Lynn Paine is the former associate dean of international studies and a professor of teacher education in the College of Education. Amita Chudgar is the interim associate dean of international studies and professor of education policy in the College of Education. In this co-authored piece, they reflect on the unique vision of global education within the college that drew them both to MSU and has kept them here.
How can a university in the middle of the state in the middle of the country be a beacon for global engagement?
Each of us, decades apart, wondered that as we considered coming to MSU. One of us (Amita) had grown up in India and had traveled west for graduate education in the United Kingdom and the United States; the other (Lynn), a Midwesterner by birth, was eager to leave the region behind as she sought out opportunities to learn, work and live in Taiwan and China. But each of us discovered that MSU’s College of Education has a unique vision of and approach to enacting global engagement. It brought us here and kept us here, as we have continued to work to support a vision of education — and a College of Education — that brings the world to MSU and MSU to the world.
Over time, we’ve been excited to contribute to the ongoing creation and evolution of that vision — one that challenges narrower approaches to studying or doing education, one that expects all folks (and not only “specialists”) to learn and care about the world and its diversity and one that assumes global engagement occurs through ethical collaboration, committed and longstanding partnership and genuine curiosity.
Infusing education and scholarship with global perspectives
Our college is unique in that it sees international and global work as integral to all aspects of college life, not just the purview of one department or program. We recently celebrated 40 years of an Office of International Studies in Education, or OISE. That office was created with the idea that our understanding of education is enriched by learning about a wide range of approaches and variations that education systems around the world offer, and the diverse and complex histories of thinking about growth, development and knowledge that education reflects internationally. Our students’ and faculty’s learning are enhanced by tapping the assets of classrooms filled with students from a range of backgrounds and educational experiences.
Our future teachers are better prepared for the diversity of students and families they will encounter, wherever they teach, if they have developed global competence. These commitments were foundational to creating OISE and the effort to think across departments and programs about global and international education rather than, as is more common in many peer institutions, having one stand-alone program that focuses on comparative, international and global education.
We are unique in this vision about what it means to study and do education. It means we have cross-college learning communities, shorter and longer term, offering faculty and student opportunities to engage with issues of education globally (e.g., fellowships to “internationalize” College of Education courses; faculty-led short-term study groups to explore a theme as it is exemplified in education in another country; brown bag seminars that bring faculty, staff and students together to share research and work in progress on topics from early childhood education to higher education spread across five continents; and learn about new and emerging opportunities in the field.
Becoming leaders in global education
We are one of the few programs in the country to have a global education-focused undergraduate teacher preparation program, in which we bring critical global perspectives into coursework and require all students to have a global immersion experience.
Our impact is felt not just on the lives of those in the MSU community. Through this work, we also serve the state of Michigan and our local community. For instance, our partner schools in mid-Michigan collaborate with us to host visiting educators and regularly speak to how this enriches their own K-12 students’ learning.
The college’s global engagement vision is also unique for supporting longstanding international partnerships that allow a wide range of reciprocal engagement. These relationships, many spanning decades, have had impressive ripple effects with faculty drawn into new research, new learning and new exchange opportunities that continue to draw from expertise across MSU. Even more recent relationships with commitment to reciprocity — such as the Reeves Scholars Program, which pairs Spartan teacher candidates with counterparts from University of Cape Coast, Ghana, — is a clear illustration of the power of making “global” an opportunity for joint learning. This program includes a semester-long online seminar followed by each cohort taking turns visiting and hosting the other to learn together.
Sharing MSU’s expertise with the world
The recent creation of the Global Education Engagement initiative similarly works to build relationships that support authentic learning communities. Through the initiative, we are creating short-term professional learning experiences for international participants, which are offered at MSU, in country and in hybrid formats. This format allows us to create powerful learning opportunities for the MSU community and faculty and our international participants, furthering our commitment to continue bringing the world to MSU and MSU to the world.
Our large-scale, system-level international education projects and collaborations, most recently through our work in Colombia, India, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania, provide other significant examples of how, across the globe, our college is living out the MSU mission of advancing knowledge and transforming lives.
These are just a few examples of some of the important ways our college’s commitment to bringing the world to MSU goes beyond traditional college of education programs. Just recently, as part of our 40th year celebration, we invited OISE faculty and staff to submit one example of global work they were engaged in. The response we received was overwhelming both in terms of range and variety of such efforts across the college.
Our commitments and success rest on what has been a consistent distinction in the quality and impact of College of Education faculty and staff members’ international research and related contributions.
As active researchers, teachers and, more recently, as each of us has had the awesome responsibility of shepherding OISE, it now seems like we were luckier than we realized in coming to this little corner of the Midwest. It has opened a world of possibilities for us and our learning, just as it continues to do so for many.
