Outcomes
More than 20 faculty and staff members representing various academic colleges and key campus units were brought together to form the Global Strategy Committee. This committee worked to catalog and identify past and current global engagement activities across campus, benchmark Nebraska’s position compared to peers, and contribute to the creation of the new strategy, Forward Together, which was publicly released in February 2021. Four primary goals were established, each with accompanying initiatives and objectives:
- Future and world ready: Reimagine what constitutes a global experience for Nebraska’s students, both inside and outside the classroom.
- Partner for impact: Support and incentivize contributions toward solving world challenges through strategic partnerships.
- Bring the best to Nebraska: Be a magnet for the best and brightest students, scholars, faculty, and staff from around the world.
- Strong foundation: Strengthen the university’s global affairs infrastructure and operations to anchor engagement for years to come.
Significant progress has been made since the rollout towards realizing these goals. For example, Nebraska has announced the creation of a new Global Education Center, made possible by private funding; restructured its Education Abroad Office into a Global Experiences Office while jump-starting engagement with a new Global Experiential Learning Fund; and launched an initiative to rethink how it recruits and supports international students.
“Participation in the ACE Internationalization Lab came at exactly the right time for us. It gave us the tools, structure, and motivation to wrestle with the hard questions about global engagement that resulted in our institution’s first comprehensive global strategy.”—Josh Davis, Associate Vice Chancellor for Global Affairs and Senior International Officer, University of Nebraska–Lincoln