Internationalization Lab Cohort 16 Wraps Up as Cohort 18 Opens Applications
January 06, 2020

​​The ACE Internationalization Laboratory’s 2018-2020 cohort held its closing meeting before the winter holidays to tie together a year-and-a-half of work. Meanwhile, the 2020-2022 cohort began accepting applications this month.

The closing meeting began with an opportunity for attendees to reflect on the Lab process. In small groups, they identified challenges they faced and how they overcame them. For example, a number of participating institutions were undergoing leadership transitions at the same time as their internationalization strategizing. While this fact could leave them feeling uncertain of where their project stood with their institutional leadership, Lab advisor Gil Latz reminded them that this could also be “an opportunity to position yourself for change.” The participants then workshopped some of their remaining questions in a large group discussion with input from Lab advisors and program alumni.

Before the meeting, participants were polled on their key interests in policy issues affecting international education. After lunch, Sarah Spreitzer and Steven Bloom of ACE’s Government Relations division provided an update on the top two topics of the poll: congressional concerns regarding foreign influence and interference on campus and trends in international student enrollment. The session was so popular that it ran overtime as participants asked questions such as how best to communicate with their members of Congress on important issues and provided anecdotes about how policies such as visa delays were affecting their institutions.

Kielo Savilaasko, associate director of community engagement at ACE, showed participants where they could find additional resources on policy and other issues using ACE Engage®, ACE’s peer-to-peer community and online learning platform. She also demonstrated how Lab participants could use the site to share documents and communicate with ACE and each other, as well as to share the Fundamentals of Comprehensive Internationalization Microcourse with their campus leadership to help make the case for the benefits of internationalization.

As participants looked ahead to ending up their Lab process and implementing their knowledge gained, Robin Helms, deputy chief innovation officer and principal internationalization strategist at ACE, assured them that this was not good-bye. “I have yet to let go of an institution,” she said, “Participating in the Internationalization Lab is the beginning of a years-long relationship with ACE.” There are plenty of ways for institutions to stay involved with ACE, whether by continuing to work with the Lab as alumni or advisors, or through other ACE programming such as the upcoming ACE/AIEA Internationalization Collaborative or the new Learner Success Lab.

Institutions interested in developing their internationalization strategy are encouraged to apply for the 18th cohort of the Internationalization Lab, whose work will take place from August of this year through 2022. For more information, visit the Internationalization Lab webpage or contact Kara Godwin at KGodwin@acenet.edu. ​​


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