The Office of Global Affairs is excited to announce that 10 faculty members have been selected as 2025 UW Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Fellows!
COIL is a virtual exchange pedagogy that fosters global competence through development of a multicultural learning environment, linking university classes in different countries. Using both synchronous and asynchronous technologies, students from different countries complete shared assignments and projects, with instructors from each country co-teaching and managing coursework. COIL is an innovative way to traverse boundaries and make the “classroom learning” experience globally connected.
Since 2014, the UW COIL Fellows program has been supporting faculty in developing and implementing COIL modules in their courses with structured training, a community of practice and a stipend. Building on several years of collaboration between the UW Bothell and UW Tacoma campuses, the UW COIL Fellows is now a tri-campus program.
The program will span two years:
Winter 2025-Spring 2025 will focus on course development
Summer 2025-Summer 2026 and beyond will focus on implementation
The 2025 UW COIL Fellows are:
Anindita Bhattacharya
School of Social Work & Criminal Justice
TSOCW 541: Adult and Adolescent Interpersonal Violence or a new course on Global Mental Health Needs
Wednesday, February 26 // 4:30-5:30 PM // UW Career & Internship Center Lobby
Are you curious about what it’s like to serve in the Peace Corps?
Join us at 134 Mary Gates Hall to learn about the challenging, rewarding, and inspiring moments of service from returned Peace Corps Volunteers who will share stories from their unique service journeys abroad.
Co-sponsored by the Office of Global Affairs and the Center for Teaching and Learning, this workshop will focus on helping faculty create syllabi that are globally inclusive. Participants will explore how to design syllabi and select course content to elevate different voices, traditions, perspectives, and ways of knowing.
This interactive workshop is designed for members of the UW.
Anita Ramasastry, Henry M. Jackson Endowed Professor of Law, School of Law; Director of Faculty Engagement, Office of Global Affairs, Seattle
Wei Zuo, Instructional Consultant, UW Center for Teaching and Learning, Seattle
Panelists:
Jayadev Athreya, Professor, Mathematics and the Comparative History of Ideas, Seattle
Salwa Al-Noori, Associate Teaching Professor, Division of Biological Sciences, School of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, UW Bothell
The University is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation in its services, programs, activities, education, and employment for individuals with disabilities. If you need disability accommodations, please reach out to the UW Disability Services Office (DSO): dso@uw.edu.
The Office of Global Affairs is pleased to feature Sabrina Prestes Oliveira for our January 2025 edition of the Global Visionaries series. The Global Visionaries series highlights the UW’s global impact by featuring innovative, globally-engaged faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Sabrina Prestes Oliveira is currently a senior studying Data Visualization in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at the UW Bothell (UWB) campus. Sabrina describes her experience exploring what it means to be a global citizen, learning about international human rights and making the most of global learning opportunities.
Global Scholars Graduation Ceremony
UWB’s Global Scholars Program was my way to incorporate international awareness while majoring in Data Visualization. Connecting with the cohort throughout the year, reflecting on our global experiences in class, and having critical discussions about how our personal identities and notions of the world are shaped by international power dynamics, brought me closer to my peers than in most other courses. We also had career-building workshops and the chance to hear from speakers and former Global Scholars about their experiences working in international affairs. Many of us in the program are first-generation students and/or first/second-generation Americans, and it’s rare to find welcoming spaces that provide much-needed insights about networking, the nuances of local and global engagement, and advocacy.
Poster Presentation on Human Rights Day
During our week in D.C., as part of the seminar, we met a delegation of Ecuadorian activists and public defenders in partnership with local advocacy organizations as well as Amazon Watch and Amnesty International. The stories they shared about violence, cultural erasure, police brutality, and territorial/environmental rights violations motivated me to focus on Ecuador for my research paper.
Ecuador once stood out in the region for its low homicide rates and progressive human rights legislation (even if it was more on paper than in practice). Now, it has become prized territory for international criminal organizations in the trafficking of drugs. A weakened state and prison system have allowed these organizations to take control. The more I researched, the more I discovered that drug traffickers are by no means independent agents. They are enabled by and benefit from both international and local political and corporate interests.
