Located in Boston, Massachusetts, Northeastern University is a private research university with more than 41,000 total students, around 14,000 of whom come from other countries. Since 2015, Northeastern has had a dedicated focus on developing partnerships with employers abroad to provide students with international work experience through its Global Cooperative Education Program.
When Gianna Scioletti applied for engineering jobs at Dolby Laboratories, the Northeastern graduate already had 18 months of practical work experience under her belt, thanks to the university’s unique focus on co-op experiences.
“When I got hired at Dolby, I got hired into a role that required 2 years of working experience, which meant a higher starting pay grade,” she says. “I was able to present myself as a candidate with valuable experience, more so than most other people my age.”
Scioletti, who graduated in 2018 with a degree in electrical and computer engineering, did three different co-ops during her time at Northeastern. In the United States, she worked as a systems engineer at iRobot in Massachusetts and at a start-up that designed electric motorcycles in California. She also spent 6 months as an engineer at a small solar engineering company in Tanzania focused on providing clean power to communities without reliable energy access.
While she was in Tanzania, she began to learn Swahili and realized she wanted to pursue employment opportunities at a global company. “Because of my international co-op, I realized that where people are from and what their backgrounds are really affects their outlook,” she says. “Having that kind of diversity is a big asset for any company.”
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A Northeastern student works at the Northeastern Seattle campus. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University.
A Foundation of Experiential Learning
Northeastern’s Global Cooperative Education Program, which dates back to 1898, is one of the oldest in the United States. The model combines academic learning with on-the-job training; students typically complete 12 to 18 months of professional experience before they graduate. “We were built on the idea of students integrating work experiences while they were going to school,” says Tom Sheahan, executive vice provost.
Northeastern partners with over 3,000 employers in more than 136 countries on all seven continents, ranging from small startups to large multinational corporations. While these are non-credit bearing experiences, students maintain their full-time enrolled status while they are completing a co-op.
Sally Conant, assistant director of global co-op for the College of Engineering, says that many colleges that offer experiential learning opportunities focus on summer internships and work through third- party providers for internship placement. In contrast, Northeastern works directly with employers and students are available for 6 to 8 months, including during the academic year.
To ensure that all students can access global co-op experiences, students receive financial support through the Presidential Global Scholarship in amounts ranging from at least $2,000, based upon financial need and merit. Honors program students receive at least $6,000. Another benefit is that students do not pay tuition during their co-op experience, and some companies pay students for their work abroad. These factors combined reduce the financial barrier to participating in a global co-op experience.
Going Global
Although Northeastern has long sent students abroad on various co-ops, it wasn't until 2015 that the university focused on streamlining support for global placements.
Sheahan says that the renewed focus on global co-op came about because more students were requesting global opportunities, and the nature of work was also becoming more internationalized. “We really started to double down on the ability for our students to go overseas to international locations as part of the co-op experience that they go on as part of their normal education here,” he says.
One of the biggest challenges that developed as a result of this global expansion was preventing partnerships from being siloed in a particular college. Someone from engineering might discover that a company is not only looking for engineers, but also people with expertise in supply chain management. To address this challenge and support the nearly 12,000 students who participate in a co-op every year, the institution’s nine colleges employ a team of more than 135 co-op faculty. Each college has a dedicated coordinator that focuses on global co-op opportunities, but they also work across colleges.
Conant says the co-op coordinators are faculty members who teach courses that cover topics related to career preparation, such as resume writing and interviewing. The coordinators also serve as career advisers and work directly with employers, helping students find co-op placements that fit their interests and career goals.
The global co-op coordinators work with a wide range of global offices on campus beyond their own college. Northeastern’s Global Experience Office, which oversees education abroad and other international programs, assists global co-op students with visas, health and safety information, and predeparture orientation, Conant says. The co-op coordinators also collaborate with the Office of Global Services, which includes international student services, and the International Safety Office for legal compliance and risk assessment. “We're all really tied in together and we've worked extensively to make sure it's a streamlined process,” Conant says.
Leveraging Relationships
Northeastern faculty identify co-op partnerships through a variety of channels. They may come from interactions such as faculty exchanges or a professor taking a sabbatical and doing consulting work somewhere, Sheahan says.
The global co-op team also works closely with Northeastern’s alumni relations office to connect with alumni communities in strategic locations. These alumni are active in hosting events and connecting Northeastern with local companies.
“It really permeates through the culture of the organization that people are kind of looking out for all these connections when they're talking to companies or nonprofits,” Sheahan says.
Aspa Papanastasiou, associate director of global partnerships, employer engagement, and career design, works with a team focused on developing partnerships with companies abroad. One of her first priorities was translating individual placements to larger institutional partnerships. “We shifted from more singular opportunities to holistic engagement that would ultimately benefit the university,” she says.
As Northeastern developed more support for global co-op experiences, they wanted to leverage their position as a top research university. That allowed them to develop strategic partnerships and create research work experiences with universities with which they were already collaborating.
An example of such a partnership is the Université Paris-Saclay, a group of top research institutions in France that the government has clustered to create a French “Silicon Valley” focused on aerospace. In addition to creating co-op positions in both industry and research for Northeastern students in France, the university has hosted French students in the United States.
“Our faculty have been working together, and they have applied for different funds, both through the National Science Foundation here in the United States, and for transatlantic funds through Erasmus,” Papanastasiou says. “We have a team of 30 people working back and forth between the two institutions in the two countries.”
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Research from Psyche Loui, director of Northeastern’s music imaging and neural dynamics lab, provides insight into how music changes the connective pathways in the brain. The findings hold promise for improving memory and cognition among older adults. Photo courtesy of Northeastern University.
Growing Global Placements
Since 2015, Northeastern has facilitated 3,340 global co-ops in 126 countries and collaborates with nearly 800 employer partners abroad. The number of partnerships and co-op placements have increased significantly since the global co-op team was formed.
The Global Cooperative Education Program is part of Northeastern’s broader portfolio of international programs. Sheahan says that Northeastern, which won the Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization in 2010, provides global experiences in many ways, ranging from global co-ops to the opportunity to study at its campuses in Canada and the United Kingdom.
“The goal is to provide a lot of mobility to our students from the curriculum and education side but also adding to that the experiential education piece, because that's what the global education is really about—letting students have the experience of learning in a context that is relevant to the curriculum that they're engaged with,” Sheahan says.
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Members of the Northeastern’s Mars Rover Team test a prototype rover for the University Rover Challenge. Photo by Matthew Mondoono/Northeastern University.
