Mind the Gap (Series on Engaged Learning and Teaching)

Co-published with

There is growing awareness that global learning is not confined to university, credit-bearing off campus international programs, and that institutions of higher learning have, up until now, conceived of global education too narrowly. Global learning through study abroad and off-campus domestic study fits into a larger context of students’ educational experiences. You can find global learning as part of other high-impact practices; domestic off-campus programs, undergraduate research, and service- or community-based learning all can be global learning opportunities. On-campus global learning can occur in the disciplines and in the core curriculum as well. Language and culture, anthropology, sociology, and other departments, multicultural centers, and diversity and inclusivity offices, to name a few, also teach students to be global learners. Global learning pertains to the many staff and faculty educators who intentionally encourage students to engage with and successfully navigate difference. Thus, there is a growing need for bridging across disciplinary and administrative silos, silos that are culturally bound within academia. The gaps between these silos matter as students seek to integrate off- and on-campus learning.

Higher education needs a new, holistic assessment of global learning. This book investigates not just student learning, but also faculty experiences, program structures, and pathways that impact global learning, and expands the context of global learning to show its antecedents and impacts as apart of the larger higher education experience. Chapters look at recent developments such as short-term, off-campus, international study and certificate/medallion programs, as well as blended learning environments and undergraduate research, all in the context of multi-institutional comparisons. Global learning is also situated in a larger university context. 

Visit the Mind the Gap Companion Page, hosted by the Center of Engaged Learning.

Nina Namaste is the Arts and Humanities Director for the Elon College Fellows.

Amanda Sturgill teaches in the interactive media graduate program at Elon University. Her research focuses on the intersection of education and community-based work, the relationship of religion and media and on new technologies and the news.

Neal W. Sobania is the Executive Director of the Wang Center for International Programs and Professor of History at Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA. As a teacher he has taught a wider range of courses in African history and African studies, and as an international educator has held many elected positions at both the regional and national level. He has been involved with Ethiopia for nearly forty years, first as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, then a staff member, and now as an active scholar.

Michael Vande Berg is vice president for Academic Affairs at the Council on International Educational Exchange. He completed his PhD in comparative literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He has held leadership positions at several institutions that are unusually committed to the international education of their students, including Georgetown University; the School for International Training; Michigan State University; Kalamazoo College; and el Instituto Internacional, in Madrid, Spain. Michael has authored a wide range of international education, intercultural relations, and comparative literature publications, including Spanish-to-English translations of two classics of 20th-century Spanish literature. He has been the principal investigator of several study abroad research projects, including the Georgetown Consortium Project; frequently consults with faculty and staff about international education topics; and leads intercultural workshops in the United States and abroad. A founding board member of the Forum on Education Abroad, he now serves as a senior faculty member of the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication. Michael is also the recipient of The Forum on Education Abroad’s 2012 Peter A. Wollitzer award.

Jessie L. Moore is Director of the Center for Engaged Learning and Associate Professor of English: Professional Writing & Rhetoric. She leads planning, implementation, and assessment of the Center’s research seminars, which support multi-institutional inquiry on high-impact pedagogies and other focused engaged learning topics. Her recent research examines transfer of writing knowledge and practices, multi-institutional research and collaborative inquiry, writing residencies for faculty writers, the writing lives of university students, and high-impact pedagogies. She co-edited Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer (2016). She currently serves as the elected Secretary of the Conference on College Composition and Communication.