CCSP student Kezia Gopaul-Knights presents her research at the May International research event.
In May the Gevirtz School celebrated its international reach with a packed Don Gevirtz Boardroom and the event “Around the Globe in Eight Lightning Presentations.” Based on the format of UC Santa Barbara’s Grad Slam, a contest in which graduate students present research in three minutes or less, the event attested to the breadth and depth of the Gevirtz School’s commitment to international education.
The event began with members of the Teacher Education Program (TEP) discussing its teacher exchange program that began this school year. Twenty-two teacher candidates (eleven from the U.S. and eleven from abroad: Denmark, Singapore, and Switzerland) participated in this exchange. TEP director Tine Sloan made the case for the power of global knowledge for teacher candidates once they get back to California; two of the participants in the exchange, Brendan Fereday and Elise Berg, provided information about their own experiences.
Reem Alfrayan, Gary Haddow, and Kezia Gopaul-Knights, Ph.D. students from the Department of Education and the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology, talked about their international research projects in Saudi Arabia, Liberia, and Trinidad. Professor Andres Consoli discussed “International Engagement, Ground Zero for Clutral Competence/Humility” as it related to immigration and Guatemala. Professor Russ Rumberger discussed the just-beginning “Cities Project: An International Study of College and Career Readiness.” And visiting scholar Wu Zheng presented the talk “Chinese Students and US Campuses.”
Gevirtz School faculty and students are highly engaged in a variety of international projects across the globe including collaborative research, prominent lectures/workshops, teacher/student exchanges, and philanthropic projects. The extent of the School’s internationalization for the 2013-14 academic year included:
• 29 visiting international students (over 8% of our graduate student population) representing 13 countries across 5 continents;
• 29 visiting scholars representing 10 countries across 4 continents;
• 22 teacher education students (11 UCSB students, 11 international) will be involved in exchanges among, the U.S., Denmark, Singapore, and Switzerland;
• 8 Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with institutions across 4 continents.