Hosted by the Isabella Cannon Global Education Center and campus partners, the week invites students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members to examine and connect through cross-cultural and interdisciplinary experiences.

IEW highlights the strengths of international education and exchange. �鶹��Ƶ’s celebration aligns with the university’s relationship-rich, engaged learning, helping us develop a deeper understanding of our interconnected world.

Week-at-a-glance

The full schedule is available on the International Education Week website. This year’s schedule features a mix of cultural, academic, and community-building events.

Highlights include:

• Global Flow Yoga at Sunset (Nov. 8)
• Research in Global Contexts: Student and Faculty Symposium (Nov. 9)
• French Poetry Slam (Nov. 9)
• Traditional West African Dance and Drums (Nov. 10)
• Global Film Series (Nov. 10)
• Minute to Win It! Meet and Greet (Nov. 11)
• International Cheese Festival (Nov. 11)
• International Coffee Hour and International Books and Authors (Nov. 12)
• Amici dell’Italia (Nov. 12)

Why it matters

IEW provides a focused moment to elevate global learning that happens across �鶹��Ƶ every day, in classrooms, residence halls, student organizations, and the Alamance County community.

IEW’s core idea is that international education thrives on meaningful relationships, shared experiences, and collective purposes.

“At its core, this year’s theme and events highlight how global learning is strengthened when students, faculty, staff, and partners come together across cultures, disciplines, and perspectives,” said Jessica Gisclair, associate dean of global education.

�鶹��Ƶ continues to lead nationally in study abroad and Study USA participation as part of the �鶹��Ƶ Experiences.

Most IEW events are open to the entire �鶹��Ƶ community. Some programs require an RSVP or have limited capacity. Visit the IEW website for times, locations, and updates. For questions, contact the Isabella Cannon Global Education Center at 336-278-6700 or visit Sato Commons 360 during business hours.

Bethanny Sudibyo, assistant teaching professor of Spanish in �鶹��Ƶ’s Department of World Languages and Cultures, is building a bridge between comprehension and community.

Sudibyo’s community engagement (CE) course, Spanish for Healthcare, lets students learn and use Spanish in a practical setting through a partnership with Open Door Clinic in Burlington, North Carolina.

“It was always one of my goals to have a community engagement component,” said Sudibyo. “I didn’t want students to simply learn in the classroom because I think if we are thinking about language as a way to connect with people and to help the community, we should also put that into practice.”

The purpose of the course is to prepare students to interact with patients who may not be comfortable communicating in English in a healthcare setting. After a few weeks of preparation, students are required to volunteer for two sessions, doing tasks such as shadowing a Spanish translator, translating promotional materials into Spanish and supporting patients who may be more comfortable speaking Spanish while acting as an interpreter between the patient and healthcare professional.

“I honestly didn’t know what to expect,” said Hannah Nunez ’28, a public health major, who took Spanish for Healthcare in the fall of 2025. “But I really liked connecting with patients and having one-on-one conversations with them. You could tell that they were very appreciative.
It is very nerve-wracking. But honestly, they don’t care if you mess up.
It’s more so that you’re trying.”

The course was pitched to make language learning a more hands-on skill. �鶹��Ƶ as an institution is passionate about professional experience, especially healthcare-focused programming such as nursing or physician assistant. By combining this with language learning, Sudibyo turns Spanish into a skill that can be utilized directly, strengthening practical skills and community building before students even enter the professional world. And the Open Door Clinic was open to facilitating that learning.

At first, Sudibyo was hesitant to establish a partnership due to possible ethical concerns within the medical field. However, one of her students in the first cohort of the class was a student coordinator for Open Door Clinic and was able to connect Sudibyo with the clinic, which assured her that the clinic itself was a learning space where students could build real-life experience and help patients in any capacity.

“I think the beautiful thing about the clinic is that it’s very community-centered. Everyone is volunteering,” said Sudibyo. “If you’re working in the healthcare professions, you’re serving a community, and you need to know who the community members are.”

Currently, the class is only offered at one intermediate level of Spanish in the fall semesters. In the future, Sudibyo hopes that she can get a second level to keep volunteers connected with the Open Door Clinic during the spring semester, both further building the students’ language skills and growing their connection to �鶹��Ƶ’s surrounding community.

“A university as an institution can sometimes feel very disconnected with the community that it is in,” said Sudibyo. “I think it is important for students to know the stories of the people who are living around campus. It’s an important thing to bridge that gap between higher education and the community.”

