Year of International Engagement (2009-10)
Mount Allison University
2009-10 is the Year of International Engagement at Mount Allison. It promises to be an exciting year that will challenge us as a university community to more critically consider our place in the world and the part we can play in more actively engaging it at home and abroad.
Mount Allison recognizes that the wider world is becoming increasingly accessible, its issues more immediate and its complexities better understood, thanks to gains in technology and communication. It’s no longer beyond the realm of comprehension to travel halfway around the world to attend university or to travel just as far to participate on a study-abroad or exchange program. A conflict in one part of the world no longer seems so remote when students and faculty with first-hand familiarity are able to provide a personal perspective that goes beyond what the textbook or media can offer. Once far-away celebrations come to be more easily understood and appreciated when members of the wider campus community serve as cultural guides during locally-held festivities which are open to all. In these and other ways, the world is being made readily more known in increasingly closer-to-home contexts.
Internationalization is a nebulous term that can mean different things to different people. Mount Allison believes that internationalization speaks to the necessity of becoming more critically aware of the interconnectedness of today’s world and then acting upon that knowledge to become more responsible, more active global citizens for whom town limits are just as immaterial as international borders. The world is here on our campus. It’s in the material that you study, the research you conduct, the networks that you build, the friendships that you keep, the programs that you join, and the volunteer work that you do. Mount Allison believes that its students, staff, and faculty have come to expect, demand even, an academic and social experience that takes into account the undeniably global nature of today’s society and that ultimately serves to build a stronger, more diverse, more tolerant , and more engaged community that can be taken from Sackville to all points beyond.
Mount Allison’s International Affairs, the President’s Speakers Series, and all the departments and student organizations who have played a part – or who will play a part – in shaping the Year of International Engagement are hopeful that the focus our campus community places on becoming more engaged global citizens is one that will extend beyond the 2009-10 academic year. The speakers who are coming are inspirational figures (see below) with compelling messages. If not the example of their lives, then their words will hopefully lead us to reflect and provoke us to act. The same will hopefully be true of the various faculty-led and student-facilitated current events nights planned for the year ahead. The events planned around International Development Week in February 2010 will further serve to reinforce the difference that we can make both as individuals and as a community.
In short, the Year of International Engagement brings in name a goal and an identity that our campus community has already taken on and one that we hope to further develop and expand through all that is planned over the next nine months.
We hope that this is a real year of growth and discovery for you.
Sincerely,
Ron Byrne
Vice-President, International & Student Affairs
Adam Christie
Manager of International Affairs
Stephen Lewis
Presented by the
Wilford B. Jonah Lecture Fund & the President’s Speakers Series
Chris Turner
Presented by the
Department of Geography
and the Environment
Jean-Marc Hachey
Presented by
Mount Allison’s
International Affairs
Jessica Jackley
November 4, 2009, 7:30 pm
Crabtree Auditorium
Presented by
Leadership MTA, the Campbell-Verduyn Fund & Student Affairs
Dr. R. Balasubramaniam
November 26, 2009, 7:30 pm
Crabtree Auditorium
Presented by the
President’s Speakers Series
Louise Fréchette
January 22, 2010, 7:30 pm
Crabtree Auditorium
Presented by the
Davidson Lecture Series
(Centre for Canadian Studies)
Dr. James Orbinski
February 9, 2010, 7;30 pm
Convocation Hall
Presented by the
Bronfman Lecture Fund & the President’s Speakers Series