2023 MIEC & MCCIEC Conference Proceedings
Maryland International Education Consortium (MIEC) & Maryland Community College International Education Consortium (MCCIEC) 2023 Conference
Cambridge, MD | February 3-5Conference Digest | Abstracts
Rebekah de Wit
Director, Global Education
Community College of Baltimore County
rdewit@ccbcmd.edu
Two of Maryland’s largest international education organizations, the Maryland Community College International Education Consortium (MCCIEC) and the Maryland International Education Consortium (MIEC), collaborated to offer their first combined conference for faculty and staff members across the state in February 2023. The conference theme was global learning locally, reflecting a growing focus in the field of international education on campus- and community-based global learning.
Topics that the 2023 conference explored in depth were the process of developing and fostering institutional and community partnerships for global learning both locally and virtually, paradigms for internationalizing curricula, and strategies for creating and leading domestic study away programs. The keynote speaker was Kent Koth, executive director of Seattle University's Sundborg Center for Community Engagement and an expert on campus-community partnerships. Other core sessions were led by faculty leaders from Howard Community College, who have done excellent work bringing COIL (Collaborative Online International Engagement) to the community college setting; education abroad organizations CIS Abroad and the Forum on Education Abroad, who brought their expertise to bear on a domestic context; and numerous faculty and staff members who have developed innovative globally-oriented curricular programs involving STEM fields, interdisciplinary learning, free library resources, goals of access and inclusion, and professional development.
The conference began with a virtual evening event followed by several days of in-person activities in the town of Cambridge, Maryland. The town’s rich history as a seaport and an environmental center and its strong links to Harriet Tubman rendered it an excellent case study location for conference participants to engage in bringing global themes to the forefront within a quintessentially Maryland context.
The conference proceedings published herein reflect the event’s rich content and context. On behalf of both consortia, I extend thanks to the presenters, the reviewers, and the leadership of TALES, who all contributed to the success of the 2023 conference and to this publication. I hope that readers will find the proceedings to be useful in their work in international education at their own institutions.
I also wish to thank the consortia's leaders and members for their support of the conference. The MCCIEC involves all Maryland community colleges that participate in international education, and the MIEC comprises 15 Maryland colleges and universities that work together to promote international education in the state. Both organizations regularly offer professional development events, and I am pleased to announce that plans for further collaborations between them are already underway.
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Abstracts
Thursday, February 2, 2023
Launching COIL at HCC
Yang Yu
Assistant Professor of Geography
Howard Community College
yyu@howardcc.edu
Amelia Yongue
Professor of English
Howard Community College
ayongue@ccbcmd.edu
Two Howard Community College professors share their experiences of integrating Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) into their courses, each with a unit of 5-6 weeks in length that culminated in a project. The presentation focuses mainly on the design and implementation of COIL projects in a Cultural Geography course and an Oral Communication ESL course. Geography students collaborated with students at the Suranaree University of Technology in Thailand. Their group project was to contribute to UN Sustainable Development Goals in both countries from a local perspective. With the goal of sharing about sustainability efforts on their campuses, Oral Communication students worked with English learners at Horsens Gymnasium in Denmark and also with graduate students in education at the Federal University of Para, Brazil to make comparisons and recommendations. In summary, the audience can gather that although the planning, implementation and feedback process required that the faculty to be flexible and face some challenges, the learning and added student engagement made the COIL projects well worth the extra time and effort.
Friday, February 3, 2023
Around the World within the Classroom: Suggestions for Infusing Global Flavor into Your Course
Janet Gross
Adjunct Instructor of English
Community College of Baltimore County
jgross2@ccbcmd.edu
This talk focused on ways to infuse global concepts into individual units or assignments by utilizing students’ individually unique backgrounds, experiences and interests. For example, a unit on cultural artifacts expanded on the concepts to include not only cultures we are born into but those we choose. Students research and write about one of the cultures to which they belong with such topics as traditional food, clothing, music, holidays, myths and celebrations or specific hobbies and interests. Presentations inform, correct assumptions and add to enjoyment of the class. For a unit on travel small groups choose a destination and then research and write about that city’s culture, history, food, natural and manmade attractions, language and mores. They include obstacles and drawbacks to the planned trip, craft a complete realistic budget and end very enthused about travel abroad. In a First year Seminar on protest songs, students read about and discuss social movements and the songs associated with them across time both within and outside the U.S. At least half the research topics focus on a country outside the U.S.; time periods range from the 19th century to current times. Giving students wide latitude to explore a course topic results in deeply engaged students whose curiosity about the world is further piqued. The use of a global lens enriches the entire class experience, including that of the instructor--who always learns something new!