On behalf of NAFSA’s Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship Knowledge Community (TLS KC), we are very pleased to present the 12th issue of the Global Studies Literature Review (GSLR). The issue’s theme, “Moving Beyond the Status Quo: Advancing Inclusive Excellence in International Education,” which
Marist is a private liberal arts college with 5,000 undergraduates in Poughkeepsie, New York. The college sent its first student abroad in 1963, and 60 years later approximately half of each graduating class has participated in education abroad. One of its signature offerings is the First Year Abroad programs*, where 40 to 60 first - year students spend a year studying with partners in Italy and Ireland, giving them a global foundation for their college experience.
Kevin Weinman, president of Marist College. Photo courtesy of Carlo de Jesus/Marist College.
Having students spend their first year abroad as 17- and 18-year-olds can help set the tone for the rest of their college career, says John Peters, dean of international programs and acting dean of Marist College- Italy. “We're able to help them to think about the broad scope of what they want to do in the world,” he says.
The First Year Abroad program was in its beginning stages in the mid-2000s when Marist experienced a larger than expected incoming freshman class and too few beds to house them. Inspiration and necessity strengthened momentum and helped grow First Year Abroad at the Florence branch campus.
In Italy, Marist has partnered with Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici. In addition to the First Year Abroad program, students have the option to complete their full 4 years at the Florence branch campus, choosing among nine different undergraduate programs. Traditional study abroad students can spend a semester or year there. A master’s of arts in museum studies is also available. Altogether, the campus hosts around 300 Marist students a semester across all programs, says Vanessa Nichol-Peters, director of Marist Italy.
A second First Year Abroad program started in Dublin in 2018. In Ireland, Marist has partnered with Dublin Business School for academics. The second First Year Abroad cohort to study in Dublin had their time cut short in spring 2020 due to the pandemic, but the program resumed with the third cohort in fall 2021, says Shane Duffy, director of the Dublin program.
Creating a College Identity Abroad
Florence first-year seminar, "Genius Loci: Travel Writing and the Spirit of Place," taught by Lea Graham. Photo courtesy of Carlo de Jesus/Marist College.
Working with first-year students with no college experience requires a hands-on approach. Peters says that it's essential to have staff who are willing and eager to interact with students 24/7, especially during the first weeks of the program abroad. “Trusted partners can have important roles in academics and housing, but there’s no substitute for having your own person or people on the ground, ensuring institutional presence,” he says
Program participants take most of their courses alongside students from a variety of countries and other U.S. colleges. However, the academic anchor of the Marist First Year Abroad programs are courses taught by carefully selected affiliate faculty or visiting faculty from the Marist home campus, including a first-year seminar and a college writing class. These courses serve as common experiences to build community and Marist identity and helps the program integrate academic and experiential education.
“We try to build a Marist identity here so that they all feel like they're part of something bigger,” Nichol-Peters says.
Having Marist professors on site in the fall helps build a bridge between the programs abroad and the main campus in Poughkeepsie. In addition to virtual presentations from staff in the library and other offices, academic deans, vice presidents, and even the president occasionally travel to Dublin or Florence to meet with students.
Students also have two advisers—their adviser at their study abroad site, as well as their major adviser back in New York. To make sure the program is financially accessible, all participants are awarded a $5,000 grant in addition to their regular financial aid package to help offset the extra expenses of studying abroad.
Integrating Experiential Learning into the Classroom
In addition to providing a connection to the main campus, Marist faculty also help integrate experiential learning into the classroom.
Students in the Dublin program take a course called “Irish Life and Cultures” that covers history, politics, and both traditional and modern culture in Ireland. The fall courses often incorporate experiential activities, such as a trip to Galway in the west of Ireland.
Students also visit the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands as well as Northern Ireland where they take a political tour. There, Marist partners with an organization that sets up meetings with former combatants from both sides of the political divide.
“By that stage, the class has covered the history of the island, Northern Ireland, the Troubles and the peace agreement, and the Good Friday Agreement, so they have an academic context to the issues,” Duffy says. “But now they're getting local perspectives and learning the history of the struggle through the eyes of people on the ground.”
Philosophy professor Joe Campisi has taught in Florence three times. He integrates his expertise on the philosophy of food into his courses. In one class, students learned about the history of pizza in Naples, where it emerged as food for the city’s poor in the late 18th century.
Jack Kraus, a political science major who just finished his junior year, took Campisi’s class in Florence. One of the writing prompts was to try a new food. “That was actually a pretty cool assignment because I tried tripe, which was something I had never had before,” he says.
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First Year Dublin Experience students tour Dublin Harbor during program orientation. Photo courtesy of Marist College.
Returning Home
Having Marist faculty in Florence and Dublin with students provides them a “grounding in what it will be like at Marist,” Kraus says. It also helps ease the transition when they arrive in Poughkeepsie as sophomores.
Before students leave Dublin or Florence, they also have a day-long reentry program where they discuss what to expect when they return home. Upon arriving on campus in the fall of their sophomore year, they continue to participate in group activities, such as hiking or visiting New York City. They also have sessions with different offices on campus, including one with the career center. Program staff run a seminar called “Beyond Awesome,” which gives students the language to talk about what they gained from the First Year Abroad program, Peters says.
Peters says the First Year Abroad participants have equal or higher first-year to second-year retention rates than the general student population at Marist. Many of them win awards or go on to do Fulbright fellowships or other international graduate programs.
Faculty say that when students return to the Poughkeepsie campus for their sophomore year, they are more mature and better prepared for the classroom. Students agree.
“Going abroad sort of helps you grow up a whole lot faster than just coming to the regular campus because we were basically thrown into Italy and we sort of have to figure it all out for ourselves,” Kraus says.
After his second semester in Italy was cut short by the pandemic, Kraus took a semester off and came back to Poughkeepsie campus in spring 2021.
“The biggest issue is making friends and finding that footing on campus,” he says.
But he already had a head start. Kraus says his two best friends at Marist were his roommates in Florence.
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Marist Student Life in Florence, Italy in 2019. Photo courtesy of Carlo de Jesus/Marist College.
*Marist College renamed the First Year Abroad Programs in 2023. An earlier version of this report referred to the experience as Freshman Year Abroad Programs.
With about 35,000 undergraduate and graduate students across eight campuses, Kent State University (Kent State) is a major public research institution located in Northeast Ohio. Internationalization is embedded in the university’s strategic plan, with the goal of establishing Kent State as a leading international university. The institution accomplishes this through global research, comprehensive study abroad programs, international curriculum, and robust international student and scholar programs. The university is also a popular destination for international students and has a global reach with educational centers in Italy and Brazil.
Kent State University’s 13th president, Todd Diacon, first joined the university as provost in 2012 and became university president in 2019. Photo courtesy of Kent State University.
