Internationalizing teaching and learning: Transforming teachers, transforming students

In 2009, the University of Minnesota established initiatives to internationalize the curriculum on all five of its system campuses. These efforts began and have continued as a direct response to the University’s strategic educational goal to graduate lifelong learners, leaders, and global citizens. The University of Minnesota defines “internationalizing the curriculum and campus” as including all of the learning experiences in which students gain global and intercultural competencies. These experiences may be curricular or co-curricular. The learning may happen in classrooms on-campus, on study abroad programs, in local communities via service learning programs, on campus in informal settings, or by technology with students and communities in other countries. This broad definition allows for academic departments and student affairs units to envision and implement a range of learning experiences that span the entire student population, from first-year undergraduates to doctoral-level students. In order to guide academic departments and student affairs units with developing global learning experiences, we enlisted the help of professors and staffin developing a definition of “global competency” for the entire University. We elicited responses from 225 faculty, staff, and students to the question: What does global competency mean to you? The results were crafted into a working definition of global competency for the institution.