Fadia Antabli

Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

Fadia Antabli, an assistant professor of instruction in the Middle East and North African Languages program, used an International Classroom Partnering grant to partner with faculty at La Sorbonne-Nouvelle et l’Université Paris 3. This joint project supported shared language learning opportunities for students from both institutions enrolled in advanced Arabic language courses in Winter and Spring 2021. The activities were designed to expand the global perspectives of students’ learning and increase intercultural competency by engaging with advanced literary readings, analysis and discussions of the work of women writers and the role of Arab women in society. Students were able to learn from one another through icebreaking activities, group discussions, joint assignments, guest lectures and a final celebratory group project and presentation.

Sarah Bartolome

Bienen School of Music

Sarah Bartolome, an associate professor of music education at the Bienen School of Music, used an International Classroom Partnering grant to partner with Dr. Leonard Tan at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The grant was used to foster international dialogue and collaboration across institutions through a “Philosophy of Music Education” course in Winter 2021. Through weekly readings, reflections and discussions, students had an opportunity to engage with the scholarship of music education philosophy and to consider how it might be applied to their own practice as music educators. The course emphasized the importance of cultivating international perspectives on music education, and engaged with scholarship from Singapore, Scandinavia, Australia, Greece, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Rifka Cook 

Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences

During the 2021 spring quarter, Rifka Cook connected her “Spanish 121-3, Special Topic: Gastronomy and Identity” students with peers from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to practice their second language skills. Throughout the course, both student groups participated in language exchange and interviews centered around identity, lifestyles, and cultural and culinary traditions. Cook intended for this collaboration to strengthen her students’ Spanish language skills while simultaneously increasing their global awareness and cultural knowledge.  

“My teaching is designed to ensure that students are equipped to use the foreign language not only professionally but also as a way to reflect on their own culture and others’,” said Cook, an associate professor of Spanish in the department of Spanish and Portuguese, who welcomed 16 students from each university in the course.  After the partnership’s initial success in Spring 2021, Rifka repeated the project in Winter 2022.

Lina Deng

School of Education and Social Policy

In Fall 2020, through a SESP collaboration with Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, students from both institutions worked together to develop an inclusive global workplace plan for a multinational corporation. Students in SESP’s Masters of Science in Learning and Organizational Change (MSLOC) program “are preparing for careers as change leaders and practitioners who must design and implement solutions in a variety of organizations,” explained Lina Deng, an assistant professor of instruction in SESP and co-instructor of the “Leading Global Change” course. 

In addition to conducting country-level cultural analyses, participating in cross-cultural virtual collaborations, and delving into global case studies, students had access to guest speakers, including a faculty member from Peking University and to Jeff Liu, the CEO of Fuyao Glass USA, whose company was used as a case study for the course.

Caroline Egan

Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

Caroline Egan, an assistant professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese, used an International Classroom Partnering grant to partner with Dr. Sarissa Carneiro at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUCC) in Santiago, Chile to develop a four-week graduate level course titled “Corporealities in Colonial Poetry” for the Spring 2022 quarter. The course will be co-taught by Egan and Carniero, and will consist of a collaborative, hybrid class for Northwestern and PUCC graduate students offering an in-depth exploration of Indigenous poetic traditions in colonial Latin America. Topics to be discussed will include the influence of Classical and Renaissance texts and motifs on colonial Latin American literature; the translation and transformation of pre-Columbian Indigenous poetic traditions during the colonial period; and the representation of gender and corporeality in Indigenous poetry.

Thomas F. Geraghty

Pritzker School of Law

A classroom partnership between Addis Ababa University Law School (AAU Law) in Ethiopia and Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Center for International Human Rights (CIHR) explored issues surrounding international access to justice. Building upon a 50-year relationship between the two universities, this newly designed law course examined the development and support of civil and criminal legal aid programs in the United States, Ethiopia and Somalia. 

Throughout the term, teams of Northwestern law students collaborated with faculty and students in Ethiopia and Somalia to examine legal aid development in the targeted countries and determine if programs followed domestic and international standards. Participating students worked together to “formulate recommendations for the continuing support and improvement of legal aid programs in those countries,” said Thomas F. Geraghty, interim director of CIHR. 

Mizanie Abate, associate dean and director of research at AAU Law, was in residence at Northwestern beginning in January 2021 as a Fulbright Scholar and participated in the course.

Wen-pin Hsieh

Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences

In Spring 2021, undergraduate students in the intermediate Chinese language class were paired with students from National Tsing Hua University's Global Program in Taiwan, which enrolls students interested in global engagement and leadership. Wen-pin Hsieh, an assistant professor of instruction, and coordinator of the Chinese Language Program, and Licheng Gu, a professor of instruction — both in the department of Asian languages and cultures — co-taught the course, which was adapted to allow students to collaborate synchronously despite the 13-hour time difference.

“Culturally differentiated attitudes toward education and family [were] the theme of peer discussion and joint class projects,” said Hsieh. These were complemented by an NTHU faculty member’s guest lecture that compared U.S. and Taiwanese perspectives on academic achievement and its impact on family relationships and society.