I was recently selected for UW’s Mary Gates Leadership Scholarship to support a project to pinpoint, assess, and visualize Latino community needs and demographics in WA. The Latino Educational Training Institute (LETI) is expanding their educational and entrepreneurship programs to Everett, and thoughtful data analysis can help guide their upcoming outreach initiatives. While I’ve started my analysis with data from the U.S. Census, with the support of the LETI team, I hope to expand into broader sources and find ways to highlight empowerment and opportunity in our community.
Latino Leadership Initiative cohort at Bothell High School after the first mentoring session
The UWB’s Latino Leadership Initiative (LLI) is truly a game-changing program as a Latino student. I joined in 2024 simply looking to connect with other Latinos on campus but also as the chance to hear many WA leaders’ stories of representing their communities, starting a business, and advocating for change in local politics. The leadership seminars with the Latino Educational Training Institute made me realize that success, unlike what we’re always told, isn’t solely an individual effort. Connecting with UWB’s LLI cohort and organizing our service project, where we hosted college/career mentoring sessions for Latino high schoolers, helped me find a space here in the U.S. where I felt I could contribute meaningfully.
The Office of Global Affairs is pleased to feature Kim Lovaas for our December 2024 edition of the Global Visionaries series. The Global Visionaries series highlights the UW’s global impact by featuring innovative, globally-engaged faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Kim Lovaas, Director of International Student Services, describes her experience advocating for and supporting the international student community at the University of Washington for the past 25 years.
I grew up in Bellingham, Washington -as my parents did before me – so other than growing up near the Canadian border, I wasn’t really exposed to other countries around the world or foreign languages. As a kid, my family mostly took trips within the state or down the West Coast of the United States.
I attended Western Washington University, which is also located in Bellingham but my parents wanted me to have the true college experience by living on campus. As a first year student, I learned about a Japanese exchange program that my roommate was involved with at Western called the Asia University America Program (AUAP). She was a peer adviser for a small group of AUAP students and she organized social and cultural events as well as local activities and trips. I joined her in these activities and soon also agreed to be a peer adviser, supporting my own AUAP groups for about a year and a half. During that time, I enjoyed getting to know the Japanese students, learning more about their culture, music, food and language. I have many fond memories of introducing AUAP students to my hometown, my parents, and having a family dinner at my parents’ house.
Peer Adviser with the Asia University America Program, 1991
Welcoming Japanese exchange students to the Asia University America Program, 1992
I initially thought I wanted to be a Psychologist and started taking Psychology courses at Western. I quickly realized these courses weren’t a good fit and I reflected on why I wanted to be a psychologist in the first place. The heart of why is that I have always liked working with people and helping others. So I decided to lean into my evolving interests in language, culture, and people, so I focused my efforts on East Asian Studies. I had started studying Japanese language and taking courses about the history of Japan. I also realized I wanted to understand the experience of being an exchange student and deepen my studies by actually going to Japan.
I was not sure it would be financially feasible or how my family would react since I had never been outside the U.S. before, but I realized I could afford it if I participated as an exchange student through Western directly so I was still paying only Western’s tuition. I was selected to go to Obirin University in Machida, Tokyo my junior year but because I was majoring in East Asian Studies, all of the courses that I took at Obirin transferred back and counted towards my degree requirements.
It was an amazing experience! I lived with a Japanese family that didn’t speak very much English. I was 21 years old at the time, and the family had two little kids, so I spent a lot of time with them and really improved my Japanese language skills during that year.
Obirin University in Machida, Tokyo, 1993
My host family in Japan, 1993
Teaching English in Tokyo, 1994
Before I went to Japan, I had lived in the same place my entire life. By stepping outside of my comfort zone and living outside of the United States for a year, I learned more about myself as well as my country and culture. That international experience was such a pivotal moment in my life.
