In March, four faculty and staff members were honored by Chancellor Gary S. May as Chancellor’s Awards for International Engagement recipients, one member of the Academic Senate and one member of the Academic Federation received the Academic Senate’s Excellence in Teaching in Study Abroad Awards, and this year’s recipients of various Global Affairs grant and development programs were announced.

UC Davis has been named as the only university to earn the 2020 Platinum Institutional Award for Global Learning, Research and Engagement from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, or APLU, the highest honor from APLU’s Commission on International Initiatives.

The Global Education for All Fellowship is a campuswide student committee created to further develop and implement Global Education for All—a goal aiming to provide 100% of UC Davis undergraduate, graduate, and professional students with global learning opportunities. The inaugural cohort of Global Education for All Fellows is building upon the efforts of previous student advisory committees.

UC Davis has been named one of only four U.S. universities to receive NAFSA’s 2020 Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Campus Internationalization. This honor is bestowed annually to leading higher education institutions for excellence in internationalization efforts—both on campus and across the world. 

Due to the current global health situation, and with the safety and well-being of Fellows and Partners as the highest priority, the U.S. Department of State has postponed the 2020 Mandela Washington Fellowship until summer 2021. Applicants for the 2020 Fellowship who were selected as Finalists and Alternates have been notified that they are eligible to defer their participation until summer 2021.

After working alongside two Visiting Fulbright Scholars from Romania and a visiting international scholar from Japan, UC Davis global disease biology major Amanda Nguyen was inspired to apply and was later selected, for the highly competitive NIGINTERN undergraduate student internship in Japan to continue her research on the neurophysiology of itch and nerves.  

UC Davis Mandela Washington Fellow Winfred Mwende Mutinda (2019, Kenya) shares her experience as part of the six-week program at UC Davis, and how her participation shapes her mission to inspire and lead young people to transform the continent of Africa.

Through the SDG framework, which provides concrete steps to achieve sustainable development across the planet’s economic, social and environmental dimensions, inaugural SDG Interns Christal Juarez and Jeanett Lor are working with a shared global ethos and connecting with people throughout the world.

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. 

For the second time in the past three years, UC Davis has been recognized as a top producer of Gilman Scholars for the 2018–19 academic year—with the university producing the third-highest number of Gilman Scholars, at 51, among all U.S. universities with over 15,000 undergraduates.

In the spring, we asked UC Davis Mandela Washington Fellowship alumni to tell us how they were handling the COVID-19 pandemic through their professional work, community service efforts, and personally from their homes in countries throughout Africa. Here in their own words, six fellows share their experiences and inspiration.

UC Davis is the lead institution on a global classroom pilot project, partnering with Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China to create a framework for teaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals using a global classroom model that has been developed and utilized by Tecnológico de Monterrey and will be enhanced by UC Davis and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The Peace Corps announced today (Feb. 26) that UC Davis ranks No. 23 among large universities on its 2020 list of top volunteer-producing colleges and universities. Currently, 42 campus alumni are serving as Peace Corps volunteers in countries around the world. Since the Peace Corps’ founding in 1961, over 1,550 UC Davis alumni have served as Peace Corps volunteers.

International scholar and biochemical scientist at the UC Davis MIND Institute, Paulina Carmona-Mora, has a passion for science education that has led her to connect with and mentor people around the world.  

On campus and around the world, UC Davis faculty, students, and staff are addressing all 17 SDGs in various teaching, research, and service activities. The inaugural Grants for Advancing SDGs support work already underway and spark new partnerships. The five selected projects contribute towards 14 of the SDGs—locally and globally—bringing together more than 12 UC Davis colleges, school, and units, and more than 10 external partners.

Veterinary medicine doctoral student Amanda Crofton is helping animals and people—and advancing global education for all—right in our own backyard.

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. He decided to organize and host virtual COVID-19 public awareness symposiums featuring colleagues and longtime collaborators as panelists and guest speakers.

The University of California, Davis, is included on the list of U.S. colleges and universities that produced the most 2019-20 Fulbright U.S. Scholars, announced today by The Chronicle of Higher Education. UC Davis ranks among a list of the top 21 highest producers of Fulbright U.S. Scholars among doctoral institutions, with seven scholars from UC Davis earning Fulbright awards for 2019-20.

Biochemistry & molecular biology major Jonathan Ho recently secured over $50,000 in funding for the Knights Landing Community Garden project. Learn more about his UC Davis Global Aggies story, which starts with him addressing food insecurity among fellow Singapore soldiers.

Thanks to her experiences growing up in Taiwan, immigrating to the U.S., interning with the US Environmental Protection Agency via the UC Davis Washington Program, and studying environmental science in three countries, ESM major Annie Chen is ready to take on the world.