The Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, this seminar series prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social, and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development as well as Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures, and societies that call Africa home, and wish to explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development practice.

How will we meet the most pressing demands of our time?

Join us for a two-day symposium that brings together the Cornell community and international partners to discuss the most urgent challenges around the world and how we can work together to address them.

Building on the first Global Grand Challenge, Migrations, symposium participants will help identify the next university-wide research, teaching, and engagement initiative to harness Cornell's global expertise.

The symposium, hosted by Global Cornell, will focus on five interdisciplinary themes, with panelists bringing their research and perspectives to bear:

Knowledge | Water | Health | Space | International Collaboration

Register today!

If you can't attend in person, please join us virtually:

Day 1: Wednesday, Nov. 16Day 2: Thursday, Nov. 17

Wednesday, November 16

Welcome: President Martha Pollack
Panel 1: Knowledge: What Counts, for Whom, and to What Ends?
4:30–6:00 ET, Klarman Hall, Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium

A panel of Cornell faculty and Global Hubs partners discuss innovations in higher education, social media, and legal frameworks; new forms of knowledge production and inequalities in access; and security, privacy, disinformation, and the role of knowledge in democracies.

Read about the panelists.

Remarks, Provost Michael Kotlikoff
Reception, 6:00 ET, Klarman Hall Atrium

Thursday, November 17

8:00–5:00 ET, Clark Hall, room 700 (7th floor)

Breakfast, 8:00 ET

Panel 2: Water: Worldwide Challenges and Approaches
9:00–10:30 ET

Faculty from Cornell and partner universities explore the most critical challenges related to changing global water conditions, including access to clean drinking water; water governance, norms, and customs; trade-offs between drinking water, irrigation, and hydropower; rising sea levels and water-dependent communities; and new solutions for wastewater, ocean plastics, and pollution.

Read about the panelists.

Panel 3: Health: An Integrated Global Perspective
11:00–12:30 ET

Faculty from Cornell and partner universities explore vital issues related to health, including equity, nutrition, mental health and well-being, disease, communication, new technologies, sociocultural norms, One Health, sustainable agriculture and ecosystems, elder care, and the business of medicine/health.

Read about the panelists.

Lunch, 12:30 ET

Panel 4: Space: In a Galaxy Not So Far Away
1:30–3:00 ET

Faculty from Cornell and partner universities explore urgent topics related to our global engagements with outer space, including intergovernmental collaboration and defining a new space policy; private space travel and exploration; historical lessons for colonization; new technologies, materials, and visualizations; intelligent life; resources and extraglobal markets; and access and inequalities.

Read about the panelists.

Panel 5: International Collaboration:< /b>Taking Action for Our Global Future
3:30–5:00 ET

In this final session, panelists discuss opportunities and challenges for creating truly collaborative and mutually beneficial partnerships in an unequal world. Faculty from partner universities share ideas for collaborating on the four themes introduced earlier in the symposium, and participants explore the tension between respect for local cultures and universalisms implicated in scientific inquiry.

Read about the panelists.

Register in-person or virtually for one or all sessions!

"Creating Pathways of Perspective-Shifting through Structured Critical Reflection"
Cori Crane
Associate Professor and Language Program Director of German, University of Alabama

Providing second language learners with space and guidance to critically reflect on their past and current learning experiences can set them up to better understand and evolve their own worldviews as they learn about and engage with ones different from their own (Crane & Sosulski, 2020; Cranton, 2016; Johnson, 2015). While reflection is often acknowledged as playing an important role in leading language pedagogies such as literacy-based approaches and intercultural language learning, it is rarely theorized from a pedagogical perspective, let alone integrated into formal language assessment. As reflective practice in language instruction has become more mainstream, it is important for educators to understand the diverse outcomes associated with different reflection activities and the learning conditions and instructional scaffolding needed to support students' ability to critically reflect on their learning. As Ash and Clayton (2009) note, "a critical reflection process that generates, deepens, and documents learning does not occur automatically—rather, it must be carefully and intentionally designed" (p. 28).

In this talk, I explore the role of critical reflection in language instruction with an eye toward employing reflection strategically at various points across a curricular pathway. In the first half, I address what we mean by critical reflection and what educators see as the main benefits of integrating reflection activities into their instructional practice. Here, I locate and describe common reflection practices used in language learning contexts. In the second half, I provide examples of critical reflection used in beginning, intermediate, and advanced German language instruction to illustrate how reflective practice can be staged meaningfully across a curriculum to support level-specific learning and cultivate a practice of reflection among learners and teachers.

References
Ash, S., & Clayton, (2009). Generating, deepening, and documenting learning: The power of critical reflection in applied learning. Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education, 1, 25-48.
Crane, C., & Sosulski, M. J. (2020). Staging transformative learning across collegiate language curricula: Student perceptions of structured reflection for language learning. Foreign Language Annals, 53(1), 69-95.
Cranton, P. (2006). Understanding and promoting transformative learning. Jossey-Bass.
Johnson, S. M. (2015). Adult learning in the language classroom. Multilingual Matters.

