Global Engagement
International Education / Geography / Global Studies
Globally engaged...
I am a professor of geography and international studies at Columbus State University in Georgia, USA. I also hold the Mildred Miller Fort Foundation Eminent Scholar and Chair of International Education at CSU. Global learning is one of the outcomes I value most through my teaching and administration of international education at CSU.
I have been a SIO (senior international officer) for 23 years and am experienced in education abroad, international enrollment management, international student and scholar services, and international/regional studies.
Global learning is a topic that is discussed in higher education circles. Whether its pedagogical design, experiential learning through education abroad, or co-curricular intercultural campus programming, global engagement present in American higher education.
For me, a geographer, being globally engaged is also connected to a sense of place and identity in locations around the world. For me, it was through my immersion in other cultures and language that developed my understandings of the world. This was certainly true as postgraduate student in the UK thirty years ago and as a doctoral student doing extensive field research in the favelas of Brazil in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Today, I aim to give students a global skill set for professional and personal success in the twenty-first century. In terms of career-readiness, students need to be able to engage with diverse groups of people, cultures, and perspectives. The soft skills (and soft diplomacy) learned while abroad or with befriending an international student on the CSU campus shapes students' experiences in ways that cannot be learned in the classroom alone.
My role as the head of Spencer House in Oxford, England also gives me the opportunity to mentor my students through intellectual and cultural journeys My students engage in tutorial study at Regent's Park, St. Anne's, and St. Catherine's college at The University and participate in academic and cultural exchange at Oxford Brookes University.
Similarly, I am leading CSU's international initiatives at the European Studies Program in the Château de Pourtalès in Strasbourg, France. I oversee language immersion in Sevilla, Spain and Cuernavaca, Mexico, service-learning in Guatemala and Costa Rica, and study abroad and internships in São Paulo, Brazil. East Asia is also a core area of study abroad and internship opportunities, including South Korea and Japan (and soon-to-be Vietnam).
Please contact me if you have any questions. Media inquires can also be made at my contact email address below.