Kent State has a long history of international engagement. “As early as the early 1960s, Kent State was hosting delegations of educators from the Soviet Union through the Gerald R. Reed Center in our College of Education, Health and Human Services,” says President Todd Diacon. “So there’s a really long history of active internationalization at Kent State. And then we’ve had exceptional leadership throughout the years and expansion into the university writ large.”
Marcello Fantoni, vice president for global education, says that over the last 10 years Kent State has fostered a strong culture of internationalization that built on the institution’s long history of global engagement.
Internationalization was solidified as one of the institution’s five priorities in its 2015–2021 plan, “A Strategic Roadmap to a Distinctive Kent State.” The priority focuses on enhancing the university’s global competitiveness by advancing Kent State’s impact and reach as a leading international university.
The strategic plan was developed under the leadership of Diacon’s predecessor, former Kent State president Beverly J. Warren. She launched a “listening tour” that asked different parts of the institution to weigh in as the plan was developed.
“The strategic plan is a way of keeping us mindful of and accountable for the importance of being comprehensive in our internationalization,” adds Melody Tankersley, senior vice president and provost.
Every student at Kent State has the opportunity to engage globally, whether that’s through interacting with the 1,400 international students from nearly 100 countries, studying abroad through one of 200 education abroad programs, participating in international research opportunities, or engaging with international faculty.
Students encounter global perspectives in the classroom. As part of the requirements for any bachelor’s degree at Kent State, all students have had to take a global diversity course that focuses on global issues since 1999.
In 2017, Kent State’s senior leadership also supported the university’s participation in the American Council on Education’s (ACE) Internationalization Laboratory. About two-thirds of faculty who responded to an ACE survey reported that curriculum in their academic program exposed students to international perspectives.
In addition to individual courses, the university offers 18 undergraduate majors and 14 graduate programs with an international focus. Several programs, such as the university’s top-ranked fashion major, require study abroad (or away) or foreign language coursework.
Integrating International Operations
Marcello Fantoni, vice president for the Office of Global Education at Kent State, is an outstanding ambassador for the university, its programs, and its students. Photo courtesy of Kent State University.
The Office of Global Education (OGE) includes international recruitment and admissions, international student and scholar services, education abroad, and global partnerships.
“We’re a big university and having us all together under one banner helps keep us from being siloed and facilitates the communication process so we have a really smooth transition from the time a student is admitted to the time they arrive on campus,” says Sarah Malcolm, executive director of the OGE.
The model allows education abroad, international student services, and international admissions to work closely together. “We can make sure that we take care of the student holistically from the time we meet them on the road in their home country to the time that they’re graduating from Kent State,” says Salma Benhaida, director of international recruitment and admissions.
One of the mechanisms to ensure that international students have the support they need is the International Student Integration Committee, a campus-wide body that includes representatives from across the university such as faculty from all colleges and regional campuses, and staff from academic, administrative and student support units.
“It’s there so that we can keep abreast of what kinds of issues are happening with international students and scholars and also help to make sure that they’re acclimating to our campus community,” Malcolm says. “That committee does a lot of work to make sure that international students are included in the normal things that happen in the university.”
A Flagship Program in Florence
In the 2019–20 academic year, Kent State sent nearly 1,500 students abroad through more than 200 education abroad programs. Since resuming its international programming in July 2021, Kent State has returned to its full operations abroad and is already projected to surpass its previous enrollment in education abroad programs by fall 2022.
The development of articulated pathway programs in business, arts and sciences, and architecture and environmental design has allowed students in these disciplines to study abroad while staying on track for graduation. “The curriculum has been designed to be integrated into the students’ roadmap here at Kent State,” says Amber Cruxton, director of education abroad.
The university’s flagship education abroad program is Kent State Florence, currently the largest U.S. program in Florence, Italy. Staff are currently in the process of organizing an anniversary celebration of its 50-year presence in Italy.
“It started with 11 architecture students going to Florence for one week in the summer in 1972,” Fantoni says. “Now fast forward 50 years later, we are leasing one of the most beautiful historic buildings in downtown Florence and we host about 850 students a year from every single Kent State college.”
Fantoni started his own career in Florence, first as an adjunct faculty member teaching a course in the architecture program and later becoming academic director of the Florence center. In 2012, he was invited to come to the campus in Kent, Ohio, to serve as the institution’s senior international officer.
All 11 of Kent State’s colleges offer coursework in Florence with programs custom designed to meet their needs. The center even hosts programs such as the College of Podiatric Medicine’s Clerkship. Podiatry students can complete one of their training rounds in Italy, working in local hospitals and honing their intercultural communication skills, while learning how different countries approach medicine.
Through specially funded and designed programming, Kent State Florence also provides traditional study abroad experiences to underserved students, such as those enrolled at Kent State’s regional campuses, and boasts a successful past program for the TRIO Upward Bound program for high school students.
The center employs several dozen local faculty who are vetted by their departments at the campus in Kent, Ohio, and hosts visiting professors from its U.S. campuses. In summer 2022, 26 Kent State faculty members traveled to Florence.
Fantoni says the Kent State Florence program offers all the same resources and services that are available in Ohio, ranging from mental health counseling to IT support. In addition, the venue serves as a research center, regularly hosting lectures and conferences.
More recently, Florence has served as a host location for international students who are interested in studying abroad. The center hosts students from various partners around the world. In summer 2022, for example, Kent State Florence hosted 20 students from a women’s college in Saudi Arabia.
Creating Innovative Partnerships Abroad
Kent State has also found ways to serve more international students through innovative partnerships abroad. The institution is currently in the process of developing new educational centers in Rwanda and France and recently signed an agreement with the Paris American Academy. This partnership will offer degrees in subjects such as fashion, art, and writing. Students will spend their first 2 years in the United States at Kent State and will complete their degrees in Paris, Fantoni says.
Since 2018, Kent State has offered the American Academy, a joint degree program with the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUCPR), located in Curitiba, Brazil. The program allows students to complete their first 2 years of undergraduate study in Brazil at the PUCPR campus, taking classes in English taught by Kent State faculty members who travel to Brazil to teach.
The students earn academic credit from both institutions simultaneously and can choose either university for degree completion at the end of the two-year associate degree program. Approximately 150 students are enrolled each semester, with more than half, on average, choosing to continue their studies at Kent State.
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The Kent State University Gospel Choir members represent different ages, ethnicities, races, majors, sexual orientations, and religious beliefs, making it one of the most diverse organizations or ensembles on campus. Photo courtesy of Kent State University.
