This month, we are thrilled to feature Tiffany A. Overby, M.A in our UNC World View Global Educator Spotlight. Tiffany is an English professor at Guilford Technical Community College (GTCC) who serves as one of the co-coordinators of the college’s Scholar of Global Distinction program.
Tiffany shares that she appreciates the diversity of careers for which GTCC prepares its students. She explains, while the main campus “is located in Jamestown, North Carolina,” GTCC has
“several satellite campuses throughout Greensboro and High Point. It is the 4th largest community college in the system and serves approximately 27,000 curriculum, career technical, continuing education, middle college, and career and college promise students throughout North Carolina. Though GTCC offers a plethora of transfer programs with articulation and joint admission agreements throughout the UNC System (including C-STEP with UNC Chapel Hill), [they] are most known for [their] career technical programs like nursing, dental science, aviation, manufacturing, welding, and entertainment technology.”
These academic and technical programs prepare students to enter the global workforce, including at international companies with locations in North Carolina. Tiffany emphasizes that the diversity of students further enhances the GTCC community, noting that “[they] serve students from 93 countries around the globe so to say [that they] have a diverse student population is an understatement.” GTCC thus is a center where students learn about global issues in their classes and from the diverse perspectives of their peers.
Tiffany noted how impactful global experiences and education can be – both for students and instructors! She explained that one of the experiences that inspired her to incorporate more global perspectives into her courses was the 2017 UNC World View Study Visit to South Africa. Tiffany shared:
My first experience with UNC World View was through the study visit program. GTCC has partnered with UNC World View for several years to send a faculty member on one of the annual study visits, and in 2017, I was the faculty member selected to visit South Africa. Having never travelled internationally before and always wanting to go to Africa specifically, this was a great experience for me…Prior to the 2-week trip…, I participated in the UNC World View seminar “Stories of Africa” keynoted by William Kamkwamba, author of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. This particular seminar was impactful because Kamkwamba demonstrated that innovation lives within all of us regardless of circumstances. He…taught me about resilience and perseverance, and simultaneously caused me to view my “first world” experience through a new lens. This particular session…prepared me for what was to come when I travelled to South Arica several months later.
Tiffany came back to GTCC motivated to bring global perspectives to her ENG 111: Writing and Inquiry course and shared just how one seemingly small change to the course could impact students at the college. Tiffany explained that, “after [her] study visit to South Africa” with UNC World View,” she left energized with the goal of “globalizing ENG 111 through [their] All College Read (ACR)” program, in which all ENG 111 students read a selected novel. Tiffany knew that, “[since] the text is required, the correct selection would have the capacity to get students, faculty, and staff members across the college to think about another culture in a way that they had not previously.” As a result, Tiffany “proposed that [their] 2018-2019 selection be Born a Crime: Stories of a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah. The selection was eventually chosen and supported by the ACR committee and the English and Humanities Departments. The next steps were to develop assignments for faculty to incorporate into their course modules and to organize global focus events around South Africa and South African culture. As a result of the success of this particular ACR, Greensboro’s Public Library adopted the text the next year for its ‘One City One Book’ campaign and promoted the book and global events throughout the city in the fall of 2019.”
We at UNC World View are amazed by how Tiffany’s leadership at GTCC not only helped her students learn more about South African culture and history but also opened doors for other members of the community to do the same!
Tiffany has not stopped there! She currently is integrating more global perspectives as she focuses her current ENG 111 course on “education.” This course will call on “students to think about education and how the social and political bureaucracies of education impact them and can affect the trajectories of their lives.”
For Tiffany, collaboration is key in the planning process. She noted that, “this summer [she] adopted a project developed by a colleague, Josh Lane, and for the fall semester, I added a global twist to it. Since the students in [her] course spend a large portion of time thinking about how education in the United States impacts them, [she] wanted them to think about how education in other countries impacts their citizens – this idea is connected to what I learned about education in South Africa.”
Collaboration has also been a critical part of the success of the Scholar of Global Distinction program at GTCC. Tiffany and Lindley Swift recently were named Co-Coordinator’s of the SGD program and have been “[expanding] on the amazing work that Melissa Maley has done as the former coordinator.” The support for global education at GTCC extends out through the community of faculty, administrators, and leaders. Tiffany appreciates that “[she and Lindley] have been fortunate to maintain the support of senior leadership at the college and have also been appointed as the co-chairs of the Global Education and Literacy Committee (GELC), which [she] chaired previously. Since [GTCC does] not have an international education department like some colleges do, the GELC has allowed [Lindley and Tiffany] to have a team of dedicated faculty and staff that support [their] initiatives and help [their] global programs grow.” She notes that “[they] have been very fortunate to have the support of administration, [including Dr. Beth Pitonzo and Dr. Steve Turner] when it comes to providing opportunities for professional development and fostering domestic global experiences. UNC World View has continued to support Tiffany’s work in global education, and we were honored to have Tiffany and Lindley join the UNC World View Global Education Leaders Virtual Conference this past June.
Tiffany encourages other educators looking to globalize their courses and their schools that it is possible!
Tiffany shared a few of the key principles that can help empower other educators to take the first steps:
- Use Readily Available Resources: “There are so many resources available to assist faculty in so many areas. For example, my co-coordinator and I recently connected faculty at GTCC to UNC Worldview’s Global modules and the Asia Society’s Global CTE Toolkit for globalizing courses.”
- Consider Scale: “I would also note that it is not as big of an undertaking as it may seem. Globalizing a course can be as simple as taking an assignment or project that an instructor already uses and tweaking it to incorporate ideas and concepts from another culture.”
- Seek Support: “I would also suggest reaching out to global faculty for support, whether within the instructor’s institution or beyond. In the short time that I have been a co-coordinator for the Global Scholars, I have met so many faculty members across the state and even in Florida who are always offering support. The resources are absolutely available.”
- Career-Readiness at the Core: “For educators or administrators…Consider the impact that incorporating global ideas could have on their respective college communities. How can curated and intentional connections to other cultures affect the employability of students, cultural competence in emerging industries, and overall human empathy?….Global education works to better prepare students for the changing world in which they will find themselves once they leave our institutions, and as educators, preparing students for the future is the standard!”
Thank you to Tiffany for your leadership at GTCC and in the Scholar of Global Distinction community! We so appreciate the far-ranging impact your work has had in bringing new perspectives to students and preparing them for the global workforce!