From Kenya, to the Czech Republic and Poland to Ghana, University of Western Ontario professors are bringing the world to their classroom and introducing their students to the world.
To compete in the increasingly demanding global marketplace, Western has introduced the International Curriculum Fund which allows instructors to include global perspectives in their courses and facilitates cultural learning during overseas internships and study-abroad opportunities.
At the Spring Perspectives on Teaching conference in May, Pathology professor Jack Bend, Faculty of Information & Media Studies assistant professor Amanda Grzyb and Civil & Environmental Engineering professor Tim Newson – all past winners of the fund competition – discussed how they are internationalizing the curriculum.
The focus of putting Western on a global stage is expected to take on a higher precedence as a priority of incoming university president Amit Chakma.
Bend aided the development of an interdisciplinary graduate and research program in Environmental Pathology and Ecosystem Health. As part of the program, Western partnered with First Nations communities of Walpole Island and Attawapiskat to examine the effects of exposure to environmental pollutants.
Researchers have also partnered with Egerton University and local stakeholders in Kenya, and established a student internship exchange with the university.
The interdisciplinary team of researchers working within the program offers a more holistic view of the issues affecting these environments and allows for the local community members to be engaged in the research.
“The problems are so complex that single disciplines don’t have a chance,” says Bend.
To offer an opportunity for experiential learning, Grzyb took students on a 12-day trip in February to Eastern Europe to visit Holocaust historic sites. One student also travelled to Washington, D.C. to the Holocaust museum, all as part of the ‘Communicating Holocaust History’ media studies seminar course.
The goal of the hands-on learning is to witness how communities in Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland remember the Holocaust. She says students were shocked at how movies and pop culture references influenced their experiences of iconic images of the Holocaust, such as the gates at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The students also thought about how museums preserve their educational mandate without becoming “just another tourist destination.”
Upon returning from the trip, the students completed a reflective project which was put on display at Western.
“As an instructor, it was one of the most amazing experiences,” she says.
Although many Western engineering students end up working in various corners of the world, Newson, who teaches Civil Engineering & International Development, says there are very few programs that teach students about working in developing countries.
“Civil engineers can help out in the developing world, but we never tell students how to do this,” he says.
The program, which incorporates case studies and guest speakers from across Western and outside the university, also includes an internship in developing countries between the third and fourth year.
During the students’ fourth year, they work on a design project to develop solutions to a problem they learned about during the internship. Last year’s students developed a mobile water treatment plant.
The program is popular among civil engineering students, with almost an even split of male to female students. This is a significant considering female students making up about 20 per cent of the faculty.
Faculty members interested in internationalizing curriculum do not have to reinvent the wheel.
By sharing best practices through sessions such as this, they are able to learn from each other’s successes, says Director of the Teaching Support Centre Debra Dawson.
“These give people concrete examples of how, whether it is taking students for a week or taking students for months, can have a huge impact on their education,” she says.
“It helps to foster the types of engagement and the types of critical thinking that we want our students to have,” she says.
The conference attracted its highest number of faculty participants – 175 people – to the one-day event.