At this historical moment universities are facing the challenges and the rewards of preparing students to live and work in a complex, highly interactive and technologically mediated world, where we are often on the move – in transit, out of place – as students abroad, as tourists, as immigrants, as soldiers, as professionals. A world where the urgent issues like environmental degradation, poverty and disease travel across borders and require many perspectives and many voices to address them productively.

Courses offer more and more comparative knowledge and research. The Transnationalizing LGBT Studies initiative, for example, invites teachers and students alike to analyze how sexualities and genders are defined, understood and performed in different historical contexts to recognize alternative constructs and to excavate their own assumptions.

There is much to know (lesson of things) and much to make sense of (lesson of grammar).

And the presence of international students on campus and in our courses provides an immediate and engaged opportunity to enhance our global learning, to learn more about other lives, other political and social systems, and to connect across differences and through surprising connections.

So yes, we need to provide resources to support those international students so they succeed here, and we also need to find imaginative ways in our curriculum and pedagogy to bring forward the knowledge, perspectives and histories these students bring to us.

Margaret Himley

Associate provost for international education and engagement

Published on March 25, 2012 at 12:00 pm