After graduating from Western, I returned to Japan for several years to work for a Japanese company that I had taught English for as an exchange student. I worked in their headquarters office in the center of Tokyo. I had a lot of Japanese and American friends living nearby, I was paid well, and I really enjoyed my life living in Tokyo. After working in Japan for a few years and saving money, I still didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my career, but I knew it would have something to do with international students.
My approach to intercultural competence has always been to be open and to listen. I have found that people are often scared of what they don’t know or what’s different. In my work, students come from different backgrounds, languages and cultures. I try to be open to learning about their lived experiences and to their points of view. I try to be mindful of my own preconceived beliefs and to stay curious. I think it’s important to know what you believe, but not to the detriment of saying someone else is wrong. It’s vital that we remain open and not judgmental to new ideas.
We need to enter every conversation with a sense of curiosity and a willingness to learn. We may not always agree, but we must listen and be open and willing to learn.
Kim LovaasDirector, International Student Services
I am supportive, encouraging, collaborative, and aim to put students first. I try to focus on our purpose and remind myself and my team that we are here for the students. It’s so important to remember that whenever we are making decisions that impact students.
The work we do in International Student Services (ISS) is focused around immigration rules and regulations so there are many things we can’t change because we are bound by those regulations. We still try to review the regulations carefully and provide input. I gather my team to carefully review the regulations so we can work together to interpret them based on our own institutional policy. I prefer to be inclusive and seek their input before I make major decisions. I truly believe everyone has a voice. I want my team to feel like they can give input and that they are key players during the decision-making process. Although I am responsible for making the decision, I want their input.
International Student Services Team Retreat, September 2024
I also try to lead from as supportive of a place as possible. I am constantly thinking about how so much of our work is about people and how people need compassion. I am always reminding my team that there is a strong human aspect to the work that we do. We have to be consistent and fair given that we have to follow rules and regulations that protect the institution and the UW’s reputation, but we also need to remember that we are human.
Lastly, I believe strongly in creating space for my team to grow and learn on their own. I try hard not to micromanage. I am always available to help whenever I am needed but my preference is to step back and cheer my team on as they grow and learn in their roles. I want to give them opportunities to grow within their roles and take on new challenges.
When I first came to the UW in 2000, we had fewer than 500 international undergraduate student applications. Most of the international students at the UW at the time were graduate students – the undergraduate student population was almost non-existent. Fast forward to 2024, where we now have over 7,200 international students enrolled (about 16% of the total student body), close to 13,000 international freshman applications and the UW is ranked 13 in the country for international student enrollment.
Thailand, 2014
Indonesia, 2014
South Korea, 2014
I am very proud of the growth in our international student population. It’s been amazing to witness how changes in the state budget, how a shift in admitting and enrolling more non-residents (which includes international students) and a commitment to funding international recruitment have resulted in a thriving international student community.
As far as the role I have played in all of this, I am proud to have been a part of this growth and to have strategically advocated for connecting international student enrollment and international student advising at the UW.
Kim LovaasDirector, International Student Services
It has been critical to ensure we can maintain staffing levels to support the growth of international student enrollment not only within ISS but across campus. Seeing the international student community growth across campus has been an incredibly rewarding journey.
One thing I would like more people to know is that my team in International Student Services continues to work with international students after they graduate. When international students graduate from the UW, they are able to apply for optional practical training (OPT), which is an employment benefit available through the F-1 visa.
For most international students, it is a 12 month opportunity to stay and work in the US. However, if the international students are in a designated STEM eligible field, they can apply for an additional 24 month extension after the initial 12 month experience. Currently, there are over 2,000 F-1 UW alumni still in the U.S under OPT and STEM OPT whose immigration records are managed by International Student Services.
Even though they could be employed anywhere in the country, my team in International Student Services continues to maintain and report on their immigration records during their additional 12 months to 3 years in the US after graduating from the UW. We aren’t supporting them on a daily basis but they do still reach out for advice and support.
The only other thing I would like to mention is that the international student advisers on my team have limited scopes – their focus is specifically on immigration advising. Sometimes international students are referred to International Student Services for academic advising or mental health counseling or even career counseling. We do our best to direct the students to the other offices on campus that are able to support those needs.