Globalizing Precalculus II: Could it Ever be Possible?
Entela K Xhane
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Community College of Baltimore County
exhane@ccbcmd.edu
Jignasa Rami
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Community College of Baltimore County
jrami@ccbcmd.edu
Any global contexts we use in mathematics courses should add to an understanding of mathematics as well as the world. Better understanding the nature, sources and effects of such worldwide interrelationships is important, as they are critical to how we study, work, live – and now plan for a new future. Mathematics is a powerful tool that helps us understand the world. This talk is mostly focused on understanding how we could use global issues to understand mathematics. This talk is also focused on the opportunities for learning how you can create and incorporate global projects, assignments, intercultural dialogues and entirely globalize your mathematics courses to enrich students’ learning and better prepare them for our rapidly changing world. For example, projects and assignments with global themes could teach students about the change of population size due to the effects of different global factors, by studying the exponential and logarithmic functions and models. Global projects or assignments could also include other themes, such as famous landmarks around the world, interesting facts about them, their locations, shapes and use these projects to teach students about Laws of SINES and COSINES.
Saturday, February 4, 2023
Applying the Standards of Good Practice to Community Engaged Learning
Mandy Brookins
Director of Programs and Training
The Forum on Education Abroad
brookina@forumea.org
This session highlighted how the Standards of Good Practice in Education Abroad can be applied to off-campus community engaged learning programs in both U.S. and international contexts. The session covered an introduction to the Standards of Good Practice, focusing particularly on the four Guiding Principles: Mission and Goals, Collaboration and Transparency, Ethics, and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Attendees learned about the structure of the 6th Edition Standards, issued in 2020, and key terminology associated with community engaged learning models. Participants were also introduced to the Guidelines for Community Engaged Learning Abroad (2022), a Forum produced document that applies the Standards of Good Practice to community engaged learning. Case studies were used as a tool to apply the Standards of Good Practice in real time.
CIS Abroad Consulting: Tales, Trends, and Tips in International Education
Ginny Garzón
Associate Vice President
CIS Abroad Consulting Services
ggarzon@cisabroad.com
Using insights from projects with campus partners, Ginny Garzón, AVP of CIS Abroad Consulting Services, highlighted current trends and challenges within international education. The presentation focused on the services most requested in the last year, provided an overview of the types of services CIS Abroad Consulting offers, and reviewed how campus partners are prioritizing their teams, their strategy, and their programming post pandemic.
CIS Abroad: Risk Mitigation Conversation
Aurora Margarita-Goldkamp
Director of International Education
St. Mary's College of Maryland
amargaritagoldkamp@cisabroad.com
Ginny Garzón
Associate Vice President
CIS Abroad Consulting Services
ggarzon@cisabroad.com
Drawing from firsthand experiences during the pandemic and best practices, St. Mary's College of Maryland's Director of International Education, Aurora Margarita-Goldkamp, led a discussion on how faculty and staff can incorporate best practices in risk mitigation when developing programs. Using CIS Abroad's "3 E" Framework, the discussion focused on: Engineering, Education and Enforcement of best practices in risk mitigation. Tools, including a program relaunch matrix and portfolio audit were also shared.
