in study abroad: Perspectives of study abroad professionals. In B. Streitwieser (Ed.), Internationalization of higher education and global mobility. Oxford Studies in Comparative Education: Symposium Books.
Elisheva Cohen, Post-Doctoral Fellow – Indiana University Bloomington
The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims to foster a better, more sustainable planet by the year 2030 (United Nations, 2015). At the heart of this ambitious agreement lie the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 17 goals that seek to address the world’s most pressing challenges including: ending poverty and hunger, protecting the environment from climate change, ensuring prosperous and fulfilling lives, and fostering peaceful and inclusive societies. The SDGs are universal goals meant to be achieved in both developed and developing countries.
Beyond their policy implications, the SDGs are a powerful tool for the field of global education. Using the SDGs in the classroom enables educators to bridge global and local learning and encourage globally minded and locally grounded civic engagement. By global I refer to processes, relationships, and ideas flowing through unbounded and multidimensional spaces, transcending national borders (Kearney, 1995; Appadurai, 1990). This notion of global is inextricably tied to unique localized conditions, interpretations, and understandings, thus embodying what de Sousa Santos refers to as a dual process of globalizing localisms and localizing globalisms (2006). The SDGs introduce challenges on a global scale and a shared global vision for addressing them. Yet, to fully understand and analyze the goals, and to develop action towards them, attention must be given to their daily manifestations at the local level.
Exploring the SDGs Through the Inquiry to Action Project
In the fall of 2020, I used the SDGs as a guiding tool in a virtual course about sustainable development. Through a semester-long Inquiry to Action Project, each student identified a social, economic, or environmental issue to research and a specific geographic location in which to study the issue. After conducting research on the topic and exploring its connection to the SDGs, students took action to address it. Given that students would conduct their action projects without traveling abroad, I encouraged them to consider indirect forms of action, including advocacy, philanthropy, and awareness-raising. To prepare for this project, we discussed the dangers of white saviorism and American exceptionalism, reflected on the ethics of community engagement, and analyzed our own positionality.
While the final action projects ranged greatly in shape and form, they all represented locally grounded actions towards global issues. What emerged from these projects is a framework of four ways that the SDGs can be used to facilitate and understand global learning and local engagement, which I share below.
Four Approaches to Connect the Local and Global Through the SDGs
Local as Part of the Global. The first way that the SDGs can facilitate both local and global learning and action is by serving as a global lens to analyze and act on a local issue. Students may study and address an issue in their local community and use the SDGs to view that local challenge through a global lens. For example, four students in the course collaborated to produce a series of podcasts about clean water in Bloomington, Indiana. Through recorded conversations among their team and interviews with local government and NGO leaders, they discussed the challenges to accessing clean water in our town and how the issue is being addressed. By using the language of SDG 6, students connected the challenges of clean water in Bloomington to a larger, global framework. This enabled them to take global action that was locally grounded.
Localizing the Global. Incontrast to the approach above, where students began with a local issue and tied it to a global framework, another approach to locally grounded global engagement is to begin with the global issue and then connect it to a local context. For example, several students in my course focused their research on broad trends and challenges of a specific global issue and then looked at how that issue is addressed or impacted in a local context. One student centered her project on forced migration. Her research placed the issue in historical context and highlighted contemporary challenges related to forced migration. Her action project then situated this global issue, which she tied to SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, in a local context by interviewing three young women who came to the United States as refugees. Through the interviews, she explored their experiences of migration to the United States and then tied those experiences back to the global trends she identified.
Local for the Sake of the Global. A third approach involves actions in the local community in order to address a global issue. Through this approach, students took action from home that was connected to issues overseas. For example, one student created a campaign to raise awareness about the rise of early marriage among Syrian refugees. This action targeted her peers in our local campus community in order to address a global issue which, in this case, was based in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. In a second example, a student researched human trafficking in Italy and created a series of Instagram posts to raise awareness of this phenomenon among her Instagram followers. In both of these instances, the students took locally grounded action to support a global issue by raising awareness of the SDG 5: Gender Equality.
