The notes below come from the International Partnerships strategy session.  This session was held at the 2010 Fall Directors' Meeting (November 7-9, 2010).  These notes have also been more formerly organized on the Bonner Initiatives Wiki, where volunteers for this initiative have been contributing on various next steps.  ~ Kelly

International Partnerships

This session was held at the 2010 Fall Directors Meeting, November 9, 2010.

These notes include:

• Participating Campuses
• Vision, Outcomes, & Objectives
• Potential Activities (Mid- and Long-Range)
• Individual Roles
• Next Steps 

Participating Campuses 

Administrators that participated in this dialogue included:

• LeeAnn Brown, West Virginia Wesleyan College 
• Elizabeth Cannon, Ursinus College 
• Steve Darr Peacework 
• Bryan Figura, University of Richmond 
• Marisa Frey, Allegheny College 
• Consuelo Gutierrez-Crosby, Macalester College 
• Debra Kiliru, Warren Wilson College 
• Gretchen Mielke, Siena College 
• Christian Rice, Ursinus College 
• Jonathan Rowe, Pfeiffer University 
• Sarah Ryan, DePauw University 
• Allyn Steele, Wofford College 
• Stephanie Visser, College of Charleston 
• Elizabeth Wisman, Centre College 
• Jackie Wonsey, Rider University

Vision, Outcomes, and Objectives 

Vision

The purpose of building International Partnerships in the Bonner Network is to develop sustainable internationally-focused partnerships and to supplement existing international service programs within the Bonner Network with more coordinated support and resources. Doing so will increase impact on the student experience, individual campus internationalization initiatives, and the international communities partnered with our institutions.

Outcomes 

This vision grows out the Bonner Program’s common commitment to international perspective, which seeks to cultivate students who are global citizens that:

•  embrace cultural diversity
•  understand the nature of global interdependence
•  examine issues in their local and global contexts
•  consider the accuracy, relevancy and influence of their worldview
•  explore and respect the views and values of others

We discussed potential outcomes of this initiative for other players in the process such as staff, institutions, communities, and the network as a whole. We look forward to making clear outcomes for each of these, partly based on some notes recorded below:

• Student Learning: We are educators first and foremost, so we need to create student learning expectations or outcomes. What do we want them to learn? With that, we can then seek partners who reflect our expectations, while also considering theirs.
• Students: How do we capture the firsthand accounts of our students and how do we use that important information in a meaningful way? A lot of our students go abroad and can speak to their experience, and we should use it.
• Schools: Understand that each school does this differently — try to tap into some of those resources to guage how well they do what they do and some existing partnerships. Can we support those? 
• Partners: Would like to see a network of partners that we engage with regularly on a Foundation level, so schools from all over the country can plug into the organizations who are doing the sort of work we support — a more narrowed, focused, engagement
• Bonner Foundation Network Communication: For our domestic partners, we have a guiding philosophy — sustainable, deep, long-term relationships. We don't have a guiding philosophy for international engagement. We need to hammer one out and communicate it with the network so schools have expectations to meet.
• Involve International Communities/Partners: Outside of summer experiences, a lot of our students engage while studying abroad so we should tap into our resources of international university partners. 

Objectives

We spent considerable time sharing best practices and program models, noting what elements of international partnerships we would like to develop within the Bonner Network's global reach. After brainstorming many of these possibilities, we narrowed down our primary objectives for the team to the following tasks to move this initiative forward:

1. Develop Resources | mechanisms for documenting, sharing, and learning from various Bonner programs' international engagements
2. Create Training Tools | an intentional guide for students, staff, institutions, and international communities in terms of building effective and sustainable partnerships that includes materials for before, during, and after the international experience
3. Involve Community Partners | a system for including our international partners and communities in a collaborative process, particularly through an advisory board
4. Establish an International Network | a sense of clear parameters around the "Bonner brand" of international engagement, with an identifiable network of international partner communities

Potential Activities (Mid- and Long-Range)

Here you'll find some various activities we've noted. Bolded items are what our team determined were the primary objectives coming out of the meeting.

Individual Roles

Some participants in this session volunteered to work on this initiative throughout the year, collaborating on the Bonner Initiatives wiki and devoting about 10-15 hours per semester to the work. Here is how certain individuals are contributing:

Kelly Behrend, Bonner Foundation — coordinator, lead planner

Steve Darr, Peacework — developing outcomes, student development piece, advisory board

Christian Rice, Ursinus — advisory board, study abroad office integration, program library

Marisa Frey, Allegheny — training tools, student voice

Jackie Wonsey, Rider — develop resources, research statistics and grants
Bryan Figura, U Richmond — partner library, training tools
Elizabeth Cannon, Ursinus — training tools, research model programs 

Next Steps

The team plans to get a survey sent out to the network by January 15, using that information to build the International Partner Program Library. The survey will also hopefully indicate some "holes" in the resources, providing insight on what types of training tools and grants might help our schools.

More long term, the team is envisioning a sort of "Bonner Village Network" (modeled after Peacework's engagement with international communities), in which Bonner schools make long-term commitments to key communities around the world.  The vision of a Bonner Village Network involves a series of international communities in need of development and support, each connected with a “lead campus” that tracks projects and progress in the community. The lead campus may work closely with a handful of other schools in a campus coalition that regularly sends Bonner and non-Bonner volunteers. Bonners from across the network can petition to “lead campuses” for opportunities to serve in that community through semester or year abroad programs, alternative breaks, summer internships, and international gap years.

These experiences would be supplemented by a network-wide virtual international library that would include a directory on the international service that Bonners are engaged in and also provide general information on issues such as international aid and cultural sensitivity, locally-relevant material to international partner communities, and issue briefings produced by teams of Bonner students and faculty that connects local and global issues gathered from experiences in Bonner villages.