For Spanish students interested in connecting their language learning with service in the local Alamance area but may be intimidated by using the language in hands-on situations, this class offers a supportive and connected environment and strongly emphasizes its two meaningful purposes: serving the surrounding community and learning to utilize the Spanish language.

“If you struggle with speaking up and speaking Spanish to other people, it can be difficult, but at the same time, it’s difficult for a reason. Learning a language is always difficult,” said Nunez. “It’s okay to be nervous, but you’re gonna do a lot better than you think. There’s people there supporting you.”

Scott Windham, professor of German in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, presented �鶹��Ƶ’s interdisciplinary German Studies board as a case study at the German Studies Association conference in late September.

Windham took part in a three-day seminar called “Re-envisioning the German curriculum, twenty years on.” The goal of the seminar was to chart the ways in which German and German Studies programs have evolved in the nearly twenty years since the Modern Language Association issued a call for dramatic curricular and programmatic change in 2007.

Seminar participants included �鶹��Ƶ, Georgetown, MIT, Princeton, Columbia, Emory, Arizona State, Waterloo, Arizona, Vermont, Franklin & Marshall, Furman and other highly-regarded German and German Studies programs. Participants discussed progress made over the past two decades and still-needed curricular, programmatic, structural, and administrative reforms in order to ensure the vitality of German and other language programs in the coming decades.

Windham’s contribution to the seminar was to position �鶹��Ƶ’s interdisciplinary German Studies board as a way to introduce interdisciplinarity into language programs in a structured and thoughtful way, and to boost the reach of language programs. �鶹��Ƶ’s German Studies board consists of 16 members from four schools, ten departments, and three staff units.

Classical studies faculty members Kristina Meinking, Tedd Wimperis, and Brandon Baker hosted the festivities, which featured student-designed commemorative t-shirts, gift bags for attending alumni and a cake celebrating 10 years of the Classical Studies major. Current majors and minors, including members of the Eta Sigma Phi honor society, contributed to planning the event and welcoming the alumni back to campus.

Classical Studies was inaugurated as an interdisciplinary minor by Rosemary Haskell and the late Russ Gill in 2000, housed within the Department of World Languages and Cultures. Megan Sweeney ’16 was awarded the university’s first Bachelor of Arts in Classical Studies through the independent major program; she was soon followed by several other students who sought to foreground the study of antiquity in their �鶹��Ƶ education. A dedicated major and revised minor were successfully proposed and approved in 2020-21, and first appeared in the 2021-22 academic catalogue.

The visiting alumni have gone on to a wide range of career paths after �鶹��Ƶ, including accounting, operations, software engineering, medicine, marine research, university advancement and graduate study in chemistry, communications, library science and public history. For all the diverse post-graduation journeys these alumni have taken, they will always have a home under the oaks.

“The Classical Studies program helped me decide what I want to do with the rest of my life, and will always be a part of me,” said Ash Crouse ’26

And that was a challenge. Because I entered college in 2003, at the beginning of the war in Iraq, when everyone and their grandmother was convinced that learning Arabic was the ticket to getting a job in government. At the school I went to, all students were preregistered for classes with the exception of first-year students and graduate students, who had to attend classes before they could register. All classes were required to leave three seats open for first years and graduate students. So, I showed up to the first day of Beginning I Arabic along with 70 other students, all hoping to get one of those three seats. The instructor announced that he would not allow anyone to register for those three seats until there were only three students left in the class who wanted them. And so I proceeded to wait the rest of them out. I came to every class and did all the work in the class, without any guarantee that I would get in officially or get credit for it until enough people gave up that I was offered the slot. So the first thing I learned in my college career was that I would have to fight for the Humanities and they were worth fighting for. I am still doing that work today.

But aside from Arabic, I really didn’t know what else I wanted to study. So I started off by studying everything. I took classes in history, and political science, and anthropology, and comparative literature. And calculus, and biology, and Religious Studies. And they were all great classes, but I found that I had a particular love of that place where religion, history, literature, and philosophy met and connected. Those classes lit a fire in me. Because they showed me that in places and periods and languages that were wholly different from my own people had grappled with the questions that provoked and haunted me, questions of deep existential meaning and ongoing political urgency – and that they had expressed their answers in language that was profoundly beautiful. When I studied those answers, I found myself connected to peoples, movements, and cultures larger myself.  And as I went deeper and deeper into my studies, I found that they were changing me. Once I learned how to read deeply, I found that I could read anything, including the social and political institutions in which I was embedded. I learned to question everything, and to produce my own critical answers. I put myself to work imagining other, better worlds.

