UM-Dearborn adds global citizenship as university priority

To help focus on giving all students on campus cultural experience opportunities, the University of Michigan-Dearborn has officially added global citizenship to its Vision 2020 campuswide strategic goals and priorities.

The new priority reads, “Diversity, Inclusion and Global Citizenship: Establish a national reputation as a campus community that prepares students to thrive in a diverse world, able to appreciate, navigate and cross boundaries.”

Associate Provost Ilir Miteza said transformative experiences that come from global learning opportunities are essential. A couple years ago he noticed that, despite the rich diversity on campus, some of UM-Dearborn’s cross-cultural experience opportunities, such as study abroad, lagged behind other universities.

“When looking at campuses that had a healthy and vibrant study abroad program, we saw that they also had a healthy global learning tree with many different options — study abroad was only one branch. Healthy trees have healthy branches,” he said. “That’s when I realized that we needed to make a far bigger investment to global learning as a whole.”

Miteza, along with Special Counsel to the Chancellor for Inclusion and Strategic Projects Ann Lampkin-Williams, created the Global Learning Advisory Council (GLAC), a group comprised of faculty and staff with experience and passion for global education.

GLAC has also focused on researching the best ways to connect students with, provide resources to, and promote additional closer-to-home opportunities — like Alternative Spring Break, Talent Gateway opportunities, student organization volunteer work, global-focused courses and learning from fellow students — for the campus community.