The course culminated in a joint capstone project, presented in English and Chinese, in which students provided their shared perspectives on how cultural values regarding personal development and academic achievement differ in Taiwan and the U.S.

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences

In Winter 2021, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, a professor of political science and the Crown Chair in Middle East Studies, worked with colleagues at Sciences Po in France and the Graduate Institute in Switzerland to teach graduate students how to build and maintain effective international research networks in the social sciences. The topic of discussion focused on the politics of religion and race in transnational perspective.

“These are important skills that are rarely discussed in graduate training,” said Hurd, who recently hosted a joint webinar with the Graduate Institute and Sciences Po. She found that working virtually with her colleagues supported her ongoing collaborations with the International Research Network on Contextualizing Radicalization: The Politics of Violent Extremism and significantly enhanced her students’ experiences and scholarly connections. Hurd implemented her grant activities through her graduate seminar, “Religion, Race, and Politics: Global and Imperial Perspectives.” After the initial success of the partnership in Winter 2021, Hurd will repeat the project in Spring 2022.

Wen-pin Hsieh

Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

Hong Jiang, an associate professor of instruction in the department of Asian languages and cultures, and Wen-Pin Hsieh, an assistant professor of instruction in the department of Asian languages and cultures, used an International Classroom Partnering grant to partner with Mei-lun Shih at the Center for Teaching and Learning Development at National Taiwan University during the Spring 2022 quarter. The joint language course, “Teaching Cultural Awareness & Language,” will pair Northwestern students studying Mandarin with National Taiwan University students studying English to explore cultural differences in university life between the United States and Taiwan in a bilingual setting.  The course will use a combination of peer discussions, oral presentations, joint assignments, written reports and a guest lecture to provide students with opportunities to practice their non-native languages with one another.  The assignments are designed to improve the quantity and quality of their language abilities when discussing topics such as academic life, career goals, professional and recreational interests, as well as cultural differences between the United States and Taiwan.

Candy Lee

Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications

Medill professor Candy Lee used an International Classroom Partnering grant to partner with Tel Aviv University’s School of Communication during the Spring and Fall 2021 quarters.  The collaboration paired Medill students with students from Tel Aviv University for a content strategy course during Spring 2021 and a leadership trategies course during Fall 2021. These graduate courses were designed to provide integrated marketing communications students with a foundation in how marketing organizations and marketing managers conduct leadership and content strategy in the United States and Israel. By pairing students from both universities with an international peer, students had an opportunity to compare marketing approaches across international borders through a combination of breakout sessions, discussion boards, readings and other assignments.

Mindy Magrane

School of Education and Social Policy (SESP)

SESP’s Mindy Magrane and Universidad Panamericana’s Mariana Garduño recently used an International Classroom Partnering grant to co-teach a virtual project during the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 quarters. The project invited undergraduate students from Magrane’s “Team Dynamics” course at Northwestern and Garduño’s “Advertising Innovation” course at Universidad Panamericana to work together in teams to develop concepts that foster solutions to technological problems through an understanding of human needs and motivations. Students were also asked to reflect on the intercultural component of the collaboration and how it ultimately influenced the design concepts their teams developed. Magrane and Garduño published a report about their collaboration and associated learning outcomes, and plan to host another iteration of the project in Spring 2022.

Kimberly Pusateri

Communication Studies

In Fall 2020, students deepened their understanding of global health communication and leadership decision making through a new collaboration with the National University of Singapore (NUS). Kimberly Pusateri, a lecturer in the department of communication studies and associate director of the Master of Science Health Communication program, worked with NUS colleague Ningxin Wang to create a four-week workshop designed to help their students — together and through their different cultural lenses — analyze decisions made by global leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Students studying decision-making and uncertainty in Singapore [collaborated and shared] expertise with students studying health communication in the United States,” Pusateri explained. Throughout the workshop, students shared specific concepts learned in their areas of study and tackled activities that merged the two disciplinary fields. 

Alessia Ricciardi

Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences

Longtime collaborators Isabelle Alfandary of Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 and Northwestern’s Alessia Ricciardi, a professor of Italian and comparative literature and director of the program of comparative literary studies, used their classroom partnering grant to switch gears during the 2020-21 academic year. In Winter 2021, Alfandary and Ricciardi supplemented their jointly organized annual Summer Institute of Psychoanalysis with a co-taught graduate seminar on literature and philosophy that emphasized the works of Derrida and Agamben. The Summer Institute, with its focus on advancing global discussions of the relationship between psychoanalysis and culture, attracted students from around the world in 2018 and 2019, but was canceled in summer 2020 due to the pandemic.

In an effort to continue existing collaborations and provide students with an international and interdisciplinary learning experience similar to the one offered through the Summer Institute, Ricciardi used her co-teaching opportunity with Alfandary to “offer students access to as many international scholarly opportunities as possible.”