GEO Newsletter - Spring 2024

The 2023-24 academic year has come to a close, and the GEO team is looking forward to a summer filled with study abroad programs, international students on campus taking summer classes, and hearing from our international students who get a chance to visit their homes and families before fall quarter begins. It should be a special summer for many of our students, and it follows a productive year of global engagement and global learning for the Western community. 

GEO is small but mighty. It has a lean staff with a large volume of work, having served 1,548 students and 110 faculty over the past year. GEO’s portfolio includes Education Abroad, International Student and Scholar Services, the Global Studies Minor, Faculty Global Engagement, international partner university agreement management, and, as of September 2023, Peace Corps Recruitment. Indeed, GEO happily accepted an invitation from the Career Services Center to transition Western’s Peace Corps Recruiter from CSC to GEO. 

Another significant change for GEO is a new name for our academic program, formerly called International Studies, and now called Global Studies. The Global Studies Minor requires both study abroad and the study of a world language, in addition to transborder academic coursework. Introduction to Global Studies is a popular GUR offered six times a year, and classes are filled to capacity every quarter. 

Read further to learn more about GEO’s work over the past year, which includes milestone rankings for Western for Peace Corps and Fulbright U.S. Scholar awards, plus new global engagement initiatives for faculty. At the core of GEO’s work is a commitment to helping students graduate from Western as global citizens who are prepared to contribute to positive change globally and locally. We achieve this by facilitating and supporting people-to-people academic exchange, helping faculty integrate global learning objectives to the curriculum, and promoting greater intercultural understanding and self-awareness.

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) is part of a well-established movement in higher education and is one element in Western’s comprehensive internationalization effort to expand intercultural and global learning.  In courses that contain a COIL component, faculty and students in different countries work together to create an online learner-centered experience for a portion of the academic term.  This collaboration is a cost-effective form of global engagement and supplements and enhances other educational opportunities for students, such as study abroad and faculty-led Global Learning Programs.

In fall, GEO introduced COIL@Western to faculty and invited their participation in the first cohort of COIL Faculty Fellows. We awarded ten fellowships to faculty from six colleges, and in April/May, Fellows attended three workshops facilitated in collaboration with the Center for Instructional Innovation and Assessment. Next academic year, current Fellows will incorporate a COIL module into one of their courses and help mentor members of the next cohort. To learn more about COIL or GEO’s Faculty Fellowship program for next academic year, visit the COIL@Western webpage.

Since 1966, Western faculty have received over 70 awards through the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Program.  They have taught or conducted research in over forty countries and on every continent but Antartica.   

GEO has played an important role in promoting Fulbright opportunities at Western as part of its work to expand internationalization and global learning across the curriculum.  These efforts include publicizing the various awards, supporting faculty through the application process, helping to identify host institutions, and assisting departments that wish to host a Visiting Scholar.  Mark Greenberg and Ryan Larsen  serve as the main points of contact for the Fulbright Scholar Program and as a campus resource for the latest information about Fulbright awards.  If you would like to know more about Fulbright opportunities for faculty or to join the Fulbright Scholar Interest Group, please visit the GEO Fulbright webpage.  Applications for AY 2025-2026 awards are due to the Fulbright office by September 16.

Over the past fifty years, Western has built one of the largest Mongolian Studies library collections in the world and has developed an international reputation for contributions to the field.  In recognition of their important work advancing scholarship about the region, two Western experts  previously received Mongolia’s highest civilian award for a foreigner – the Order of the Polar Star – joining the likes of past recipients Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain.

Since 2014, when Western signed several agreements of academic cooperation with Mongolian universities, GEO has led the university’s Mongolian Studies initiative. Thanks to a generous endowment created by the late Professor John C. Street of Madison, Wisconsin, GEO is able to fund a variety of initiatives that support teaching, research, and community programs. To date, GEO has awarded over $150,000 to more than a dozen faculty members and students who have conducted field research, published, and presented their findings at international conferences. In February, four Western faculty delivered papers at the XVI Annual Mongolian Studies Conference in Washington, DC. Applications for the next round of John C. Street Research Awards in Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies are due February 7, 2025. 

The number of courses related to Mongolian Studies have expanded over time as well and now include a language or special topics class offered by the annual Henry G. Schwarz Visiting Lecturer and a new Introduction to Mongolia course taught by Western faculty member Chimgay Tserendorj.