The Local Implicated in the Global: A final approach to breaking down the local-global binary is by understanding how the local and global are intimately tied together and impact each other. For instance, in some Inquiry to Action projects, students addressed the problematic ways that local actions impact global issues. One student researched the negative consequences of oil dumping carried out by America-based companies, focusing on the Chevron oil company’s work in the Ecuadorian Amazon. She learned about the environmental impacts of such actions, with a focus on SDG 13: Climate Action as well as its implications for individual and community health and wellbeing (SDG 3). Based on her research, she wrote a letter to the oil company explaining the damage they are causing and advocating for a change in policy.
In a second example, a student focusing on SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities had intended to develop a virtual museum exhibit highlighting art of Indigenous women in Argentina; yet she changed her project approach after realizing that the project itself might perpetuate a western gaze upon the Indigenous community. As she wrote in her final reflection:
While I had originally meant for this project to be solely an exhibition…It became hard for me to not feel like I was contributing to the uneven power dynamics in museum spaces, and I did not want to further the feelings (and reality) of surveillance and captivity of Indigenous people.
These two projects illuminate the ways that local actions—of corporations, organizations, and individuals—are implicated in reinforcing global inequities and neocolonial power dynamics.
Researching and taking action towards the SDGs empowered students to act locally within a global framework. The goals highlighted the inextricable link between the local and global, thereby breaking down the binary between the two, and led to civic engagement and action that was simultaneously local and global.
Resources to support incorporating the SDGs into higher education:
Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, Culture & Society, 7(2–3), 295–310.
Kearney, M. (1995). The local and the global: The anthropology of globalization and transnationalism. Annual review of anthropology, 24(1), 547–565.
de Sousa Santos, B. (2006). Globalizations. Theory, Culture & Society, 23(2–3), 393–399. United Nations (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda
Kati Bell, Ed.D., Senior International Officer – Dominican University of California
Education abroadis currently in a unique position to examine where it’s been and where it’s going. It’s not often an entire professional area shuts down and has an opportunity to reflect and plan for a reboot. The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting standstill of global student mobility forced international educators into this unexpected hiatus. It has also given us unusually ample time available to reflect; there is significant soul-searching happening. One potential opportunity that presents itself is the return of language and culture programs in education abroad. Many of us know that language and culture programs are the earliest iterations of education abroad. There was a time when language learning was synonymous with study abroad. Unfortunately, participation in language acquisition and cultural programs abroad has decreased significantly due to a variety of reasons, including a growing emphasis on shorter terms, an increase in faculty-led programs, and an overall decline in language teaching at the university level. Including language acquisition and intercultural knowledge as learning outcomes in education abroad prioritizes the application of vital cross-cultural skills and opens the door to developing innovative teaching/learning models to meet the student learning outcomes. Here are several reasons why getting back to our education abroad roots may be one of the best options forward.
Technology & Language Learning Pedagogy – Online learning has been normalized during the pandemic and become a familiar teaching modality for both students and teachers. Both synchronous and asynchronous online learning lend themselves quite well to language acquisition and show promise to increase language learning for individual and/or group settings. For universities faced with reducing teaching staff due to low enrollments, online classes present a potentially cost-effective option to continue offering foreign language courses. Additionally, pre- and posttests, taken online, can provide important data to assess language learning successes.
Global to Local Emphasis –This pandemic proves our global interconnectedness. Now more than ever, students need to not only see this connection firsthand, but also develop the vital global skills of language acquisition and cultural knowledge, to increase local impact. Education abroad shares high-level goals with community engagement programming at most universities, and by participating in campus service-learning, students returning from study abroad can keep their language skills sharp through involvement with local, non-English-speaking communities. Language and cultural skills acquired through study abroad should be seen by students as opportunities for enhanced interaction with local immigrant communities and increasing social impact. Many students put education abroad on their proverbial “bucket list,” seeing it as a one-off undergraduate activity unconnected to their major. Supporting language and culture learning outcomes for education abroad connects overseas study to future academic and career goals.
Career & Professional Development –There are not many career fields left in the US in which a bilingual employee would not be of added value and benefit. Despite companies experiencing both a shift towards more global business and the workforce becoming increasingly multicultural and diverse, the teaching of foreign languages has, unfortunately, decreased substantially in the past two decades. Encouraging students to focus their education abroad goals on language learning will double the value of their overseas experience with future employers. Another area worthy of emphasis is the promotion of language acquisition for “specific purposes.” Many universities offer medical Spanish to healthcare majors. Both students with basic knowledge of a foreign language as well as heritage speakers, already with bilingual proficiency, would be well served to increase target language fluency in healthcare, education, or business, through education abroad.