Bio: Cori Crane (Ph.D., Georgetown) is Associate Professor and Language Program Director of German at the University of Alabama. Before joining UA, Dr. Crane taught German, applied linguistics, and world language pedagogy, as well as coordinated the lower-division undergraduate German programs at the University of Illinois, University of Texas, and Duke University. Dr. Crane’s research interests closely align to her curriculum development and teacher mentoring work, with recent projects located in the areas of language teacher education, reflective teaching and learning (i.e., exploratory practice; transformative learning), and systemic functional linguistics and literacy-based instruction.
She is co-editor (with Carl Niekerk) of Approaches to Ali and Nino: Love, Identity, and Transcultural Conflict (Camden House, 2017) and co-author (with Heidi Hamilton and Abigail Bartoshesky) of Doing Foreign Language: Bringing Concordia Language Villages to Language Classrooms (Prentice Hall, 2005). Her publications have appeared in Foreign Language Annals, L2 Journal, Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, System, ADFL Bulletin, Profession, and various AAUSC volumes. She currently serves on ACTFL's Research and Assessment Committee and on the editorial boards for Second Language Research & Practice, Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, Korean Language in America, and Foreign Languages & the Literary in the Everyday.
In her free time, Dr. Crane enjoys cooking, dancing, walking, and spending time with her husband Mike and their dog Buster.

This event will be held in person in G25 Stimson and will also be streamed live over Zoom. Join us at the LRC or on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public. Campus visitors and members of the public must adhere to Cornell's public health requirements for events.

With a population of 376,000—less than half the size of Cyprus—and land area of 40,000 square miles (103,000 square km), lceland is one of Europe's smallest states.

In his lecture "Can Small States Make a Difference? The Case of Iceland on the International Scene," President of Iceland Guðni Th. Jóhannesson shares his perspective as the leader of a small country that was a founding member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

According to the Institute for Economics and Peace's Global Peace Index, Iceland is the world's most peaceful nation—for the 14th consecutive year. Iceland has consistently held the top position since the index launched in 2008.

Jóhannesson argues that Iceland's national commitment to peace; disarmament, arms control, and nonproliferation; and the shared values of the NATO alliance, including respect for democracy and human rights, are part of how his small state makes an outsized impact on international relations.

Hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, this Distinguished Speakers series event is part of Einaudi's work on Democratic Threats and Resilience.

The event will be moderated by Peter Katzenstein, the Einaudi's Center Walter S. Carpenter Jr. Professor of International Studies and Professor of Government in the College of Arts and Sciences.

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Livestream

Don't miss this important lecture!

Join the livestream.Or view the event as it happens on the large screen in the Groos Family Atrium in Klarman Hall.***

In-Person: SOLD OUT

Please bring your Eventbrite ticket to the lecture. Doors open at 4:05pm.

Note: Due to security precautions, attendees may be searched, and bags will not be allowed in the auditorium. Free and secure bag storage will be available at the venue.

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About the Speaker

Guðni Th. Jóhannesson took office as Iceland's president in 2016. Previously, he was professor of history at the University of Iceland. He also taught at Reykjavik University, Bifröst University, and the University of London.

Jóhannesson has written numerous books on modern Icelandic history—including works about the Cod Wars, the Icelandic presidency, late Prime Minister Gunnar Thoroddsen, spying in Iceland, and the 2008 banking collapse—as well as dozens of scholarly articles and newspaper articles. In 2017 he was awarded an honorary degree by Queen Mary University of London, where he earned his PhD in history in 2003.

Cornell faculty and staff are invited to join this online conversation with the Cornell International Education Network (CIEN) about Global Learning Assessment and Program Evaluation organized by Amy Kuo Somchanhmavong from the Einhorn Center. Come learn insights from current assessments at Cornell, and then split into groups to discuss the relevance to student learning, global community-engaged learning at Cornell, and your own work. The meeting invites conversation about two survey assessment tools being utilized on the Cornell campus related to international education and community engagement.

A multi-institutional global learning assessment tool, the Global Engagement Survey, that the Einhorn Center is using with their programs and their campus partners

A survey to learn more about Cornell international student involvement with community engagement and how to increase it

Speakers:

Amy Kuo Somchanhmavong, Associate Director, Global Community-Engaged Learning Programs, David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement (ayk3@cornell.edu)

Caitlin Ferrarini, Director of Assessment, The Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative (cferrarini@haverford.edu); PhD Candidate in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston

Richard Kiely, Senior Fellow, David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement (rck6@cornell.edu)

Bio for visiting speaker Caitlin Ferrarini: I am currently the Director of Assessment for the Global Engagement Survey with the Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative. I am also a PhD Candidate in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Before starting my doctoral studies, I worked in South America for five years as the Executive Director of WorldTeach Colombia and an Education Advisor with Fulbright Colombia. My professional and research interests include experiential education that promotes global learning, social action, and ethical community engagement. I am also passionate about the inclusion of non-dominant student groups in global learning programs. An example of my own analysis of Global Engagement Survey data is in the co-authored article: Coloniality-Decoloniality and Critical Global Citizenship: Identity, Belonging, and Education Abroad. I also enjoy vinyasa yoga, cooking, eating, and hiking with my husband, baby, and our cocker spaniel.

Resources: You can find more information about the Global Engagement Survey on the Community-based Global Learning Collaborative’s website including presentations/publications regarding validation of survey scales, conceptual framing, and different ways Collab members have utilized the assessment tool. The survey items document lists all survey questions and gives an explanation of key concepts. And this overview presentation is a useful introduction to the GES.