No Passport Needed: Uncovering Opportunities for Transformation Learning Through Domestic Programs
Melissa Chambers
Coordinator for Global Education
Community College of Baltimore County
mchambers2@ccbcmd.edu
Cristina Cardona
Associate Professor of Physical Science
Community College of Baltimore County
ccardona@ccbcmd.edu
This session focused on how CCBC's Global Education staff used a multi-disciplinary study abroad approach to create two new domestic study away programs, both focused on culturally-distinct areas of the US, and examined how these STEM-based programs were infused with global learning themes to appeal to wider audiences and align with Global Education's mission. The first program, "Environmental and Cultural Impacts of Southern Appalachia Settlements," brought 12 students and 4 program leaders to the Great Smoky Mountains in Eastern Tennessee in May 2022. The program will be repeated in May 2023 with a slightly larger group. The second program, "Gullah Culture and Coastal Ecology in South Carolina," will take 20 students and 6 program leaders to the Carolina Lowlands in early April 2023. Finally, the session offered ways other Maryland colleges could join these programs through collaboration in future years.
The Secrets about Creating Global Learning Locally
Tammy Field
Professor of Biological Sciences
Chesapeake College
tfield@chesapeake.edu
The secret of creating Global Learning Locally is dependent on the instructor’s use of experiential memories within each lesson. One needs to live and work in other locations, states, or even countries to really begin to try and understand the culture of learning required to reach and interest a student’s mind. For example, while serving in the military overseas and entrenched in a mountainous community that had mixed feelings towards the U.S. and its military, I quickly learned how outsiders are viewed by others, especially when the uniform was on. These initial experiences away from home helped prepare me for the challenges I encountered while teaching Native Americans, where I was again the minority. It was teenage students who revealed to me how to test their intellect by teaching more divergently as opposed to the more traditional linear methods I had been attempting. But by far, the biggest aha moment came when I returned to my hometown of Cambridge, Maryland. The racial segregation I witnessed as a child growing up in a third-generation store on Race Street prepared me to begin seeing the human nature of inequality and how differences in culture and skin color affect a student’s learning potential. If I hadn’t lived and worked abroad, I would have never begun to fully actualize that differences in skin pigmentation and cultural narratives are not related to intelligence. Further, the examples we use while teaching concepts have everything to do with what the student receives on their end. It is the educational institution’s responsibility to ensure that we, as educators, involve community stakeholders and expose our students to the world outside the traditional classroom. Therefore, Global Learning Locally prepares one’s mind to experience and understand the human nature of learning, both culturally and intellectually.
In-Country Study/Travel for Student Community-Based Global Learning: Harriet Tubman Program Model
Gregory Malveaux
College-wide Coordinator of Study Abroad
Professor of English Composition and Literature
Montgomery College
Gregory.Malveaux@montgomerycollege.edu
This presentation and talk focused on, and compelled, faculty and staff audience members, to consider a region, along with accompanying venues, within 200 miles of their college, that could be utilized to expand upon a class that they offer. With the presentation came the main and essential consideration, “how would the region provide students additional community-based and global learning?” The presentation went on to provide a model, revealing how the Maryland and Pennsylvania-based Harriet Tubman Byway served as an inspiration to apply community-based and global learning to Professor Malveaux’s ENGL 226: Survey of African American Literature course, taught at Montgomery College in Maryland. Discussed were class themes that are part of Slave and Emancipation Narratives, vernacular traditions, and Black spirituals fused within site visits to Brodess Farm, Choptank Landing, Long Wharf, and Dorchester County Courthouse as part of a “Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad” in-country study/travel program. The talk concluded with faculty and staff from the various state colleges brainstorming on program designs that would successfully link certain regions/venues with taught courses; and how the community-based program could bring about increased global learning outcomes for their students.
AnyTown, USA: How Hyperlocal Artifacts Can Help Students Rewrite MacroNarratives
Elizabeth Godwin
Associate Professor and Librarian
Community College of Baltimore County
egodwin2@ccbcmd.edu
Jean Boggs
Associate Professor and Librarian
Community College of Baltimore County
jboggs2@ccbcmd.edu
In this talk we consider how an acquisition of a new historical archive collection of a “small town” in Baltimore County creates pedagogical opportunities to engage students in learning and writing the history of the particular place of their study as it intersects with their own history. We reflect on the state of Maryland as a fractal of “all 50 States,” and how different modalities of accessing artifacts affects human engagement with material culture. We will discuss practice and opportunities to engage artifacts in classrooms of various disciplines and how the nature of library and museum collections alter our interactions with objects and the stories we tell about them.