Malcolm says the American Academy in Brazil has been successful because of the strong commitment of both partners in terms of resources, staff, and time. An administrator from PUCPR spent a year at Kent State as a visiting scholar. And prior to the pandemic, Kent State sent faculty to PUCPR every semester. “People have a lot of ideas for great international programs, but without that kind of commitment from the top down, it doesn’t happen,” Malcolm says.
As a public community college and Hispanic-Serving Institution, the College of Lake County (CLC) focuses on creating equitable international engagement opportunities for its 14,000 undergraduate students through strategic partnerships, study abroad programs, and curriculum internationalization. A new physical space and revamped governance structure for global engagement have helped put internationalization at the center of campus culture at CLC, located in Grayslake, Illinois.
Lori Suddick, CLC president. Photo courtesy of College of Lake County.
A renovated student center in the heart of the College of Lake County’s campus in Grayslake, Illinois, gave international programs more visibility, complete with a Global Community Hall that was dedicated in 2020. The hall is adorned with flags representing the home countries of the student population.
“The physical presence has really helped to solidify our transition from two people working really hard in an office to help international students and study abroad students to a full-fledged center with four full-time staff guiding strategic initiatives for the college,” says Jacob Cushing, director of student records and global engagement.
The physical renovation has gone hand in hand with a strategic focus on internationalization. “We’ve thought strategically and purposefully over the past 7 to 8 years about how best to ensure that we are graduating students to be productive members in a global society,” Cushing says.
Doyoung Kim, an engineering major from South Korea, first came to CLC in 2014 to study English as a second language. Part way through his education, he had to return to Korea to complete his required military service. When he started at the college, there were a lot of international students but little sense of community among them.
When he returned to Illinois in 2020, he immediately noticed the change that resulted due to the international office’s new location. “We have a really large space to connect and get to know each other,” he says.
Even though he had already been at the college for several years, Kim took ELI 125: Introduction to American College Culture, an international student success course. He says it helps international students to understand the resources the college has to offer and how to be successful in higher education at CLC. Topics include the U.S. grading system, Western learning and teaching styles, personal and academic support structures within the college, differences in academic requirements and expectations, appropriate classroom behavior, and healthy and safe acclimation to the academic and social college environment.
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The CLC Campus's Japanese Garden Court. Photo courtesy of College of Lake County.
In July 2021, all international program units were officially consolidated into the Department of Global Engagement (DGE). Erin Fowles, dean of enrollment services, oversees the DGE along with five other departments. Cushing, who was hired in 2014 as an international student adviser, was the right person to lead the new department, she says.
Creating the director position was instrumental in pushing comprehensive internationalization on campus, Fowles says, because “you’ve then got someone who can demonstrate on a regular basis the value of internationalization to the campus.”
Prior to the creation of the new department, study abroad was 25 percent of a role for an administrator in another division and there were no initiatives focused on curriculum internationalization. Now DGE oversees education abroad, international student services, curriculum internationalization, international partnerships, and globally focused campus and community programming.
"The support from our leadership to reorganize the Department of Global Engagement as the central hub has allowed us to really build on that momentum to push us forward,” Cushing says.
Another effort to coordinate CLC’s internationalization efforts is the Global Engagement Committee (GEC), which meets regularly to advise and promote projects and programs of the DGE. The committee is comprised of representatives from all academic divisions and more than 10 different administrative units, including the college foundation, financial aid, academic advising, the diversity office, and student life. The committee also includes an international student representative.
Members of the GEC make presentations to the faculty senate, propose new initiatives and garner feedback from the Board of Trustees, ensuring all divisions and departments can participate in driving the college’s internationalization efforts.
Engaging Faculty Internationally
Using the Community Colleges for International Development’s Framework for Comprehensive Internationalization, CLC identified faculty engagement as one of the immediate goals for the new department. Cushing worked with the educational affairs department and human resources to secure course release time for two faculty members to collaborate with the DGE. They are helping to recruit, train, and support faculty members to lead study abroad programs, as well as working to identify and add more courses with international content.
The two faculty leaders helped develop the Global Citizenship Milestone program as a way to internationalize the curriculum. If students complete 12 credits of international or multicultural courses, they receive a Global Citizenship Milestone notation on their transcript. While study abroad can account for half of the required credits, the goal was to design a program that was accessible to all students.
“In terms of equity, we realize not everyone’s going to be able to study abroad,” Cushing says. “This program touches that equity piece so that all students have the opportunity to engage and develop a global citizenship mindset.”
Most of CLC’s degree programs require students to take at least one course that is designated as international or multicultural. But students didn’t always know which courses met that requirement. Now students use a regularly updated list of all approved courses.
“I would call this a strategic repurposing of what was already being offered at CLC,” Cushing says. “Instead of reinventing the wheel and putting a lot of work into building something new, we’ve repurposed those classes that are already offered. And it’s now used as a recruitment tool to get students into those courses.”
Jacob Cushing, director of global engagement and student records. Photo courtesy of College of Lake County.
One of the new faculty leaders is English Language Instruction (Academic ESL) professor Jill Bruellman. She says that her team reaches out to every student who is eligible to receive the global citizenship notation to help them learn how to leverage it in professional contexts.
Since 2019, 396 students have earned the Global Citizenship Milestone, which is noted on their transcript so employers can acknowledge their competency.
Bruellman adds that one of the next steps is to figure out how more students in applied fields like phlebotomy or dental hygiene might be able to complete the program. Because of the type of courses that have the international or multicultural designation, “right now, it’s really heavily favored toward transfer students,” she says.
Leveraging International Leadership
While education abroad was suspended for the last 2 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, CLC sent approximately 100 students abroad prior to the start of the pandemic. Many of the college’s education abroad programs are facilitated through partnerships with other institutions in countries such as Austria, China, Costa Rica, England, France, Ireland, Japan, the Philippines, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates.
In September 2019, CLC hosted His Highness Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al Nuaimi, a member of the Ajman royal family in the United Arab Emirates, for a day of collaboration and a public speaking engagement. Abdul Aziz, better known as the “Green Sheikh,” is an environmental advocate and an expert in youth leadership development. The Sheikh’s visit to CLC resulted in a study abroad program in which CLC students actively engage with him and other community service leaders in the United Arab Emirates. The introduction to the Green Sheikh also led to the development of a formal memoranda of understanding with Ajman University. That relationship will be focused on sustainability.
“One of the key things that we’re trying to do with our partnerships is to establish a strong program around a singular curricular objective,” Cushing says.
Bruellman, who lived and worked in Japan, used her personal relationships to cultivate a study abroad and exchange partnership in Japan. She and an economics professor take domestic students to Japan, and CLC hosts graduate students studying education who participate in the college’s teacher training and take a class in U.S. culture.
