Blogs

International Education Week takes place November 16th-20th, 2020. For more information about IEW, visit our page. 

Claire Coleman ('22) woke at 3:30am on March 12th to the sound of her phone pinging her with hundreds of texts, missed calls, and voicemails. Reading them quickly, she found that her parents had booked her a flight home from where she was studying abroad, in Salamanca, Spain: She had 24 hours to pack and leave, because of the mounting COVID-19 crisis. “Getting home to Ohio and completely quarantining for 24 days straight gave me a lot of time to think,” Claire says, “I was so nostalgic, but also furious, sad and happy at the same time.” As she had time to process her interrupted experience, she became determined: “going abroad was the best time of my life and I cannot wait to go back as soon as possible...no matter what, I plan on going back to Spain after college to teach English for a year or two.”

The COVID pandemic has left no area of our globally-connected society unchanged. As numbers of infections rise and fall, and countries institute lockdowns (or ease them), daily life over the past eight months has changed in ways that are sometimes hard to quantify, but are obvious nonetheless. Human connection, now conducted through Zoom or from the safety of socially-distant events, has never been more important. Life events such as weddings and birthdays, usually the cause for joyful gatherings, have taken on a different character as each person does their best to be healthy and keep others safe. Traveling outside one’s state may be possible, but international travel has its own set of challenges, with many countries limiting entry, or banning it entirely. 

How does international education work when the “international” part has often meant a passport and an airline ticket? How do we as educators continue to prepare students for a global workplace when we aren’t able to walk them through the busy streets of Berlin, partake of the lomo saltado dish of Peru, or build solar ovens in Malawi? Can international education function in the face of global uncertainty, closed borders, and rapid change?

The answer, says Amy Anderson, Executive Director of the Center for International Programs and Associate Provost, Global and Intercultural Affairs, is simple: “We recommit ourselves to our mission, vision and values and innovate!”

Anderson is proud of UD’s commitment to global and intercultural learning, a key part of the University’s mission. Restrictions on travel due to Covid have meant that the CIP has had to be flexible and adaptive, facing sometimes daily changes with resilience.  “Faculty and staff in the CIP are in this work because of the belief that we have in a just and peaceful world,” Anderson says.   “In spite of the challenges, we have a long and optimistic view.”

This has meant that every area of the Center for International Programs has had to completely change the way they do their work while planning for the future in the midst of great uncertainties. Anderson notes, “We will largely focus on making virtual and local global and intercultural experiences happen.  We are hoping and planning for some US and international mobility as well.”  

The immediate challenge of mobility was an essential one when the pandemic hit: the CIP had to ensure that all the students studying overseas were safe. The team from the CIP Education Abroad office, led by Director Kelly Trail, is used to dealing with student emergencies as they may arise with study abroad or faculty-led programs overseas. However, she says, “having a crisis that impacts every single student abroad is rare. We navigated having all these students’ return home and tried to make it as smooth of a transition as possible, despite the extreme disappointment in having to cut their time abroad short.” 

As a major student-facing office with well-known programs, all of which  were conducted in person, the International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) office, led by Director Tim Kao, faced unique issues. “Connecting with students virtually has been very challenging,” Kao says, “There are limits to virtual interactions. It's clear that people desire an in-person connection. With that said, we have to operate in a manner consistent with public health and university guidelines if we want to lower the risk of transmission.” The ISSS team shifted services almost immediately to virtual formats, yet still retaining a consistent in-person presence in the office. The rapidly-changing immigration landscape has also presented difficulties. Implementing changing guidance coming out of the federal government, and communicating that guidance to international students, has required a great deal of effort. Kao notes, “The team has demonstrated incredible resilience, flexibility, and care in the face of unprecedented challenges. We believe in and draw strength from each other. They say your true character is revealed in adversity. I'm proud to say this team's character has met the challenge.”

Nicholas Taggart, Director of the Intensive English Program (IEP), also highlights his team’s flexibility and professionalism in the face of the pandemic. IEP instructors, like all faculty members at UD, were faced with the rapid transition to online learning during the Spring 2020 semester. However, Nick says, their battle was not as uphill as it could have been, given the IEP faculty’s proficiency in using Isidore and remote learning tools. “We’ve always been committed to providing the best possible instruction to our students utilizing current and effective techniques and approaches to language instruction,” he notes. “When the call came to incorporate hybrid or full online instruction in our courses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our instructors were up for meeting the challenge. The collaborative effort across the whole IEP team has been phenomenal and has made our transition into providing online instructional delivery an easy journey.” 

One promising area for virtual exchange is Collaborative Online International Learning, or COIL. Sangita Gosalia, Director of Campus Engagement for the CIP, sees great possibilities here. "With the impact on mobility and reliance on technology to keep us connected, it is a unique way faculty can continue to design intercultural experiences for their students and integrate into their curriculum," she says. The CIP has worked closely with the School of Engineering and E-Learning to develop the COIL Fellows program, which assists faculty in developing COIL opportunities with faculty partners overseas. "In the long-term," Gosalia notes, "COIL opportunities will continue to be present as we strategize multiple ways we can create accessible and diverse experiences for all our students."

Much of what we are doing now will continue after the pandemic,” Anderson adds, “So while difficult, the work we are doing now will help us foster even more high impact practices, and integrate that into the on-campus, local AND international experiences that students have.”