Intercultural Communication and Knowledge – Being fluent is much more than just knowing the words to the language; understanding the culture behind the language is vital to mastery. Culture learning has a two-fold value, in that as you unpack and experience another’s culture you are also evaluating and assessing your own culture by comparison. Students always report a tremendous increase in self-awareness as a key take-away from their education abroad experience. This increase in intercultural knowledge can be applied directly to cross-cultural situations not only while abroad, but also within our own borders. It is a critical component integral to everyday interactions in a multicultural society, yet it is the most undervalued skillset in the academy.
As we explore options to bring education abroad back, we should challenge ourselves to set goals for our programs that prioritize vital global skills, such as language and culture learning, that will enable better and more impactful engagement with local communities.
Ashley Bender | Assistant Professor and BA Program Coordinator, Texas Woman’s University
Gretchen Busl | Associate Professor and Graduate Programs Coordinator, Texas Woman’s University
This essay is rooted in the belief that thinking “globally” does not always mean “internationally” and that global awareness begins with self-awareness. Often the idea of “global citizenship” remains abstract to students, and previous efforts to create global curricula suggest that students need more than theoretical knowledge to “develop their own agency as responsible actors in the world” (Sperandio, Grudzinski-Hall, & Stewart-Gambino 2010). Our National Endowment for the Humanities funded project, “Building Global Perspectives in the Humanities” (2018-2020), intentionally brought these ideas together to expand the quantity and quality of our institution’s global learning opportunities. Our model demonstrates the benefits of training faculty in experiential learning focused on developing global citizenship through local engagement. The research-based methods we suggest can make global experiences more inclusive by making them more accessible, especially for economically disadvantaged students. Such an approach—what we call “going global without going abroad”—can provide the transformative experiences students need in order to see themselves as global actors with the potential to effect change in the world. In designing similar programs, we encourage institutions to reflect on their students’ unique needs within the context of their geographical locations and limitations.
The Building Global Perspectives program came about in part because of the unique situation of our university, from demographics to curriculum to geographic placement. Texas Woman’s University (TWU) is the largest public institution primarily for women in the US and a minority-majority, Hispanic-Serving Institution. Most of our students are first generation; many are considered non-traditional: they have full-time jobs, are returning to school at a later age, and/or are parents or caregivers. Such student populations face unique challenges in their quest for academic success (Blankenship, 2010; Dolan, 2008; Kirby, White, & Aruguete, 2007). The factors behind these challenges also affect our students’ willingness to consider study abroad opportunities. Lack of awareness about opportunities and benefits of study abroad, familial responsibilities, and (perhaps most important of all) financial implications are clear barriers to minority and first-generation student participation in education abroad (Brux & Fry, 2010; Kasravi, 2009; Salisbury, Umbach, Paulsen, & Pascarella, 2009).
While our short-term, faculty-led study abroad programs are one successful approach to helping students make space for global learning, we also wanted to provide another accessible curriculum-based option. As our mission at TWU is to cultivate engaged leaders and global citizens, all students must complete one Global Perspectives (GP) course in order to graduate. Global Perspectives refers to “skills, knowledge, and attitudes in areas such as global dynamics, non-western worldviews, international systems and events, and global cultures.” We chose to enhance our university’s global education by providing GP-designated courses that emphasize the idea that global learning begins at home and cultivate students’ awareness of their own place in overlapping global networks. As a result, we developed a “going global without going abroad” model that promotes learning in the same dimensions emphasized by many study abroad programs.
In designing our program, we drew from the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Global Learning Rubric, which defines such learning as “a critical analysis of and an engagement with complex, interdependent global systems and legacies (such as natural, physical, social, cultural, economic, and political) and their implications for people’s lives and the earth’s sustainability.” Local experiential learning with a global focus has enormous potential to help students meet the goals of “1) becom[ing] informed, open-minded, and responsible people who are attentive to diversity across the spectrum of differences, 2) seek[ing] to understand how their actions affect both local and global communities, and 3) address[ing] the world’s most pressing and enduring issues collaboratively and equitably” (AAC&U). The key to such experiences is engaging students directly in communities and fostering their ability to reflect on their own actions and those of others in ways that inform their future decision-making.