Opening Access to the World
CLC’s internationalization efforts have come together through the coordination and leadership of the Department of Global Engagement, engagement of faculty through study abroad and the Global Citizenship Milestone program, and strategic partnerships around the world.
President Lori Suddick sees internationalization as critical to CLC’s role as an open-access institution. “We have such an imperative role in creating this access to international experiences,” she says. “We see comprehensive internationalization as a core function of who we need to be.”
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Study abroad students from CLC walk along the Great Wall of China in 2017. Photo courtesy of College of Lake County.
NAFSA supports education abroad professionals in their daily work with a variety of publications. This page contains a select listing of NAFSA’s education abroad publications. For a complete list, please visit the NAFSA Bookstore. Advising and Administration Guide to Education Abroad for Advisers
The success of study abroad relies on an institution’s understanding that short-term courses offered for credit have the same academic rigor and standards as those taught in a campus classroom. An institution should have a clear policy regarding contact and credit hours for short-term study abroad
Katy Lane, PhD is the director of the Center for International Business Studies, Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. She has worked in international education for nearly 15 years, creating new programs and initiatives, providing oversight for outreach and risk management, and leading
By increasing its study abroad offerings, internationalizing the curriculum, and hosting international students, Santa Fe College has brought the world to the 20,000 students studying on its main campus and six education centers near Gainesville, Florida. Participation in a number of federally funded programs has helped the college build robust partnerships with institutions abroad, leading to student and faculty mobility, virtual exchanges, and institutional collaboration. The community college, which offers both associate’s and bachelor’s degree programs, has also developed an international studies certificate that allows students to showcase their global engagement.
Building On Decades of Global Engagement
Santa Fe College began its internationalization efforts in the early 2000s under the leadership of Jackson Sasser, PhD, its former president. “When we first started this journey, those of us working in academic affairs thought of internationalization as internationalizing the curriculum and study abroad—nothing else,” says Vilma Fuentes, PhD, assistant vice president for academic affairs and senior international officer. Over time, there was a gradual understanding that “internationalization must be seen as a multifaceted process.”
Paul Broadie II, PhD, president of Santa Fe College. Photo courtesy of Matt Stamey/Santa Fe College.
As a department chair in 2002, Ed Bonahue, PhD, who served as provost from 2009 to 2021 and is now president of Suffolk County Community College in New York, was involved in creating Santa Fe’s first plan for international education. The plan had four pillars: (1) boosting international student enrollment; (2) creating globally focused and multicultural programming on campus; (3) internationalizing the curriculum and developing study abroad; and (4) internationalizing workforce and economic development efforts. The plan paved the way for a series of external grants and an internal structure that helped the college become an international education leader.
“Internationalization goes directly to our college mission,” Bonahue says. “When I think about what that mission means, it’s always connected to the idea that we are educating students and educating our community—that we’re part of an interconnected world.”
In 2004, Bonahue also helped author the college’s first Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education that provided funding for international studies and world languages. The college has subsequently received two more grants and expanded its foreign language offerings to include American Sign Language, Chinese, French, and Spanish, as well as Italian, Portuguese, and Swahili periodically.
In addition to a variety of internationally focused campus programming through Fulbright and other initiatives, the college runs six faculty-led study abroad programs per year and hosts approximately 350 international students. Early internationalization focused more on liberal arts and sciences, while more recent efforts have focused on internationalizing the career and technical fields.
In 2018, the college brought together the International Education Office, International Student Services, International Student Support and Advising, and English for Academic Purposes into one physical location, the International Center. Santa Fe invested more than $700,000 to renovate an existing building.
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Students in Santa Fe’s new International Center. Photo courtesy of Matt Stamey/Santa Fe College.
“We wanted to create a physical space where international students and domestic students interested in the world could interact and mingle, synergies could be created, and opportunities could be developed that maybe we weren’t otherwise seeing,” Fuentes says.
Santa Fe President Paul Broadie II, PhD, joined the college in February 2020. “One of the things that truly attracted me to Santa Fe College was its focus on internationalization of the curriculum and how expansive it was,” he says. “Other institutions, they may do study abroad, and you will have a few faculty members that embrace that global curriculum, but this was widespread across our entire institution.”
Growing Expertise Through the Community College Administrator Program
Santa Fe has co-administered U.S. Department of State-funded Community College Administrator Programs (CCAP) since 2014. Together with Florida State University, a 2017 Simon Award recipient, Santa Fe has hosted 10 CCAP cohorts from 10 different countries: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa, and Ukraine.
Visiting administrators spend 2 weeks of a six-week program at Santa Fe seeing the daily operations of a U.S. community college.
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Several Santa Fe student ambassadors pose with two representatives from the CCAP South Africa delegation. Photo courtesy of Matt Stamey/Santa Fe College.
“We’re very happy to be involved with that training program because it brings a lot of know-how that’s unique to [U.S.] higher education to the rest of the world, to other kinds of tertiary educational institutions,” Bonahue says. “The more that we take part in that program, the more that we realize that the transparent governance of [U.S.] community colleges, the way that we collaborate with our workforce community, these are things that we should treasure because they don’t happen all over the world.”
The primary focus of the program is for the visiting administrators to interact with their counterparts at Santa Fe and learn about best practices for community college management. Approximately 50 Santa Fe administrators interact with each visiting cohort from abroad. Conversations quickly shift from practical knowledge about how to run a department to deeper cultural exchange, Fuentes says.
She added that the institution is intentional about having the cohort interact with students, meet with student government leaders, and visit classrooms. The visiting administrators also give public presentations for students.
For example, a group of higher education officials from Pakistan wanted to counter U.S. misconceptions about their country, so they developed a presentation on the hidden beauties of Pakistan that focused on food, music, and culture. Another participant talked about how the educational system in Eastern Ukraine had been disrupted by war with Russia. “It is one thing to read about what is happening in the news, but hearing directly from people who had their university bombed makes it very real,” Fuentes says.
“The Community College Administrator Program has not only impacted administrators, but it’s also directly impacted students, faculty, and staff,” she adds.
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Vilma Fuentes, PhD, with CCAP South African participants. Photo courtesy of Matt Stamey/Santa Fe College.
History professor David Price, PhD, has interacted with visiting administrators in his role as president of the faculty senate. He says that participation in the CCAP and Fulbright programs provides excellent opportunities for Santa Fe staff and faculty to learn about other educational systems and interact with colleagues from abroad. “These have been great professional development opportunities for our faculty, given our high teaching load and limited resources provided by the state compared to research universities,” he says.
The CCAP program shifted to virtual operations and suspended in-person travel from April 2020 through July 2021 due to COVID-19. Santa Fe plans to receive delegations from the Caribbean, Egypt, the Philippines, and an additional country in upcoming years.
