UIUC faculty, students and alumni were well-represented at the annual conference held by the Comparative and International Society (CIES), which aims to increase the “understanding of educational issues, trends, and policies through comparative, intercultural and international perspectives” (CIES website, 2023). This year’s theme was “Improving Education for a More Equitable World”, with a goal of empowering educators and learners to tackle the challenges of the existing inequalities in our educational systems and work toward solutions in education policy and practice that can have real impact on the local, national, regional, and global scale.
To accommodate a growing international audience while also remaining cognizant of pandemic-era precautions, the CIES offered 2 presentation formats – an online component and an in-person component. CGS faculty affiliate Allison Witt, who is the Director of International Programs in the College of Education, presented in the online conference, with a talk titled “Postpandemic futures of Global Citizenship Education for preservice teachers: Challenges and possibilities, which explored another facet of her work in teacher education and study abroad. A talk prepared by Dr. Witt for CGS on Virtual Exchange can be found here: https://cgs.illinois.edu/news/2023-01-27/allison-witt-uiuc-maintaining-online-connection-post-pandemic-world-virtual.
The in-person conference welcomed over 3,000 educators and practitioners to Washington D.C., and among them was Ananya Tiwari, former CGS Graduate Student Advisory Board Member and Global Intersections Awardee. Her presentation on “Missing Girls on the margins? Equity, assessment, and evaluation in India’s education policy” discussed India’s new National Education Policy (NEP), and brought to light the missing voices of India’s most marginalized girls in the country’s discourse on education. The panel, which was centered on equity and marginalized populations, was chaired by CGS faculty affiliate Melissa Goodnight, Assistant Professor in the College of Education.
CGS colleague Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies Outreach Coordinator Mike Yuchuan Shen participated in the poster presentation segment. His poster, “Adapting Teach For America to Taiwan: A Case Study of Social Entrepreneurship in a Rural Educational Setting” investigated how Teach for America’s teacher pipeline model, through the lens of social entrepreneurship framework, is implemented in rural Taiwan, and how the concepts of Teach For Taiwan, which was inspired by Teach for America, can be effectively operated through adaptation and localization and fit into the educational and social context in Taiwan.
Alumna Samaa Haniya, former advisee of CGS faculty affiliate William Cope presented on Distance Learning without Borders: A Study from the Arab World. Now an Assistant Professor in the Education Division, Graduate School of Education and Psychology at Pepperdine University, she examines user experience, instructional models, and learning behaviors taking place in different online courses and e-learning platforms in relation to learner differences and was applying it in the Arab World https://gsep.pepperdine.edu/about/our-people/faculty/samaa-haniya/.
Alumna Mousumi Mukherjee, former advisee of CGS faculty affiliates Cameron McCarthy, Emeritus Faculty Fazal Rizvi, and James Anderson led a session highlighting the launch of her new co-edited book, Global Higher Education During and Beyond COVID-19: Perspectives and Challenges https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-9049-5. It examines how educators were managing the crisis, working towards stability and educational continuity, and reimagining the future of higher education in a post-pandemic world. As an Associate Professor and Deputy Director at the International Institute for Higher Education Research & Capacity Building at O.P. Jindal Global University, she is also the founding Executive Director of the university’s Centre for Comparative and Global Education (CCGE) https://jgu.edu.in/dr-mousumi-mukherjee/. Recently, she has been appointed as an Honorary Senior Fellow of the University of Melbourne Graduate School of Education and International Education Advisory Board member of the Morgan State University, USA.
CGS Associate Director Donna Tonini presented on the U.S. Department of Education Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Program (UISFL) grant project evaluation for Illinois College that she is leading in conjunction with colleagues Kasia Szremski, Associate Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Antonio Sotomayor, Associate Professor, Historian, and Librarian of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. The talk was titled “Integrating Caribbean Culture, Language, and Ecology into the Curriculum (ICCLEC) Initiative: A project evaluation on the implementation of educational innovation.” It discussed the inputs available for the project, the outputs expected, and the anticipated outcomes and impact of the ICCLEC project on Illinois College students and faculty. CGS’ U.S. Department of Education Program Officer was in the audience and was among the many who provided positive feedback on the project.
The 2023 CIES conference in Washington D.C. brought together educators from all over the world and reunited educators with Illinois connections. It was energizing and enlightening to be able to reengage with these education colleagues from all over the globe to work towards “improving education for a more equitable world”.
