UC Davis’ Seminar Abroad in Nepal recently earned “highly commended” status in the category of Progressive Education Delivery, as judged by Professionals in International Education, or PIE, an independent media, recruitment and events company.

The international education sector should raise its ambitions and confront sustainability and ecological problems it is partially responsible for, industry stakeholders at The PIE Live have suggested.

IIE and UC Davis created the Future of International Education: Leadership Perspectives from Around the World as an online series for candid discussion among senior university leaders, to facilitate region-specific and global insights about how the pandemic is reshaping global engagement for higher education. Based on the series, this briefing paper covers four key themes for the future of international education.

The inaugural forum is set for October 21 3-4 p.m., is open to the UC Davis community, and will be hosted on Zoom. It will showcase UC Davis activities that contribute to the SDGs—featuring faculty and student presentations—and provide specific resources and upcoming opportunities.Registration is free and is open to members of the UC Davis community including faculty, researchers, scholars, staff, students, and alumni.

In the field of global education, change is inevitable. The COVID-19 pandemic reminds us how interconnected the world is, how global challenges manifest themselves locally and across borders, and how crises exacerbate other challenges such as poverty, inequalities, climate change, political tensions, and educational needs. The multiplicity of challenges reinforces the critical need for students to develop global awareness, skills, knowledge, and sensibilities – all of which make global education more important than ever.

UC Davis has been named a finalist for two PIEoneer Awards, which celebrate innovation and achievement across all components of international education, by The PIE News, a leading independent media company for a global community of professionals. For the 2020 awards, UC Davis has been selected as a finalist of the Progressive Education Delivery Award and the Sustainability International Impact Award.

From mitigating food insecurity to coordinating COVID-19 treatment trials, UC Davis alumae Michelle Lee and Emily Fehrman are putting their degrees—and global learning experiences working alongside communities—to work during the pandemic.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Walter Leal, a UC Davis distinguished professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the College of Biological Sciences, realized it was in the public’s best interest to have access to the medical experts at UC Davis. Given the state’s stay-at-home orders, he decided to organize and host virtual COVID-19 public awareness symposiums featuring colleagues and longtime collaborators as panelists and guest speakers.

The two-time Academic All-American and 2019 team captain Tiger Garcia pursues the world’s most prestigious international postgraduate scholarship, The Rhodes Scholarship.

Jesse Rodriguez, B.A. ’13, MBA ’19, was exposed to the importance of global education after he completed a capstone project in Chile for his MBA program.