The period that I grew up in was really not perfect. I went to college – and then lived in the Middle East – during the Iraq War. A war of choice, when the President decided to invade a country that posed no threat to the United States, largely to secure access to vast oil resources. I then graduated from college into a massive financial disaster caused by the loosening of banking regulations so that very rich people could become even richer. So I can’t say that it was an easy time to be a young person – if there is ever an easy time to be a young person.

But I do think that it is much harder to be a young person today. I went through college at a time when few students had personal laptops, before the invention of the smart phone or the ipad or the rise of social media. The students I went to school with didn’t all like me – but they were all really present along with me in the spaces we shared. The political culture at the time seemed divisive, but it was nothing in comparison to the chaos and fury of the current age. It’s hard right now y’all.

But one of the things that is making it even harder is that the institutions and entities who are invested in dividing us from each other, in fracturing our attention and undermining our interpersonal relationships – are also selling us a particular approach to knowledge. This approach is, “the extractive attitude.” It is based on the idea that the purpose of knowledge is to extract resources from the environment and money from the economy – which ultimately means from consumers. This attitude is not new. I know from my own field of African history that the European governments who colonized various territories sent scholars out in the wake of the armies, geographers and engineers to survey and map the land, and linguists and anthropologists to learn languages, and catalogue customs. The purpose of these colonial scholar-soldiers was to facilitate the pacification of the population and the extraction of natural resources. Knowledge has always been a form of power. And then, just as now, deep engagement in storytelling, religious worldviews, and philosophy was disregarded and rejected as impractical. Education, according to the extractive attitude, is a product whose value measured as a return on investment. This attitude invites us to use learning to maintain a position in cultural and class warfare.

The opposite of the extractive attitude is a humanistic attitude. A humanistic attitude values knowledge for its ability to bring meaning and joy into our lives and our communities. A humanistic attitude evaluates our present relative to both our past and our vision of the future. A humanistic attitude is an approach that finds richness and complexity in things that seem simple. And it does those things through a deep engagement with the ideas and the art that have been produced by humans through the ages.

When I went to college I had to fight for a seat in a language class against the forces of opportunism. And I want you to fight for humanism, too. And it is a fight sometimes. A fight to maintain vision and resolve in the face of a thousand messages that tell us that the humanistic attitude is “useless.” The makers and marketers of new technological products are trying to convince us to give up our capacity for deep engagement. To give up our ability to generate ideas, to read literature, to think about the past, to make and appreciate art and culture, and to communicate with each other. To convince us to give up on humanism they threaten us with catastrophe and apocalypse. They warn that their products will change society so deeply that it will be unrecognizable, or that they might destroy humanity entirely. But I have my own message. For anyone who is worried about understanding these forces, or who is struggling to make sense of the world right now – the Humanities can help.

Those of us in Religious Studies have studied apocalyptic predictions, we know the distance between what they promise and what they deliver. Those of us in History have studied revolutions and know how politics and new forms of media align. Those of us in World Languages and Cultures know that our understanding of the world is shaped by language and how to connect with people across cultural differences. Those of us in Philosophy know that the potential for meaningful change is rooted in examination and reflection.  And those of us in English know (to paraphrase James Baldwin), that it is literature that teaches us that the things that torment us the most are the very things that connect us with all the people who are alive, or who have ever lived. The Humanities are a repository of our shared humanity and the heart of our capacity to be, not just human, but better humans. More than ever, humanity needs the Humanities. And right now, the Humanities needs you.

Scott Windham, professor of German in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, participated in a three-day seminar called “Re-envisioning the German curriculum, twenty years on.” The goal of the seminar was to chart the ways in which German and German Studies programs have evolved in the nearly twenty years since the Modern Language Association issued a call for dramatic curricular and programmatic change in 2007.

Seminar participants included �鶹��Ƶ, Georgetown, MIT, Princeton, Columbia, Emory, Arizona State, Waterloo, Arizona, Vermont, Franklin & Marshall, Furman, and other highly-regarded German and German Studies programs. Participants discussed progress made over the past two decades and still-needed curricular, programmatic, structural, and administrative reforms in order to ensure the vitality of German and other language programs in the coming decades.

Professor Windham’s contribution to the seminar was to position �鶹��Ƶ’s interdisciplinary German Studies board as a way to introduce interdisciplinarity into language programs in a structured and thoughtful way, and to boost the reach of language programs. �鶹��Ƶ’s German Studies board consists of 16 members from four schools, ten departments and three staff units.

Wedged between Germany, France and Belgium, the small European nation has three official languages – Luxembourgish, French and German – while English and Portuguese are also widely spoken, reflecting the country’s large immigrant population and international workforce.