Fostering Partnerships Abroad Through Federal Programs
Participation in Fulbright, the CCAP, and other federally funded programs has helped spur comprehensive campus internationalization at the college, Fuentes says. All of the international partnerships that Santa Fe College has started began as a result these programs.
In the wake of September 11, 2001, Santa Fe hosted a Fulbright scholar-in-residence through the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright Specialist Program: Direct Access to the Muslim World. Since then, the college has hosted four more Fulbright scholars-in-residence.
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Svitlana Sharkova, PhD, a Fulbright scholar-in-residence (2017–18) from Ukraine. Photo courtesy of Matt Stamey/Santa Fe College.
Participation in the Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence Program has led to the creation of faculty and students exchanges with partners in countries such as Brazil, China, Egypt, Indonesia, and Ukraine. Santa Fe has signed cooperation agreements with several visiting scholars’ home institutions that led to further collaboration, Fuentes says. For example, the college developed its first study abroad program to China after hosting a scholar from Beijing Union University in 2006–07.
“All of those [collaborations] came about as an extension of the Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence Program,” Bonahue says. “Often, we’ve worked on shared interests that relate to, for example, a sector of industry. That program has really opened the door not only for students but also to institutional collaboration.”
Another example of partnerships to come out of participation in federal grant programs is the online Certificate for Accessible and Inclusive Practices (CAIP) that Santa Fe professionals created in collaboration with Brazilian counterparts from Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho” (UNESP). CAIP is a self-paced online course designed to promote an inclusive pedagogy through the application of universal design principles. Dozens of Santa Fe faculty members have participated in the online training and earned a certificate of completion.
Promoting Internationalization Through Virtual Programming
Another way that Santa Fe is bringing global perspectives to its campus is through the development of virtual programs. Fuentes says the college worked with partners to come up with ways that they could engage students virtually during the pandemic—and many of these innovations will likely persist even when travel fully resumes.
The college pivoted to offer online its International Lecture Series, which began in 2010. Speakers include visiting scholars, Fulbright scholars, and Santa Fe faculty. In 2020–21, the college offered 14 virtual events. “The virtual International Lecture Series has allowed us to make things more accessible to students,” Fuentes says.
Santa Fe also organized a series of four “virtual world tours” in 2020 in collaboration with partner universities. The events connected nearly 400 Santa Fe faculty and students with peers abroad in Bolivia, Brazil, and Ukraine. The tours taught participants about food, music, and culture, but organizers recognized they needed to create opportunities for more robust cultural exchange, says Jessica Surana, LSM, international education coordinator.
One way to do that was through virtual exchanges that allow students to interact with their peers abroad. A few professors had already been doing virtual exchanges for several years, but the pandemic helped spur wider participation across the college. “There have been sprinklings of informally organized virtual exchange for a long time here at Santa Fe, but when the pandemic hit, we really focused our energies on developing programs that students can still participate in,” Surana says. Since 2010, more than 800 Santa Fe students have participated in virtual exchanges.
Fuentes says that the college will develop more comprehensive trainings to teach faculty about how to incorporate virtual activities into their classrooms, starting in fall 2021.
Surana helped arrange a student virtual exchange with the college’s partners in Egypt and Ukraine that paired students to discuss current events and culture. Her unit worked with EDU Africa, a third-party provider based in Africa, to develop exchanges focused on global legacies of racial injustice and street art as a voice for social transformation in South Africa. The college also implemented virtual exchanges with Iraq and Jordan through a program funded by the U.S. Department of State through the Stevens Initiative and implemented by IREX.
“What we’ve realized is that we’re able to access and provide opportunities for so many more students than we have in the past with just offering study abroad and in-person events,” Surana says.
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ASL faculty and students interact virtually with Palestinian students in the West Bank. Photo courtesy of Matt Stamey/Santa Fe College.
Professor Michelle Freas, MA, has included virtual exchanges in her American Sign Language (ASL) and deaf culture classes since 2014. She began doing virtual exchanges with a school for deaf students in the West Bank in Palestine. In 2017, she also worked with advanced ASL students and Palestinian students to create an online video dictionary that translates Arabic/ Palestinian Sign Language into ASL/English.
Freas says that the virtual exchange with Palestine was her first international experience. It was challenging at first because the students in Palestine did not know English and the U.S. students did not know Arabic. To overcome the language barrier, they would draw pictures and use props. “What’s interesting with sign language is that it’s very easy to gesture and get your point across,” she says.
Freas has also done virtual exchanges with partners in Sweden and Ukraine.
“Not many colleges with American Sign Language programs have international experiences,” Freas says. “I’ve been very fortunate to be able to have experiences with three different countries and involve my students and have the deaf culture course that’s offered at Santa Fe become part of our international coursework.”
Freas says that virtual exchange has been a significant source of growth for her as an educator. “It keeps me motivated to learn more and to find ways to reach the students and the deaf community in those countries, but [it] also gives my students different outlets to be involved in their college experience.”
Fuentes says that virtual exchanges are a way to provide international opportunities to students who might not be able to study abroad. “Even though we’ve been able to provide funding and scholarships, study abroad is often inaccessible to [community college] students,” Fuentes says. “We realized there might be other ways that we can expose students to the world without actually ever having them leave the country. That prompted us to begin exploring virtual student exchanges.”
Internationalizing The Curriculum Through Grants
In addition to virtual exchanges, Santa Fe has created opportunities for its students to learn about the world by incorporating international perspectives in the classroom. Since 2016, the college has provided internationalizing the curriculum grants to 19 faculty to develop new or modify existing courses with a global perspective.
Several faculty members have also received curriculum enhancement grants through the University of Florida (UF), which received NAFSA’s Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization in 2018. The result has been more than 50 general education and elective courses with significant international content. Many of these classes meet the college’s multicultural and global awareness requirement for all students pursuing associate’s and bachelor’s degrees.
Price has received several grants from UF to enhance his courses. At the time when the United States was implementing the Affordable Care Act, he received a grant from the UF Warrington College of Business to create a module on comparative health care policy for students to learn about how insurance works in different countries.
More recently, he was awarded a grant from the UF Center for European Studies to travel to the United Kingdom to do research in the British National Archives on the country’s first attempts to enter the Europe Union in the 1950s and 1960s. He was able to connect it to contemporary discussions about Brexit.
“Without the college putting the focus on international education, we wouldn’t be able to get these opportunities from other entities to really enhance our course offerings, keep them fresh, make them more vibrant, and tie them to things that are going on in the real world so that students see more of a connection,” Price says.
