In this article, multiple faculty program leaders reflect on how the COVID-19 pandemic forced a reimagining of the student global engagement opportunities they manage at Elon.
Phillip Motley, associate professor of communication design and faculty fellow for service-learning and community engagement, partnered with other Elon colleagues to co-author a peer-reviewed article that was published in the summer 2021 edition of “The Global Impact Exchange: A Quarterly Publication of Diversity Abroad”.
Motley collaborated with Amy Allocco, associate professor of religious studies and director of the Multifaith Scholars Program, Mathew Gendle, professor of psychology and director of Project Pericles, and Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler, professor of psychology and director of the Center for Research on Global Engagement, on an article entitled “COVID-19: A Catalyst for Rethinking Global Engagement”. This article is available for download here.
The article’s abstract is as follows:
The COVID-19 pandemic forced a reimagining of global engagement opportunities and reminded us that global education should encompass not only student mobility but also an internationalized curriculum at home with an emphasis on community engagement, cultural diversity, and interdependence (Agnew & Kahn, 2014; Caruana, 2014; Hartman, 2020). At our institution over 80 percent of students study abroad, and we are also deeply committed to local civic engagement and community partnerships. As travel ceased we were inspired to augment these partnerships. Rather than reducing or eliminating opportunities, enterprising faculty instead redesigned their offerings to further diversity and global learning goals through local community engagement.