This fall, an exhibition at �鶹��Ƶ will offer the campus community a closer look at how those languages intersect with the country’s history, culture, education and migration.

“The Luxembourgish Language(s)” exhibition will be on display in the lobby of Steers Pavilion from Monday, Sept. 28, through Friday, Oct. 9, before moving to Sato Commons from Nov. 8-12.

Across 10 poster exhibits, the exhibition traces Luxembourg’s linguistic story and examines how multilingualism functions in daily life. QR codes connect visitors with interactive experiences, while a touchscreen display offers additional videos and activities.

The exhibition was developed by the Zenter fir d’Lëtzebuerger Sprooch (ZLS), a Luxembourg-based language research and policy institute supported by the country’s Ministry of Culture.

Derek Lackaff, associate professor of visual communication, coordinated �鶹��Ƶ’s hosting of the exhibition. His interest in Luxembourg includes what he describes as the country’s “linguistic landscape” – the ways language appears throughout the visual world, from signs and packaging to billboards and digital interfaces.

It is a subject Lackaff also incorporates into his Contemporary Practices in Visual Communication course, where students examine how visual designers approach text and typography in multilingual settings.

“The goal of the course is to expose students to new ideas and opportunities in design,” Lackaff said. “It uses language as a bridge to connect visual design to bigger, interesting questions about communication and culture.”

Students in the course consider both local and international examples, providing a broader view of how designers communicate in spaces where multiple languages coexist.

Lackaff worked with ZLS sociolinguist Sarah Muller to bring the exhibition to �鶹��Ƶ.

“We are happy to see this interest in our exhibition on the Luxembourgish language and languages in Luxembourg.” Muller explained. “We hope the �鶹��Ƶ community enjoys learning more about the Luxembourgish context, and the exhibition also offers much more beyond that: Visitors can increase their awareness of multilingual societies in general and the sometimes unusual contexts of small languages. Such insights are relevant well beyond the Luxembourgish or even a European context.”

The exhibition has drawn support from across the university, with co-sponsors including the Department of Visual Communication, School of Communications, Isabella Cannon Global Education Center, Department of World Languages and Cultures, and German Studies Program.

For Lackaff, that broad campus involvement reflects the exhibition’s connections to larger conversations surrounding global education, culture and communication.

“The exhibition themes connect well to many conversations we are having around campus and with our students,” Lackaff said.

The exhibition will also complement several campus celebrations and hosted events this fall, including National Humanities Week, the Mountain Interstate Forum on Languages & Cultures and International Education Week.

The designation honors well-established and growing German programs with excellent instruction and strong support from administrators, colleagues, alumni and students.

The evaluation criteria include program vitality, faculty excellence, dynamic teaching, student engagement, and connections beyond the classroom. The application process included a comprehensive overview covering all areas of the program and letters of support. It was developed over the course of a year by the German Studies advisory board, a group of 16 faculty and staff members across four schools, 10academic departments, and three staff units. The application was also supported by administrators in �鶹��Ƶ College, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of World Languages and Cultures.

Founded in 1926, the AATG “champions the belief that bringing the diverse cultures of the German-speaking world to Americans is a vital humanistic endeavor that serves essential national and global interests.”

“The award is, first and foremost, a recognition of the achievements of our students and alumni who have used their German – alongside the other knowledge and abilities they gained at �鶹��Ƶ – to make a big impact on the world,” said Professor Scott Windham, co-coordinator of the German Studies program. “The designation also shows that �鶹��Ƶ’s investment in language study has paid off. Students know they’re in a dynamic, top-ranked program where high levels of achievement are the norm.”

The �鶹��Ƶ program’s vision and mission focus on community, supporting and challenging students, and integrating their career interests from day one.

“German at �鶹��Ƶ has bucked national trends and seen significant growth in recent years thanks to intentional community building, curricular flexibility, dedicated faculty, engaged students, a productive board and visible cross-disciplinary and administrative support,” said Associate Professor Elena Schoonmaker-Gates, chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures and associate professor of Spanish. “This recognition is further evidence of the vitality and excellence of �鶹��Ƶ’s world-class German program.”

Colleagues on the German Studies advisory board and in the Department of World Languages and Cultures have helped develop the program through curriculum, teaching approaches and conversations about the role of German language and cultural study in the 21st century.

“Having our German Studies program be recognized as a Center of Excellence is a great achievement and one that is well deserved,” said Hilton Kelly, dean of �鶹��Ƶ College, the College of Arts and Sciences. “We are proud of the legacy of German language, literature, history and culture at �鶹��Ƶ.”

