The global pandemic has, in a sense, dramatically shifted the landscape of international education. Student and faculty mobility has taken a pause, and instead, we relied on virtual spaces to continue our collaborative efforts around the world.
At the same time, the pandemic underscored something that we have known all along – that we do not facilitate international travel just for the sake of travel. We are neither travel agents nor tour guides. Rather, we provide meaningful opportunities for our campus community to interact with the world and for the world to interact with our campus community.
Shifting to virtual spaces has allowed for a more creative approach to global engagement. We are hosting, and joining, virtual conferences and webinars in collaboration with our international partners. We are making connections between classrooms here and abroad in new and exciting ways, engaging with faculty and students who might otherwise not ever have come through the doors of the international office. Students are learning new skills through global virtual internships to better prepare them for careers that will inevitably require virtual fluency.
This has allowed us, in collaboration with our trusted international partners, to evaluate what global engagement means to us as a campus and as a field. And as with any truly transformational intercultural experience, we will continue to ponder these thoughts long after the pandemic is over.