Our program built on TWU’s Quality Enhancement Plan, which centered on experiential learning because it can create a positive impact on minority student persistence and graduation rates, workforce readiness, and pursuit of advanced degrees (Dolan, 2008; Espinosa, 2011; Eyler, 2009; Kelly, 2011; Lee, 2007; Stocks, 2011). To ensure the highest standards in creating learning experiences, we based our faculty training on the National Society for Experiential Education’s “8 Principles of Good Practice.” Perhaps the most important of these practices for global learning are authenticity—the need for real-world outcomes—and reflection. Not only did we encourage faculty reflection in the process of creating course outcomes and designing assignments, but we also emphasized the critical role that reflection plays for students in transformational learning.
The core of our program was an interdisciplinary group of faculty fellows that created or revised GP courses with a GP designation to include at least one significant experiential learning assignment. We held five workshops for each of our cohorts in both 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. In our three fall workshops, we explored theoretical topics related to global learning, global citizenship, and applied humanities, providing the foundation for our faculty to meaningfully apply these ideas to new or revised student learning outcomes for their courses. During two spring workshops, we shifted to the theory and practice of experiential education and developing experiential opportunities for their curricula. Central to our success was ensuring that the faculty in our workshops (and, eventually, the institution) had a network of potential partners. To do this, we created a list of some 300+ organizations and cultural events that faculty can use to research potential partners for their experiential learning opportunities.
Our own program takes advantage of our position near a major metropolitan area. TWU is less than an hour from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, which allows us to capitalize on the presence of international corporations and organizations and the diverse international population in North Texas. Of course, one need not be situated closely to a metroplex in order to take advantage of a “going global without going abroad” model. We encourage other institutions to look first among their staff and students to find organizations and affinity groups that represent diverse perspectives and faculty with research and teaching experiences in topics that address global systems. We also encourage a broad understanding of diversity in seeking local organizations and businesses to collaborate with. Finally, we encourage colleagues to consider broadening their radius for potential experiential learning opportunities to include faculty-led travel within the broader United States.
The most significant outcomes of our program were an increased awareness of the benefit of interdisciplinary collaboration in defining global citizenship and increased opportunities for students to have global experiences on a local scale. Not only do these curricular interventions make global learning more accessible and more inclusive, they also help students see beyond the purely theoretical to the ethical and pragmatic values of a global outlook. Just as global learning begins at home with each student’s own awareness of their place in the world, each institution must begin by looking within (see Table 1 for a recommended institutional self-assessment). Based on our experience, we believe that similar projects could be highly successful at a broad variety of institutions, as long as they include explicit training in experiential learning best practices, especially critical reflection; open, interdisciplinary dialogue about the values and characteristics of global citizenship; and a willingness to promote internal and external partnerships.
Table 1: Institution Self-Assessment
Foundational questions:How does your institution define global learning?What does global learning mean to you?How might you reconcile these definitions?What are 2-3 student learning outcomes that can be drawn from these definitions?
Contextual inclusivity questions:Who are your students? What are their unique needs?What are your barriers to inclusivity?What activities can help your students work towards learning objectives connected to inclusivity?
On-campus global connections questions:Which faculty are already teaching globally focused courses?How might you add experiential learning to those courses?What departments are already engaging in experiential learning?How might you add a global component to those experiences?What resources already exist on campus to connect students to different cultures?
External global connections questions:What international groups or organizations have a local presence in your area?What local organizations represent or connect diverse cultures?Who do you already know that may be connected with these organizations?What connections may faculty or staff have to other similar groups or organizations outside your immediate area?
Partner collaboration questions:What are your goals for this partnership?What does your partner stand to gain?Who will manage the relationship?How will expectations be communicated and evaluated?What risks are involved?What part will the organization play in the assessment of the program?
References
American Association of Colleges & Universities (2014). Global learning VALUE rubric. American
Blankenship, M. (2010). How some schools increase graduation rates of minority students. Education Digest, 76(4), 26–29.