Showcasing International Experience
Santa Fe has brought together its global curricular and co-curricular initiatives through the International Studies Certificate, which it launched in fall 2013. In addition to completing 12 credit hours of internationally focused courses, recipients are required to participate in international activities, such as study abroad or events on campus. In addition, they must compose an e-portfolio showcasing their global engagement. Many Santa Fe students transfer to the nearby UF, which applies some of the work done for the International Studies Certificate toward its International Scholars Program.
“The International Studies Certificate program is a way for students to codify their international experiences,” Surana says.
Building on the work that has already been done, President Broadie says the next step in internationalization at Santa Fe is to link the college’s global engagement with his goal of creating a college-going culture in the two counties in Santa Fe’s service district. That includes creating more scholarships for students to participate in international activities. “We want to get as many students in the doors as possible to create that college-going culture, and then expose them to our focus on internationalization,” Broadie says.
In order to accomplish this, the college is creating 22 new scholarships to help underrepresented students with financial need participate in study abroad. These will become available beginning in 2022.
Davidson-Davie Community College is a public, two-year community college with two campuses in north-central North Carolina. Despite limited resources, the college has become a leader in international education among North Carolina’s 58 community colleges. With a commitment to enhancing global awareness outlined in its strategic plan, the college exposes its 11,000 students to global perspectives through its globalized courses, internationally focused events on campus, and the presence of international students and scholars.
Study abroad student Ayannia Tripp at Dunluce Castle, Ireland. Photo courtesy of Davidson-Davie Community College.
Ayannia Tripp had never heard of studying abroad before she got a work-study job at the Office of International Education at Davidson-Davie Community College (which changed its name from Davidson County Community College in January 2021). “I was just a regular college student going to school, just trying to get a degree,” she says. “I never really heard of international education. So I just kind of jumped on the opportunity.”
Her supervisor, Suzanne LaVenture, MA, encouraged her to think about studying abroad. “I told her, ‘Honestly speaking, I don’t even know what that is,’” says Tripp, who is now a senior at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Eight months later, Tripp found herself on a weeklong study abroad program to Ireland over spring break. “It made me more confident as an individual,” she says.
Tripp, like nearly half of the students enrolled at Davidson-Davie, is the first in her family to go to college. LaVenture, the director of international education, says that one of the goals of internationalization at the college is to create international opportunities for all students.
Building A Foundation For Internationalization
LaVenture says that much of Davidson-Davie’s commitment to internationalization started with the college’s former president, Mary Rittling, EdD, who led the college from 2003 until she retired in 2018. “She was a huge proponent of international education,” LaVenture says.
Rittling, who served as chair of the board of Community Colleges for International Development (CCID) and was a Fulbright scholar to India, helped bolster international education by increasing education abroad opportunities and working with federal programs such as Fulbright to bring international scholars and students to campus. It was under her leadership that internationalization became embedded in the college’s strategic plan. Rittling appointed LaVenture director of international education in 2010, when she was still teaching a full courseload in the Spanish department. She is still the only full-time staff member working in the Office of International Education, along with a part-time employee who works 25 hours per week. “I’m in charge of anything and everything that has international on it,” LaVenture says. “If we can internationalize at Davidson-Davie Community College, then anybody can.”
Internationalization efforts at Davidson-Davie are also bolstered by the 30-member International Education Committee, which has representatives from across the campus. LaVenture says she has intentionally recruited faculty and staff from as many different areas of the college as possible. In that sense, the committee serves as a vehicle to disseminate information about international education campuswide. The wide representation also helps build a campus culture around internationalization. “The International Ed Committee is where all of the campus internationalization efforts are centralized,” she says.
The members of the larger committee can opt to join a number of subcommittees that work on specific topics, such as study abroad, a global certificate program, virtual exchange, and internationalizing the curriculum.
Victoria Hundley, MA, career and college promise coordinator, serves on the Study Abroad Committee, which selects leaders for education abroad programs. The committee reviews faculty proposals and then identifies the programs they think will be most attractive to students. More recently, the committee was involved with drafting COVID-19 safety policies and procedures.
Darrin L. Hartness, EdD, president of Davidson-Davie Community college. Photo courtesy of Davidson-Davie Community College.
Hundley says that being on the study abroad committee has been a way for her to get involved with international education even though it is outside of the scope of her regular job. She says it improves not only the student experience but also the employee experience. “Coming from the perspective of somebody who loved international ed and was looking for a way to work in it, Davidson-Davie was just a godsend for me,” she says. “It was [the institution’s] international ed committee that drew me there and made me know that it was where I wanted to work. The people who are doing it do it because it’s something they love.”
President Darrin Hartness, EdD, says that students at Davidson-Davie have access to global experiences that they are not likely to find at most community colleges. “If you had to describe the international experience at Davidson-Davie Community College, it really comes in a variety of formats, and that might be in the form of speakers on global issues or panel discussions of industry leaders who are brought in to talk about the importance of global education and global awareness in the workplace,” Hartness says. “It might be a study abroad experience. In 2020, it might be a virtual study abroad experience. It could be the instruction in a foreign language from a Fulbright teaching assistant.”
Launching Global Scholars
The 2013 launch of Scholars of Global Distinction, a global certificate program that is informally referred to as Global Scholars, ushered in a new phase for internationalization at Davidson-Davie. The program helped faculty internationalize their courses and incentivized support for internationally focused campus programming.
To earn the Global Scholars distinction, students must take five globalized courses; attend eight globally focused activities called Passport Events; participate in a global experience, which includes study abroad or virtual exchange; and produce a capstone project. Students who successfully complete the program receive a designation on their transcript and special recognition at graduation.
As of May 2021, 472 students had enrolled in the Global Scholars program. Of those students, 133 completed the requirements to earn the distinction on their transcript.
One of those students is 17-year-old Grace Upton. As a participant in Davidson-Davie’s early college program, she has been able to earn college credit as a high school student. When she graduates from high school next year, she will earn not only her high school diploma but also an associate’s degree and a Global Scholars distinction.
Upton was planning to study abroad in South Africa last summer, but the program was postponed until summer 2022. The scholarship she received to participate will carry over until next year. “I did know that I wanted to study abroad, but I didn’t think that would be accessible until I went to a four-year university,” she says. “But it’s amazing that I have that opportunity as a high schooler to travel abroad and receive scholarships and have a supportive group that goes with me.”
To meet the Global Scholars program’s requirement for a global experience, Upton participated in a virtual exchange with students from Jordan as part of the Global Solutions Sustainability Challenge, a U.S. State Department-sponsored program that pairs community college and university students in the United States on collaborative teams with their peers in Iraq and Jordan. Upton worked on a team that developed the concept for an app that would link artists with recycled materials they could use in their work.
