Driving Sustainable Development and Global Collaboration through Experiential Learning
By Mara B. Huber, PhD, Director, Experiential Learning Network (ELN), University at Buffalo
Traveling further with our global partners… driving innovation through collaboration. These and other catchy taglines popped into mind when I first thought of GPS, Global Partner Studio (GPS), and an obvious play on the satellite navigation system. The year was 2018 and our Experiential Learning Network (ELN) had recently launched and everything seemed possible. So we invited a group of global partners for a week of innovation and sharing. There were health experts from Zimbabwe and Jamaica, entrepreneurs from Ghana, and my own education partner from Tanzania. We hosted presentations, open studio sessions for faculty and students, field trips to centers of innovation, and engaging dialogue around the promise of Experiential Learning, digital badges, and multi-stakeholder partnerships.The energy was palpable and the possibilities limitless. Yet as soon as our partners left, the vast distance between us returned.
How to maintain connectivity without physical proximity. We needed a digital bridge, a vehicle for continued conversation and engagement. The notion of a studio, the S in GPS, felt urgent, and within a year we launched our Project Portal, an online system for connecting students with projects and partners, highlighting opportunities and supporting engagement. While the Portal would accommodate any type of mentored project, it was designed to support collaboration with global partners. Since our engagement framework, PEARL, started with Preparation and context setting, we could frame projects around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), prompting students to explore issues within real-world communities and ecosystems, and connect with community-based organizations doing related work on the ground.
When we launched our Project Portal in 2019, we did so quietly. While we planned to eventually scale, our system needed testing and the obvious place to start was with lab-based research projects, the mainstay of our flagship university. By posting research opportunities and issuing digital badges, we could support both students and faculty, steadily building an inventory of project offerings and the necessary data for optimizing our system. It was all working smoothly until the Pandemic hit and in-person experiences shut down. Labs closed and students scattered to homes and computers around the globe. And while the entire world waited in suspended animation, students were eager to move forward, to find meaningful activities to support their academic and professional goals. They began to reach out, sharing a collective sense of uncertainty and need for forward motion.
The expansion of our global project offerings was a natural solution to the Experiential Learning crisis created by COVID. When the Pandemic hit, our Portal was already up and running, our badges were waiting to be issued, and students were searching for opportunities. All we needed were viable projects, and our global partners were eager to engage. Like other schools and institutions, our university quickly shifted to remote learning and made Zoom and other web-based communication technologies broadly accessible. We discovered that these platforms worked equally well for our global partners. We could Zoom with rural Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, literally anywhere there were viable engagement opportunities and a willingness to connect. While our existing partners provided a strong foundation for virtual projects, our network quickly grew, with new recommendations for leaders and community-based organizations who were doing the work of the SDGs but lacking resources and opportunities to connect.
In 2022, I felt compelled to bring our partners together, to thank them for their engagement, and explore ways to build on our initial efforts. Despite the disruption caused by the Pandemic, our Project Portal was yielding exciting results, with growth in professional competencies, transformational learning, and even enhanced retention among those who completed badges. While our students were clearly benefiting, our partners deserved and wanted more. The first collective Zoom meeting felt inherently important. Over 20 community leaders from across Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda all eager to explore possibilities and ideas for further leveraging engagement. Although I had prepared an extensive agenda for that initial meeting, the introductions alone conveyed the excitement and promise of simply coming together, discussing specific initiatives, sharing expertise and building on what had already been started.
We are now into 2023, 5 years since our initial GPS gathering, and our collaboration with our global partners has entered a new stage. Although we continue to meet via Zoom, we are spawning new channels of communication and focus. A general WhatsApp group is used for sharing opportunities and requests for expertise and collaboration. A directory of organizations and SDGs identifies potential speakers and panelists for classes and presentations. And in-country meet-ups are being planned to coincide with a Fulbright project led by my co-convener who is traveling to Uganda to share expertise and host training sessions on digital resources and model development. Perhaps most exciting are the young people, a university student who recently completed a project yet is seeking to go further, pitching an idea for a start-up and exploring related career opportunities. And four new mentees of my own, matched through YALI, the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), a program started by President Obama with the goal of cultivating leadership across sectors and areas of focus. It seemed fitting that my first introduction to these young leaders should include my GPS colleagues who will hopefully become trusted mentors and collaborators, extending their network of resources and support.
When we envision the potential of Experiential Learning to catalyze transformational impacts, we must recognize the importance of engagement and authentic relationships. Students want and need to connect with the world, but not just the shiny parts. They want to get close to the most pressing problems and the most promising solutions. In this new frontier of High-Impact Experiential Learning, community partners are the superstars, especially those working within the most vulnerable communities and ecosystems. We must earn the opportunity to collaborate by working toward collective goals and visions that are bigger than our own. As we reflect on the potential of GPS, it is unclear where our collaboration will take us, but we share a collective sense of hope and inspiration in knowing that we are traveling together.
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Having devoted her career to designing and implementing scalable engagement models that catalyze student growth and humanitarian impacts, Mara Huber currently serves as founding director of the UB Experiential Learning Network (ELN) and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Research and Experiential Learning at the University at Buffalo. In 2018, she led the creation of the ELN Project Portal, an award-winning web-based platform that connects students with mentored projects and utilizes digital badges for facilitation, incentivization and dynamic assessment. The model has received recognition for its SDG Project Challenges that connect students with locally-led development and sustainability partners for virtual projects supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and is currently being scaled across the State University of New York (SUNY). Huber serves as a mentor for the Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI) and consults with global organizations and communities interested in leveraging the benefits of dynamic Experiential Learning systems.
Institutional Context: The University at Buffalo is New York's flagship and a top 40 public research institution. As the largest SUNY campus by enrollment, UB offers the broadest and most comprehensive academic offerings—140+ undergraduate majors, 55+ combined undergraduate/graduate degree programs and extensive research, internship and experiential learning opportunities to complement and enhance every academic path. UB is an international university with students representing over 90 countries and institutional partnerships with more than 80 leading universities around the globe. UB faculty, students and staff have relationships with organizations around the world, including those involved in local development and sustainability efforts, making it uniquely poised to leverage and scale Experiential Learning and collaborative projects for individual, collective and societal impact.
Snapshot Institutional Profile (for comparative purposes as part of the broader project described below):
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This entry is part of a Public Writing Project, Higher Education for the World We Need, co-edited by Eric Hartman, Shorna Allred, Jackline Oluoch-Aridi, Marisol Morales, and Ariana Huberman. Initial reflections in that writing project will be posted here, on the blog of the Community-based Global Learning Collaborative (The Collaborative). The Collaborative is a multi-institutional community of practice, network, and movement hosted in the Haverford College Center for Peace and Global Citizenship. The Collaborative advances ethical, critical, aspirationally decolonial community-based learning and research for more just, inclusive, sustainable communities.
Join us for, Stepping into the Work: Expanding understanding of global positionality, responsibility, and opportunity, a Collaborative gathering in partnership with the Global Engagement in the Liberal Arts Consortium at Haverford College, immediately outside of Philadelphia, November 10 and 11, 2023. Registration is open.