About the Initiative
Cultural competency among 21st-century graduates has become imperative as the job market globalizes and the workforce continues to diversify. In order to become responsible, productive citizens, our students must understand their own cultures and those of their neighbors at home and afar. By engaging higher education institutions in examining the collaboration potential between diversity/multicultural education and internationalization, we seek to address these needs through the At Home in the World: Educating for Global Connections and Local Commitments initiative. For institutions to fulfill their service mission in a globalized society, they will need to advance the analytical frameworks, pedagogical enhancements, diversification strategies and innovative solutions to societal issues that the work in this intersection affords.
The Current Three-Year Good Practice Project
Through this 3-year effort, funded by The Henry Luce Foundation, the Inclusive Excellence Group and the Center for Internationalization and Global Engagement are working collaboratively with a select group of 8 institutions to advance new analytical frameworks, enhance pedagogy, and develop innovative ways of fostering collaboration between internationalization and diversity/multicultural education on campus. The institutions we are working with are:
It is anticipated that selected institutions will engage with our project team over approximately two years and then participate in a national conference (Fall 2013) to disseminate findings and lessons learned. The engagement will take the following forms:
- Campus visits by the ACE team;
- Project meetings in Washington, DC;
- Regular consultations with ACE team; and
- Quarterly virtual meetings of the selected institutions.
Through this project, ACE seeks to enhance access to:
- Communication strategies that facilitate productive and mutually beneficial conversations between international and multicultural educators;
- Planning processes that identify and support shared priorities between internationalization and diversity/multicultural education initiatives; and
- Models that feature new traditions of collaboration between international and multicultural educators and administrators.
Background
Our work to date includes 2 roundtables, an At Home in the World publication and 2 institutes, through which we have learned that many institutions recognize the potential benefits of collaboration between diversity/multicultural education and internationalization, but most are still in the early stages of exploration. This suggests that institutions are seeking guidance in facilitating campus dialogues. This project is intended to assist the broader higher education community through further study on work at this intersection.
ACE is grateful to The Henry Luce Foundation for their generous support of this program.