Ahmad Ezzeddinewill serve as the UW’s next vice provost for Global Affairs, beginning Feb. 1.
Ahmad Ezzeddine
Ezzeddine comes from Wayne State University in Detroit, his alma mater, where he is the senior vice provost for partnerships, workforce and international initiatives.He fills the position vacated when Jeffrey Riedinger retired and became professor emeritus at the UW School of Law. Gayle Christensen has served as interim vice provost of the Office of Global Affairs.
Ezzeddine will lead and manage the Office of Global Affairs and serve as a strategic thought leader for the University’s global engagement efforts. This workincludes enhancing and expanding our global partnerships and coordinating and collaborating with University partners to build a cohesive and campus-wide vision for global engagement.
As Wayne State University’s senior international officer, Ezzeddine leads oversight of all international university affiliations and partnerships. He also has strategic and operational responsibility for the university’s international initiatives and activities, including international recruiting, study abroad and global education and research. Most recently, he’s been leading Wayne State’s College to Career initiative that will better prepare and support students, graduates, and alumni for careers and align university efforts with workforce trends and needs.
“I am deeply honored to serve as the University of Washington’s next vice provost for the Office of Global Affairs and thrilled to join one of the leading and most innovative universities in the world. This position offers an amazing opportunity to build on the UW’s impressive global presence, strengthen and grow its international partnerships, and continue to create transformative global experiences for students and scholars. I look forward to collaborating with our vibrant university community of distinguished faculty, dedicated staff and talented students to advance a shared, innovative and inclusive global engagement vision.”
The Office of Global Affairs is excited to celebrate Yen-Chu Weng for our November 2024 edition of the Global Visionaries series. The Global Visionaries series highlights the UW’s global impact by featuring innovative, globally-engaged faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Yen-Chu Weng
Dr. Yen-Chu Weng, Lecturer, Program on the Environment, describes her experience advancing global learning opportunities between the United States and East Asia – and reducing barriers to participation – for students at the University of Washington.
Dr. Yen-Chu Weng obtained a PhD in Geography & Landscape Architecture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, she earned a MS in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BS in Geography & Botany from National Taiwan University. Her knowledge and expertise includes environmental studies, sustainability, geography, data analysis, research methods, and international and regional studies.
I was born and raised in Taiwan. From an early age, I knew I wanted to explore more of the world. I chose geography as my field of study when I went to National Taiwan University. I really enjoyed all of the field components of the curriculum, especially going out to explore different topics across various regions in Taiwan. While I was in university, I took advantage of an opportunity to go on a new global exchange program to Germany. The language program allowed me to study German intensively for three months in Munich. In my senior year, I decided to study abroad again but this time in Australia on an exchange program to the University of Melbourne. My first few weeks in Australia were very difficult as I figured out how to navigate a different system of higher education and I gained more confidence to speak out during class discussions.
After I graduated from university, I spent one month in Taiwan after returning from Australia before I packed up all of my things and moved to Madison, Wisconsin. I came to the United States in 2003 to continue studying geography in graduate school. While I was in graduate school, I served as a teaching assistant for multiple courses in my department. It was a very formative experience for me. I learned more about what higher education looks like in the United States. I found a way to deliver instructions to students in my class while sharing my own perspectives. It involved a lot of self preparation and learning from my peers and mentors to learn how to adopt a more interactive teaching style.
My first job after graduate school was in the Program on the Environment in the College of the Environment at the University of Washington back in 2013. For the first couple of years, I mainly focused on developing curriculum and learning the curriculum in my program. In 2017 or 2018, after establishing some of my teaching credentials in my program, I decided to incorporate more of an global learning component into our curriculum. I saw there was a demand from students in the Program on the Environment to learn more about environmental issues in countries outside of the Western context. I decided to challenge myself and started seeking opportunities to bring in an international perspective to our curriculum. I got started by making connections with colleagues in Taiwan to lay the groundwork for a new study abroad program.