Beyond the curriculum, students in the program make lifelong connections and develop a strong sense of community.

“The students consistently praise the sense of community in the program,” said Associate Professor Kristin Lange, co-coordinator of German Studies and associate chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures at �鶹��Ƶ. “The German Club is a huge part of our community by hosting weekly study sessions and social events. We are also proud of our study abroad programs, with four destinations in Germany. By the time students head for Germany, they are well prepared for their semester abroad.”

�鶹��Ƶ is the only university in North Carolina to receive the Center of Excellence designation.

“The Center of Excellence designation is a well-earned recognition of the faculty and staff members who have championed this program and built a space for our students to engage with German language, history, culture, art and more,” said Rebecca Kohn, provost and vice president of academic affairs and professor of biology. “It also sets a broader institutional commitment to modern language study that sets �鶹��Ƶ apart.

“I remember what it meant to me as an undergraduate student, studying a new language and immersing myself in an unfamiliar country. Those experiences changed how I understood my own place in the world. This same transformation is available to our students through the work of our faculty and staff members, and the recognition as a Center of Excellence is a direct reflection of their dedication.”

A virtual will be hosted by AATG on Nov. 8 from 12-1:30 p.m. The ceremony is open to faculty, staff, administration, students, alumni and families of the program. Roughly a month prior to the AATG ceremony, German Studies will celebrate another milestone: the 20th anniversary of the creation of the German Studies minor, representing the moment when interdisciplinary German Studies took shape at �鶹��Ƶ. That in-person ceremony will take place Monday, Oct. 5, at 3:30 p.m. at Scott Plaza (rain location Carlton Commons).

The first German course was offered at �鶹��Ƶ in 1890. The German Studies minor was founded in 2006, and the interdisciplinary German Studies advisory board was established in 2011. The first German Studies major graduated in 2019 after creating her own independent major.

“The AATG is the largest organization for German educators and German programs,” Lange said. “This makes the Center of Excellence especially significant, because it’s awarded by German educators to German educators.”

With the support of the Departments of Art History, English, History, Philosophy, Religious Studies and World Languages and Cultures, a slate of events from Oct. 5-9, 2026, are intended to communicate the value of the humanistic disciplines in a digital age.

All �鶹��Ƶ community members are welcome to join. Contact Associate Professor Ariela Marcus-Sells (amarcussells@elon.edu) with any questions. 

Monday, October 5

• Trivia Night at 6:30 p.m. at the Oak House

Tuesday, October 6

• Social Media Takeover with Humanities majors

Wednesday, October 7

• Career Paths for Humanities Majors at 6 p.m. in Lakeside 212 and 213

Thursday, October 8

• Being Human Coffee, from 9:50 – 10:20 a.m. in Numen Lumen

Friday, October 9

• Being Human Alumni Reception and Networking from 4:30 – 5:30 p.m. on the Spence Pavilion Patio

Visit the Humanities Week webpage for updated information.

Register your participation on the �鶹��Ƶ MIFLC2026 website. Registation is $25 for non-presenting attendees for both days, including lunches and Friday wine reception. The full program will be available on the �鶹��Ƶ MIFLC2026 website. (If you can only attend the conference for a panel or two, please email the conference co-chairs, Mina Garcia & Nina Namaste, to attend for free.)

Saturday, Oct. 3 interactive workshop 9 a.m. to noon, by Todd Lee Goen is

“Galvanizing Intercultural Competence for Growth: Building Capacities in People, Classrooms, and Organizations” by Todd Lee Goen  — interactive workshop Saturday, October 3 9am to noon in LaRose Commons
This workshop centers intercultural competence as an essential component of global learning that supports the development of many of the skills necessary for academic and professional success. It is a foundational component of most teaching and skill-building related to global education, yet international educators often treat it as a byproduct of global engagement rather than a competency that requires intentional development. Through the lens of developing global career-ready graduates, this workshop challenges globally engaged faculty to employ a three-pronged approach to global learning.

First, the workshop explores ways educators can improve their own intercultural learning to ensure they are equipped to support their students and organizations. Then, participants will share methods for integrating the developmental process of intercultural growth into classrooms for the purpose of advancing NACE’s career-readiness competencies. Finally, they will conclude by challenging ourselves to channel our intercultural growth as a catalyst for greater organizational focus on globally oriented processes and outcomes. Each segment of the workshop will provide participants with tools, strategies, and skills to implement in their professional endeavors.

The conference plenary workshop as well as the free Saturday workshop is generously sponsored by the Isabella Cannon Global Education Center.