Programs in the Illinois Global Institute (IGI) engage students through a variety of outreach efforts. The Center for Global Studies and its collaborators leverage the campus expertise and library resources at the University of Illinois to support the development of international and area studies programming in colleges across the country through the International Studies Research Lab (ISRL), which provides access to important US Department of Education Title VI resources to institutions without direct access to these important grant funds. The ISRL constitutes a unique resource that benefits college students throughout the United States.
The purpose of the ISRL is to create opportunities for faculty and administrators in 2-year colleges and 4-year universities to access the University of Illinois Library extensive collections –the largest of any institution of higher education in the United States– and consult subject experts in the library. Participants can then utilize these resources to expand global studies curricula, improve language programs, broaden the scope of their library holdings, and expand international studies or student programs, or to complete something brand new.
While the 2020 and 2021 labs were entirely virtual, the 2023 lab was in a hybrid format with an option for participants to visit the UIUC campus in-person for a week of their choosing to fully explore and utilize library resources. This summer marked the eighth consecutive year that the lab has been held. This year’s lab was conducted from June 5-August 4, 2023, the longest ISRL to date. The lab timeline was extended to this 8-week-long program in which researchers accessed the University of Illinois Library collections and utilized the in-person research opportunity if desired. The lab was hosted by the Center for Global Studies (CGS) in collaboration with the International & Area Studies Library (IASL) and was co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies; the European Union Center; and the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center.
In addition to utilizing Library resources, ISRL Fellows are connected to subject specialists and experts on international studies and affairs. A highlight of the 2023 lab was the Study Abroad panel workshop that kicked off this summer of research. For this workshop, ISRL welcomed the speakers Nellie Khalil and Mukila Maitha from Harper College; D. Rose Elder and Nathan Crook from Ohio State ATI; and Theopolies Moton III from UIUC to present. These three presentations focused on international education, leading study abroad programs, and faculty development programs with a focus on previous endeavors through their institutions in Africa. Opportunities like these and the various individual consultations with subject specialists across topics and regions make ISRL a unique place of learning and growth for Fellows.
The 2023 ISRL hosted 8 participants from around the United States – as far east as New Jersey, as far west as Washington, and as far south as Texas. The intention of research during the lab is to benefit students at the ISRL Fellows’ home institutions. Fellows come from institutions of all sizes and serve students from a variety of backgrounds, with twenty-five percent of this year’s researchers coming from Minority-Serving Institutions. The flexibility of ISRL allows for the examination and application of international study in many different capacities. Julie Moore is an English professor at Green River College, an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPI) and returning participant to ISRL. This year, her project focused on a revision of an introductory English course around the theme “Cultural Impacts on Education.” Carolina Rocha, another returning researcher this year, spent the lab developing a syllabus for a new course titled Mexican National Identity and Society. This course is an important contribution to the internationalization of curricular offerings at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Topics and focuses for the ISRL can greatly vary by output and by regional focus. Jayanti Tamm, a first-time participant in the ISRL, completed a project that contributes to curricula globalization efforts at Ocean County College, a community college in New Jersey. She developed content for a course titled Women in Literature intending to better connect students to the ancient world and other cultures with a new unit on history’s first named poet, the Akkadian priestess Enheduanna.
The 2023 ISRL resulted in a total of 7 projects across varying topics and different regional focuses. These projects, as well as materials from previous years, are free to download from the university’s institutional repository, IDEALS. IDEALS makes ISRL projects discoverable through different search platforms like Google Scholar and the University of Illinois Library online catalog. In total, ISRL projects have been downloaded over 22,000 times and this continues to increase.
More information about the 2023 ISRL and ISRL Fellows is available on the CGS website. For notifications and announcements about next year’s lab, subscribe to the ISRL mailing list. If you have any questions please email the Global Studies Librarian, Dr. Steve Witt, at swwitt@illinois.edu.
The International Studies Research Lab is made possible through Title VI funds provided by the US Department of Education.
