More than 100 higher education leaders gathered Feb. 20 in Montreal
to discuss strategies for internationalizing the general education
curriculum as part of this year’s ACE-AIEA Internationalization Collaborative, an annual meeting organized in partnership with the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA). Representatives from several countries participated, including the United States and Canada.
“It is an auspicious time for global learning,” said Patti McGill
Peterson, presidential advisor for global initiatives at ACE, who
chaired the opening plenary. The plenary featured Lynn Pasquerella,
president of Mount Holyoke College (MA), and Ralph Wilcox, provost of
the University of South Florida (USF). Pasquerella and Wilcox discussed
the increasing relevance of global learning, even as many higher
education institutions move toward competency-based approaches. Wilcox
said global competencies will be essential for tomorrow’s workforce,
while Pasquerella called for stronger K-12 and industry partnerships to
prepare students for an increasingly global society.
According to Pasquerella and Wilcox, no student at the institutions
they lead would be able to “escape” a meaningful global learning
experience. Mount Holyoke prepares students for “purposeful engagement
with the world,” in part through institution-wide global learning
outcomes. At USF, students can expect global themes and issues to be
integrated into the curriculum, research and experiential learning.
Participants agreed that general education is an essential—but not
sufficient—vehicle for genuinely transformative global learning, which
should also be integrated into capstone programs, internships,
co-curricular experiences and education abroad. However, “a meaningful
international experience does not always have to be cross-border,” noted
Cheryl Matherly, vice provost for global education at The University of
Tulsa (OK) and chair of the Internationalization Collaborative Advisory
Council.
Robin Matross Helms, associate director for research at ACE, presented findings from a 2015 report on faculty engagement in campus internationalization (2 MB PDF) and the 2012 Mapping Internationalization on US Campuses report (3 MB PDF),
which identified a shift in course requirements away from area studies
(e.g. East Asian studies) and foreign language toward global trends and
issues. The 2016 Mapping Internationalization survey
(2 MB PDF) has been distributed to chief academic officers, and a new report
documenting U.S. institutions’ progress toward internationalization is
expected in 2017. The survey is conducted every five years and is the
only comprehensive source of data and analysis on internationalization
in U.S. higher education.
Brad Farnsworth, assistant vice president at ACE, chaired an
afternoon plenary session with Kyra Garson, intercultural coordinator in
the Centre for Student Engagement and Learning Innovation at Thompson
Rivers University in British Columbia; Hilary Landorf, director of
global learning initiatives at Florida International University; and
Dawn Whitehead, senior director for global learning and curricular
change, at the Association of American Colleges & Universities. The
discussion focused on institutional processes for revising general
education and for working with faculty in order to strengthen global
learning.
This year’s meeting was sponsored by ELS Educational Services, Inc. The next ACE-AIEA Internationalization Collaborative meeting will take place in February 2017 in Washington, DC.
Search #IntlCollab16 on Twitter to follow conversations from the meeting.