Susan O'Rourke | November 14, 2023
This year, UNC World View celebrates its 25th anniversary of serving K-12 and community college educators across North Carolina and beyond. UNC World View equips educators with global knowledge, best practices and resources, so they can prepare students to engage in our interconnected and diverse world. Since its inception, UNC World View has served more than 25,000 educators from more than 100 counties.
In October, educators gathered at the Friday Conference Center for the World View K-12 Global Education Symposium, “Global Indigeneity: Indigenous Cultures, Peoples, and Places.” UNC faculty, community partners and K-12 educators explored the meaning of global Indigeneity while examining the complexities of Indigenous identity and life. They investigated the commonalities among the world’s Indigenous and Native peoples, as well as what makes them profoundly diverse and different from one another.
Select educators are continuing to deepen their knowledge of global and local Indigenous cultures this year through the UNC World View Fellows program. This year-long program connects K-12 teachers with UNC faculty and resources to develop global competencies and support them as they develop standards-aligned lesson plans. Committed to sharing this knowledge and resources with the wider community, UNC World View publishes these open-access lesson plans each spring.
“Through developing my lesson plans and seeing my students engage in a difficult topic I have gained a lot of confidence [as an educator]. Overall, my participation in the [Fellows program] has broadened my understanding of Sustainable Development Goals and has helped me to integrate these concepts into my teaching practice in a more meaningful and courageous way,” one Global Fellow said.
UNC World View also brings global research right into NC classrooms through the Teacher-Student Initiative. Last year, educators in the initiative collaborated with faculty from the Galápagos Science Center and strategic partners at the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador to show students how truly “global is local.” Teachers learned from faculty experts and received one-on-one coaching from World View to develop lesson plans that immerse students in Ecuador’s diverse ecology and culture. At the end of the program, faculty joined NC classrooms virtually to discuss the research. One educator from a rural community in NC shared how the UNC World View program helped her students make connections between the environmental research presented and local agriculture. Other educators observed how global education can affect students’ academic goals and cultural curiosity, and that students often gain empathy and understanding.
“As students became more active participants in their own learning, they began to gain the timely awareness of how interconnected we all are on a global scale. They began to realize that we all share common issues, that no one truly lives in isolation, and how we must all work together to devise solutions to those issues that will ensure positive outcomes for everyone,” one participant said.
UNC World View also partners with community colleges across the state through the Scholar of Global Distinction program, which was developed in collaboration with community college leaders and now includes 34 official “Scholar of Global Distinction campuses.” This program supports instructors through an annual symposium, the student and educator program and curriculum grants funded by UNC-Chapel Hill’s six Title VI National Resource Centers for area and language studies funded by the U.S. Department of Education. This program provides students with diverse global activities and courses so that they may obtain a credential from UNC World View.
Scholar of Global Distinction students affirmed the positive intellectual and personal impact this program has had on them. “The program gave me knowledge [of] how to approach globalization topics in my classes and how to approach people in my life; it took away my fear. It educated me and gave me confidence to grow on my own,” one participant said.
On Nov. 3, UNC World View hosted its annual Community College Symposium, “Preparing Tomorrow’s Global Workforce.”
Barbara Stephenson, UNC’s vice provost for global affairs and chief global officer, introduced the symposium by sharing how important community college educators are in developing future-ready and culturally competent students who can thrive in the increasingly global workforce.
“The students in [NC] classrooms are our future industry leaders, policymakers, researchers, elected officials and community leaders – and some will become teachers themselves,” she said. “It is important for students to be equipped with the skills, knowledge and experience to become global problem-solvers when they leave our classrooms.”
UNC World View invites the community to honor educators across NC who prepare globally competent and future-ready students in celebrating its 25th anniversary on Nov. 30, at the Richardson Lecture and Reception. This annual lecture is open to the public and an opportunity for people across the community to take a deep dive into global issues. Arv Malhotra, H. Allen Andrew Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship from the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, will present the anniversary lecture “Going ‘Back to the Future’ of Work in the AI Age,” exploring the impact of this technology, from schools to businesses.
This fall, Barbara Stephenson, Vice Provost of Global Affairs and Charlé LaMonica, Director of UNC World View, announced that UNC World View will work within the Office of the Vice Provost of Global Affairs, which will lead to even greater collaboration between global resources and expertise on campus and educators- statewide and beyond.