Upton, who wants to become a veterinarian, says she has been surprised at how much exposure to other countries and cultures she has received at a community college. “It just really teaches you a lot of empathy and communicating and being accepting of viewpoints that you might not understand,” she says. “It just prepares you to be a better student, a better member of society, and it will make you a better employee when you’re working with people from different places.”
Davidson-Davie’s Global Scholars program has also become a model for other community colleges in North Carolina, LaVenture says. In 2014, Davidson-Davie teamed up with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s World View, a public service program focused on equipping K–12 and community college educators with global competency. World View initiated a statewide consortium to encourage other colleges to adopt the program. Many colleges consulted directly with LaVenture on creating their own programs.
In fall 2019, Davidson-Davie hosted a curriculum internationalization workshop in collaboration with World View, drawing more than 90 participants from across North Carolina. The conference included keynote speakers, information sessions, and breakout groups that worked by discipline on globalizing courses. LaVenture has also presented with World View about the program at various conferences, such as those organized by CCID and the Association of American Colleges & Universities.
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Davidson-Davie chemistry students perform a hands-on experiment. Photo courtesy of Davidson-Davie Community College.
Internationalizing The Curriculum Through Globalized Courses
The Global Scholars program provided an impetus for faculty to internationalize the curriculum. As Davidson-Davie began planning the program in 2012–13, several instructors received small grants from World View to globalize their classes. Since then, 81 courses have been globalized by 162 faculty members, and more than 10,000 Davidson-Davie students have been enrolled in one or more of these courses.
Biology professor Paul Stevens, MS, attended a World View seminar on globalizing courses several years ago. He used it as an opportunity to bring international content into his general biology classes. He has focused on the global water crisis and the shortage of clean water in many places in the world. More recently, he has helped students do projects on endangered species in other countries.
Pharmacy technology professor LaQuoia Johnson, PharmD, teaches a course called Pharmacy Trends: What Language Does Your Patient Hurt In? Each week, the course focuses on a different culture and how its beliefs and practices affect health care. She encourages her students to reflect on the conflicts and challenges that patients from other countries might experience in the United States, as well as how to work with colleagues from other cultures.
Charles Wright, a former Marine who served in Iraq in the early 2000s, says he first heard about the Global Scholars program from math professor Amanda Klinger, MA. He was originally interested in the program as a way to add something else to his résumé, but he quickly realized the value of learning about other countries and cultures both in and out of the classroom.
Wright says that his first question to any instructor whose class he takes is whether or not their course is globalized. He says he would seriously consider transferring out of any course that was not globalized because “we’re in college to expand our minds.”
The Global Scholars program has also led to more internationally themed campus programming. Every semester, the Office of International Education hosts 25 to 30 activities known as Passport Events for the campus community. Passport Events include lectures from visiting Fulbright scholars, information sessions about study abroad, panels with international students, presentations by Davidson-Davie faculty, and online video lectures with partners abroad. “We came up with this pretty robust system of trying to offer something for all students on campus [with the idea of] bringing the world to them,” LaVenture says.
For example, history professor Gerald Bosch, MA, hosts a monthly chat for students about international events happening around the world. He started it in 2011 during the Arab Spring protests in several Muslim countries. More recently, he has led discussions on COVID-19 around the world and the coup in Myanmar.
Leveraging Grant Programs For International Education
Davidson-Davie has hosted 15 Fulbright foreign language teaching assistants (FLTAs) over the past 9 years. The teaching assistants have come from eight different countries and taught Arabic, French, Irish, Portuguese, and Russian, and the college successfully petitioned for Irish language to be added to the common course library in North Carolina. In 2021–22, Davidson-Davie will host a Fulbright scholar-in-residence from Argentina as well as Fulbright FLTAs from France and Ireland.
In 2020–21, Caolán Ó Coisneacháin was the only FLTA on campus due to the pandemic. He has taught Irish language and culture classes and hosted a number of cultural events, including a St. Patrick’s Day sing-along and a demonstration of hurling, a traditional Gaelic field sport. He was involved with the college’s International Club, which organizes events throughout the year and hosts a weekly language hour.
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Group of Davidson-Davie international student graduates at the 2019 commencement. Photo courtesy of Davidson-Davie Community College.
Timothy Gwillim, EdD, dean of workforce and community engagement, helps support the FLTAs while they are on campus. He says that FLTAs participate in new faculty orientation and host Passport Events. They also take classes related to U.S. culture and history.
“Everyone’s made me feel at home,” Ó Coisneacháin says. “I feel like even with all the limitations and restrictions that COVID has forced on us, we’ve managed to do okay in making things available for students.
For off-campus programming, the college has used grant funding from external agencies to create some of its education abroad programs. A 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund grant helped support a study abroad program to Argentina in collaboration with the Universidad Nacional de Villa María, while an IDEAS (Increase and Diversify Education Abroad for U.S. Students) grant from the Capacity Building Program for U.S. Study Abroad helped LaVenture develop a program in South Africa in partnership with Central Piedmont Community College.
The Office of International Education has worked closely with the Davidson-Davie Foundation to raise scholarship funds for students who would not be able to afford study abroad on their own. “There’s not a big budget for global education, but we’ve been really fortunate that our foundation has been extremely supportive of the scholarship,” Hartness says.
Because colleges do not have financial incentive to recruit international students due to the unique funding model that requires North Carolina community colleges to remit all tuition to the state system, Davidson-Davie has also focused on grant opportunities to bring sponsored students to campus. It has brought international students to campus through participation in the Community College Initiative Program and the Tunisia Community College Scholarship Program, both sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.
“We have tried really hard to have international students on our campus,” LaVenture says. “So even though it costs us financially to host international students, we take advantage of any opportunity.”
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Kerry Smith, division chair of Professional and Technical Careers, assists a student with manufacturing equipment. Photo courtesy of Davidson-Davie Community College.
Supporting Global Careers
To support global careers, Davidson-Davie leverages an ongoing connection with Egger, an Austrian company that manufactures wood-based panel products. Egger opened its first North American production plant in Lexington, North Carolina, in 2020. Several faculty members and administrators traveled to Austria for a company visit and helped design a curriculum to prepare future employees. “We have developed an apprenticeship program with the company to help train new employees for the company,” Gwillim says.
The company pays students to work 4 days a week and then take classes from Davidson-Davie 1 day a week. After 4 years, students earn an associate’s degree in industrial systems technology or electronics, engineering, and technology. The second cohort to participate in the program graduated in May 2021.
Egger has also participated in employability panels to talk about the global skills it looks for in employees.
Hartness says he often meets with companies that are interested in hiring students from the college. “To be able to say that our students have access to global experiences, it sets us apart as a college.”