Brux, J. M., & Fry, B. (2010). Multicultural students in study abroad: Their interests, their issues, and their constraints. Journal of Studies in International Education, 14(5), 508–527.
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Title: Sustainability in Action: Integrating SDGs into International Education
Presenters:
Sean Reilly, AFS
Saskia Kaya, AFS
Description:
Integrating Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into international education programs enhances their global impact. This session explores how SDG-focused curricula prepare students and educators for responsible and informed global citizenship..
Discuss how SDGs can be seamlessly integrated into curriculum and program design.
Highlight the value of aligning international education goals with global sustainability objectives.
Share examples of collaborative projects or community engagement initiatives tied to SDGs.
Explore the benefits of preparing students with sustainability-focused learning outcomes.
Title: Identity & Inclusion at the Crossroads: Involving Students in the Development of Practical Support Strategies in the European Context
Leadra Reeves, CASA Granada Spring ’24 Alum & Travel Grant Awardee
Dani Kaufman-Sedano, CASA Granada Spring ’23 Alum & Travel Grant Awardee
Description:
Join a seasoned study abroad director and two program alums as they share their stories, effective strategies, easy-to-implement practices, and the measurable outcomes that result from incorporating student voices in the development of inclusive support services onsite. In this deep-dive session, we invite you to engage in the exercise of validating the lived experiences of recent graduates whose identities span a range of both visible and invisible identities that we often encounter among our student cohorts, and of translating those experiences into concrete strategies. More specifically, based on both research findings and direct personal experiences, we will:
Come to a comprehensive understanding of inclusion, drawing from the different approaches utilized in Europe and the U.S., and the lived experiences of our students at this crossroads, and use it as the foundation for building inclusive programs and practices.
Explore the importance and the impact of inclusive approaches in academic and cultural adjustment support on students’ overall wellbeing and personal growth.
Identify specific challenges that students of varying identities face while studying abroad in Europe, with a particular focus on students of low-income backgrounds, Black students, LGBTQ+ students, and students of different religious backgrounds.
Discuss intentional support services/resources that study abroad programs can provide for diverse student populations in close collaboration with their host partners – institutions, host families, faculty, community organizations – and how to approach potential obstacles that may surface.
Engage with the process of developing, implementing and evaluating the success of inclusive initiatives, and measuring the direct impact on your students and the future of your program!
Title: From Abroad to Beyond: Turning European Experiences into Career Success
Presenters:
Nicola Sullivan, AIFS
Maya Edwards, AIFS
Description:
Global education experiences in Europe equip students with unique skills for careers in public and private sectors. This session highlights how these experiences translate into employability and career preparedness.
Explore how global education in Europe impacts students’ employability and career preparedness.
Identify transferable skills developed through international education and their alignment with workforce demands.
Discuss reverse culture shock and strategies to leverage the abroad experience professionally.
Showcase alumni success stories to inspire future students.
Concurrent Session Block 3
The Role of the Global University in Navigating Conflict, Dialogue, Transformation — How campuses cultivate dialogue, resilience, and civic readiness amid geopolitical tension while keeping learning and community at the center.
Partnerships that Drive Real Collaboration & Innovation — Models that move beyond finance-only deals to co-created programs, research, and talent pathways linking MENA and global institutions.
Concurrent Session Block 2
Making the Student Success Case for International Education to Campus Leadership — How to build deeper support for global learning among campus leadership by framing international education as a key driver to improving student success.
Inclusion in MENA: Narratives, Demographics & Opportunity — Public narratives about MENA are often formed at a distance. This session examines inclusion through societal trends and the policy frameworks that enable openness and stability.
The Value of International & Experiential Study Through the Lens of Global Employers — What employers say global and experiential learning uniquely delivers, from teamwork across cultures to problem-solving on real projects.
Concurrent Session Block 1
Preparing Today’s International Students for Tomorrow’s Workforce — How institutions align global and experiential learning along with employer partnerships so international students translate global study into career readiness and impact.
Unique Mental Health & Wellbeing Considerations for Study to & from MENA — Culturally grounded approaches that support student wellbeing across languages, faith, family expectations, and cross-border transitions.
Tech for Global Education: What’s Actually Working? — Practical, people-first uses of digital tools that expand reach, improve student support, and strengthen collaboration without turning staff into technologists.
