During this time, there is a critical need for a new generation of individuals and future leaders who understand the major challenges to cross-cultural and social issues and who have the capabilities, commitment and grit to address them. To strengthen the development of social skills Crossing Borders Education carefully crafted a variety of Intercultural and Diversity Resources for educators, teachers, coaches or community organizers that can be easily custom tailored to the specific needs of diverse institutions. They are designed to strengthen Internationalization and Diversity efforts through curricular and co-curricular activities, dialogues and events. The CBE Learning Framework predominantly focuses on developing skills of three AAC&U VALUE Rubrics (Global Learning, Intercultural Competence, Civic Engagement) and 15 learning areas.
Target Areas
Our resources are created for following areas:
Why include Diversity and Internationalization Resources?
Crossing Borders Education’s resources support to respond to the following trends at educational institutions:
- Many educators are asking for a stronger focus on diversity learning and intercultural skills in order to harness the potential and tackle the challenges of international classrooms and diverse campuses.
- Higher educational institutions often acknowledge the necessity of internationalization and diversity focuses in their mission statements, yet many are lacking resources to deliver on those objectives in the curriculum.
- Our current world situation puts an imperative on higher educational institutions to equip students for the diverse and complex societies and world they will live and work in.
Program aims
The CBE resources are designed to serve American and European institutions in reaching the following objectives:
- To support constructive intercultural and interracial communication on campus.
- To support faculty and staff in the creation of classroom activities where students can address intercultural and diversity issues in safe and constructive ways.
- To help overcome the separation between students of different nationalities, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds and create meaningful peer-to-peer interactions between groups.
- To support the inclusion of intercultural sessions into the curriculum, helping development of key social and leadership skills.
- To increase student awareness of existing international programs and the personal impact they have on the personal development and career of students.
Program strategies
Our resources combine following educational and interactive approaches:
- To link the fields of intercultural learning, diversity training and international programs.
- To use intercultural learning as a container to help students develop skills such as critical thinking, openness to other perspectives, intercultural empathy and self-awareness.
- To use film of real-life intercultural encounters to ease the way for meaningful, real and constructive peer-to-peer student interactions.
- To connect international students with domestic students in small group classroom activities, helping overcome international student isolation.
Program method
The Diversity and Internationalization Program assists students to grow and develop in the following areas:
- Intercultural Understanding: Support participants’ openness to hear and value a variety of perspectives and understand the power of diversity.
- Intercultural Communication: Grow students’ skills and capacities to communicate across cultural differences.
- Global Awareness: Increase students’ awareness to see the interconnectedness of human, economic and world issues.
- Self Awareness: Enhance students’ abilities to communicate about personal challenges and to learn how to deal with diversity issues.
Progress made in these areas will increase students’ resourcefulness to operate effectively at our diverse institutions, to work in a global economy and to live in our increasingly interdependent world.
View our pages CBE Site Map, Resources Strategies and suggestions for a Session Structure.
