The culmination of a multi-year effort to assess and refine WSU’s global engagement has been finalized in an American Council on Education (ACE) Internationalization Lab report, a key action amid the challenges facing higher education.
A team of faculty and administrators representing WSU system-wide helped formulate the recommendations in coordination with International Programs and the Provost’s Office. This project is an integral piece to promoting international coordination and engagement and furthers WSU’s land grant mission of making its campuses welcoming places, recognizing the value international and domestic students provide to the university’s education community.
ACE is a membership organization that assists higher education in shaping effective policy. Following a visit to WSU last fall, an ACE Lab external peer review team “observes that WSU is at a propitious moment in time to broaden and deepen its internationalization efforts.”
“The peer review team confirms that curricular and cocurricular initiatives, as well as assessment rubrics are key to realizing global learning objectives,” the peer review report states. “The knowledge, attitudes, and skills obtained by embedding global learning themes in the curriculum are the exact attributes that will benefit WSU graduates as they participate in the global marketplace as well as assume critically important responsibilities as citizens of the U.S. and the world.”
A foundational recommendation for making continued progress was forming a new cross-college standing body called the Internationalization Coordinating Council (ICC). The ICC had its initial meeting this Spring and will help to implement the ACE Lab recommendations, including:
- Create pathways to prepare students for life and work in a global context
- Maximize international opportunities for scholarly and educational collaboration for faculty and students
- Establish an internationalization culture strongly connected to WSU’s mission and strategic planning
As Paul Whitney, interim vice president for International Programs, said, “The major employers who hire WSU graduates in Washington have told us that they actively seek out graduates who understand that people from different cultures around the world negotiate differently and approach problems with different assumptions than people are used to in the U.S. The ICC will help us develop more ways for WSU to prepare globally savvy graduates, and at the same time connect WSU faculty to more opportunities to have a global impact through their teaching and research.”