Sunday, February 5, 2023
"Invisible History" is not Invisible
Michelle Diane Wright
Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies
Community College of Baltimore County
mwright3@ccbcmd.edu
Recently, the history of marginalize people has been labeled “invisible history” in an effort to give agency to those populations. This history, however, is not "invisible," it has been purposefully erased. Erased history is a form of cultural genocide - the deliberate erasure of a people’s culture and history. Saying that the history is "invisible" is to ignore the visible evidence that we see every day as well as negate the racist tactics that intentionally wrote a history that erased unwanted narratives. We have all been taught to accept the dominant narrative of most historical accounts and places and these notions impact what we see when we travel. The history of the marginalized is everywhere, not only in locations that have been memorialized. Educating ourselves before travel is crucial because we cannot leave it up to the destination to tell those stories. Critically thinking about how a location was originally created is a good start - no building, park, or other developed area was created without humans; it is crucial to remember who the work and who bore the burden of care. Bringing these notions to the classroom is key to ending the cycle of erased history.
Adding Flavor to Learning Abroad: Teaching through Food
Robin Minor
Associate Professor of Biology
Community College of Baltimore County
rminor@ccbcmd.edu
This talk focused on the opportunities for infusing topical learning on-site during travel study programs by using food. Because food has a wide appeal and is a daily necessity, it presents a useful lens through which to highlight the local foodstuffs and culinary customs in ways that augment broader learning. For example, groups on an archaeology-related program could learn about historical food production methods by studying artifacts and discussing their use. History students can be taught about common foods and food practices across time while trying different foods that reflect different historical eras during the visit. Political science and legal studies students can source and read current-event articles about policy changes to food laws and discuss regulation of the food economy in the area. Health and wellness students can make observations about the diet and exercise patterns they observe in the region, and look at data on local health statistics to evaluate the local diet for nutritional adequacy. In these and more ways foods and food culture can bring off-campus learning to life in an enjoyable, interactive, and memorable group experience for travel study participants.
Exploring Global Concepts in a Local Context
Hoa Nguyen
Associate Professor of Economics
Business Department Chair
Montgomery College
hoa.nguyen@montgomerycollege.edu
Margaret Tabiri
Professor of Business
Montgomery College
margaret.tabiri@montgomerycollege.edu
Our session presented the experience and best practices that we gathered from teaching global concepts in a local context. The pandemic has changed the way students learn significantly, but they are still curious about international topics such as non-point source pollution or learning gap. There is a need for understanding complex global issues and addressing them locally. In the Introduction to Economics courses taught by Dr. Nguyen (Fall 2022), students were guided to participate in the national competition Make a Market Tech Challenge, hosted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Throughout the whole semester, each student did an in-depth market analysis to promote new technologies invented by the EPA targeting water contamination problem in the U.S. Meanwhile, Dr. Tabiri took a group of MC students to Ghana to explore learning styles in Mathematics of Ghanian high school/college students versus African American counterparts and to contemplate why African-born students often perform better in Mathematic exams than African American students. Students kept a reflective journal of their observations as they toured different sites and wrote a report at the end of the trip. We hope our projects address students’ curiosity about those topics and collect strategies to expand our curricula.
Making Global Connections through Literature
William Lowe
Professor of English and World Languages
Howard Community College
wlowe@howardcc.edu
This session provided an overview of the Asian Literature Colloquium at Howard Community College (HCC) co-facilitated by Sandra Lee and William Lowe of the English and World Languages Division. The Asian Literature Colloquium provides an opportunity for faculty members across disciplines as well as staff across the college to make global connections through reading and discussing works of modern and contemporary literature from Asia. Participants in the colloquium earn both professional development and diversity credits, thus contributing to global awareness and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at the college. Established in 2019, the colloquium meets monthly and focuses on a national literary tradition from Asia for an entire academic year. Thus far, the colloquium has featured literature from Korea, Japan, China, and Vietnam and engaged dozens of faculty members and staff in making global connections through literature. This session will explore the structure and content of the Asian Literature Colloquium at HCC and will include an interactive discussion of how session participants can establish, develop, and sustain similar colloquia at their institutions.
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