Award for Innovative International Initiatives

The efforts of Associate Professors Katy Smith and Brian Dingmann to internationalize the biology curriculum at the Crookston campus provide an inspiring example of faculty collaboration and innovation to create significant and deeply impactful learning environments for students.

What began as a project to internationalize individual courses has become a mission to internationalize the entire biology curriculum at Crookston. They both began thinking about innovative ways to incorporate significant global, international, and intercultural learning and perspectives into their courses. They then moved on to thinking even more broadly about how to develop international outcomes at the program level and have started collaborating with department colleagues to internationalize the biology degree program. Katy and Brian would like to see internationalization incorporated at all levels of the curriculum so that student learning is reinforced and expanded as students continue throughout the program.

Their work is particularly exciting because it provides an example of innovation in STEM fields and serves as an early example for program-level curriculum internationalization in the sciences. Their work represents a deep commitment to student learning and to cultivating opportunities for significant global, international, and intercultural learning at all levels and aspects of a program.

Katy and Brian’s work continues to grow and touch on many areas of internationalization. Katy is exploring the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) model to connect Crookston students with a partner in France. Brian leads a study abroad program to New Zealand and demonstrates a commitment to engaging international students in the classroom to improve student learning.

Katy and Brian are committed to change, and they are driven to encourage others to join them in this commitment. Their innovative teaching practices can serve as an inspiring example to faculty across many disciplines who want to begin their own curriculum internationalization journey.