Global Teaching Scholars fuel cross-border connections
Faculty leave the summer workshop at the Steger Center for International Scholarship in Switzerland with fresh plans for study abroad, virtual exchanges, and global partnerships.
They arrived in Switzerland with questions.
Nine faculty members from four departments gathered for the Global Teaching Scholars Workshop wondering: How can I give my students the intercultural experience I want them to have? What would it take to build a course that crosses borders, literally or virtually?
At the Steger Center for International Scholarship in Riva San Vitale, those questions found fertile ground. There’s something about Switzerland — especially this small lakeside town in the southern Ticino region — that invites exploration. The quiet stillness of Lake Lugano, opera drifting through open windows, the inviting shade of the Steger Center’s garden — the atmosphere loosens routines and opens space for new ideas.
The 2025 Global Teaching Scholarship Workshop helped faculty wrestle with those questions not only through five days of professional development led by the Global Education Office and the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning but also through the setting itself. It was an environment where ideas flowed and international partnerships took shape.
The workshop was built around experience. Classroom sessions on pedagogy and best practices were only the beginning. Each day brought opportunities to meet local partners, live like students abroad, and walk the same streets where they hope to one day lead their own students.
An idea takes root
For four faculty members from the Department of Population Health Sciences in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, the experience did more than provide answers. It sparked a vision.
By week’s end, Ela Austin, Andrea Bertke, Ryan Calder, and Sophie Wenzel had charted a path toward a classroom that spans continents.
While most participants drafted a study abroad syllabus, the population health sciences team drafted something bigger: a multiyear international collaboration. Their vision took shape in conversation with health sciences faculty from Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in nearby Lugano, where a new master’s degree in public health program is in the planning stages.
The timing was perfect.
“We are starting with shared lectures,” said Wenzel, associate professor and associate director of the Center for Public Health Practice and Research. “The four of us will invite our Swiss counterparts to give a lecture in one of our class sessions this fall. The hope is to build on these initial steps.”
Next steps could include a summer program offered by Virginia Tech at the Steger Center, where students from both programs present research, participate in workshops, and build networks. Later, students might collaborate virtually on shared projects. At the pinnacle of the vision: a study abroad program where Virginia Tech and USI students learn side by side, taught by faculty from both institutions.
“Developing an ongoing connection with a university in another part of the world will give our students an incredible opportunity to explore public health from a global perspective and to bring new ideas back to Southwest Virginia,” said Austin, associate dean for public health programs.
That momentum is exactly what the Steger Center is designed to foster.
“Making connections in areas like public health means building networks that create opportunities for both partners at home and away,” said Sara Steinert Borella, executive director at the Steger Center, part of Outreach and International Affairs. “By hosting the Global Teaching Scholars, we provide just the right space for new ideas and relationships to germinate, take root, and grow.”
More ideas, more impact
The population health sciences team members' initiative may be among the most ambitious, but they weren’t alone in leaving Switzerland with new plans.
Renata Carneiro in the Department of Food Science and Technology and Enette Larson-Meyer in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise, for example, are building on the Salute: Food and Health in Switzerland program, which explores food practices in European contexts, and are sketching ideas for its expansion.
Mohammed Farghally in the Department of Computer Science and Rodrigo Sarlo in the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering are exploring ways to broaden study abroad opportunities in their fields.
And Alexis Henderson, experiential learning coordinator in the Department of Human Development and Family Science, said she would be carrying home strategies for supporting and enhancing global learning across her department.
“The faculty who engaged in this experience put a great deal of creative thought and effort into how they could shape learning experiences that would help their students develop global competencies through place-based as well as virtual opportunities,” said Catherine Amelink, associate vice provost for academic affairs. “It was clear that giving faculty the opportunity to immerse themselves in the local setting was an invaluable way to spark new partnerships and allow for ideas to move to implementation.”
Even though this year’s workshop was only the second installment, it already shows an impressive track record. The 2023 cohort launched three study abroad programs — Salute: Food and Health in Switzerland, Rural Belonging in Local and Global Contexts, and Computer Science at the Steger Center — each of which is thriving. The groundwork laid by 2023 participant and Public Health Program Director Kerry Redican also helped this year’s Population Health Sciences group move quickly toward implementation.
Two years in, the workshop is proving itself not just as a space for reflection, but as a springboard for programs that give students meaningful intercultural experiences.
“The success of the Global Teaching Scholars initiative, both this year and in 2023, far exceeded our expectations, and we could not be more pleased. It is clear that the workshops met a real need,” said Theresa Johansson, director of the Global Education Office. “Looking to the future, GEO [the Global Education Office] and CETL [the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning] will continue collaborating in this area to expand these opportunities. We plan to create a portfolio of such workshops for faculty at every level, from first-time leaders to seasoned experts, to keep them connected to the latest research and best practices in global learning and give them dedicated creative space.”
