Dawn Michelle Whitehead is Vice President of the Office of Global Citizenship for Campus, Community, and Careers at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Whitehead's work centers on integrative global learning with an emphasis on thematic local and international experiences that provide students with a variety of global learning opportunities across their educational experience. In this wide-ranging conversation Whitehead provides us with a broad view of the field of global learning. From her perspective, the process of global learning involves certain fundamentals— diverse perspectives, collaboration, complex problem solving, and local and global connection making. But Whitehead also says that campuses must make global learning their own—they must tailor their definition to their campus’ unique context if they want to enable all faculty and all students to engage in their own unique ways. What’s more, Whitehead outlines the different ways various U.S. based international professional organizations support global learning.
Resources Mentioned
- AAC&U Office of Global Citizenship for Campus, Community, and Careers
- Global Learning VALUE Rubric
- Shared Futures: Global Learning and Social Responsibility
- Globalizing Knowledge: Connecting International and Intercultural Studies, by Grant Cornwell & Eve Stoddard
- Dolly Parton’s America, NPR podcast
- Paper Airplanes, non-profit providing language learning for conflict-affected individuals
- Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA)
- American Council on Education (ACE)
- NAFSA: Association of International Educators
- Institute of International Education (IIE)
- Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network
- Interfaith Youth Core
- Collaborative Online International Learning
- IIE Open Doors Data
- NAFSA International Student Economic Value Tool
- Community-Based Global Learning, by Eric Hartman, Richard C. Kiely, Christopher Boettcher, & Jessica Friedrichs
- DEAL Model for Critical Reflection, Sarah Ash & Patti Clayton
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tools for Teamwork: Asset Mapping and Team Processing Handbook, by Geoff Pfeifer & Elisabeth Stoddard
- Learning to Collaborate, Collaborating to Learn, by Janet Salmons
- FIU Global Learning Syllabus Design Checklist
Great Quotes
"I think the campuses that are making the most progress are the ones that are having a serious conversation, one about what global learning is. So what does it mean in our context? What does it mean for our students when they leave our campus? What goes if mean for our local community now? And so they realized that it is something that impacts a campus, the local community, as well as the broader community."
"Global learning is one of the most powerful practices of liberal education. I think when students engage in global learning they are putting those skills of liberal education to use. At the heart of global learning is problem solving, applied learning, doing this in the field and pulling together knowledge and understanding from a range of disciplines and experiences, both curricular and co‑curricular."
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