After launching my study abroad program to Taiwan, I began to explore other ways I could incorporate global learning into my day-to-day instruction in Seattle. I had a vision to create more inclusive global learning opportunities for students. I noticed there wasn’t a course at the UW that focused on environmental issues in East Asia, so I decided to create one to fill this gap – “ENVIR 430/JSIS 484: Environmental Issues of East Asia”. I am very thankful for my program director and for the Taiwan Studies Program at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies for their support in launching and promoting the course. I was eager to offer UW students a different perspective. The course focuses on Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan. Every time I offer the course, it draws undergraduate students from both international studies and environmental studies, as well as a few graduate students looking to advance their degree in environmental policy in East Asia.
In 2021, I decided to apply for a Teaching & Curriculum Award through the Office of Global Affairs’ Global Innovation Fund to bring even more of a global dimension to the course. I used the award funds to invite speakers from Taiwan and other scholars from East Asia to give virtual guest lectures. The lectures coincidentally mostly focused on climate change issues – from climate actions to public opinion about climate change to what data tells us about changes in climate patterns.
In 2022, I applied for another Teaching & Curriculum Award to deepen and broaden the content of the course. I used the award funds to invite several speakers across East Asia to focus on different perspectives when it comes to renewable energy issues. All of the lectures were hosted as an online YouTube webinar so students, not just in my classes, but other students, can sign up to watch the virtual lectures. Thanks to the great support of the Taiwan Studies Program, all of those videos have been archived and are available to anyone who wants to watch them.
In 2022, I realized I wanted to learn more about how to reduce barriers to global learning for students. With that in mind, I applied to be a part of the first cohort of UW Collaborative Online International Learning Fellows (COIL) to include faculty from the Seattle campus. COIL, a virtual exchange pedagogy that creates multicultural learning environments by linking university classes in different countries, expanded to the Seattle campus in 2022 after several years of collaboration and success at the Bothell and Tacoma campuses.
The 2023-2024 COIL Fellows cohort, with the support of the Office of Global Affairs at the Seattle campus, the Office of Global Affairs at the Tacoma campus, and Global Initiatives at the Bothell campus, was an amazing community of UW faculty interested in COIL pedagogy. We participated in workshops and trainings together during the Winter 2023 and Spring 2023 quarters and learned directly from previous COIL Fellows at the UW. Those two quarters that were focused on course development really helped me design my own COIL project.
I decided to branch out of my comfort zone and take an interdisciplinary approach by connecting with someone who is in the field of special education. I reached out to a professor at National Kaohsiung Normal University in Taiwan, Professor Chen-Chen Cheng, who was actually a colleague of mine from when I was a graduate student in Wisconsin. Our first challenge was to figure out how to develop and design a topic that would resonate with students from both of our courses and both of our universities. After a lot of brainstorming, we decided to focus our COIL project on evaluating the accessibility of interpretive signs in nature parks. The project included an environmental education piece, which my students could relate to, and an accessibility piece, which her student could relate to. We developed a protocol to analyze signs for their physical accessibility, communication accessibility, and multi-modality experience.
It took us about six months to plan the project, especially given the 15 hour time difference (my class met in the late afternoon and Professor Chen-Chen Cheng’s class met in the early morning) and because of scheduling, given the UW is on a quarter system and National Kaohsiung Normal University is on a semester system. We also created a Google Site so all of the students could have access to the same information.
What resulted was a five-week collaboration between my Environmental Issues of East Asia course and Professor Chen-Chen Cheng’s course in Special Education. Students attended joint lectures for two hours each week – and collaborated offline outside of lectures – on the basic design principles for accessible interpretive signs and inclusive communication for people with disabilities. They also conducted field work to observe and analyze interpretive signs in their respective cities – The UW Arboretum and the UW Farm in Seattle and several parks in Kaohsiung and Tainan, two major cities in Southern Taiwan. The students were intentionally split into seven groups, with a mix of American and Taiwanese students in each group. On the last day of the COIL project, the groups co-facilitated short presentations on Zoom.
Throughout the COIL project, my students and I were really grateful for the Taiwanese students for navigating the project entirely in English. My students at the UW were aware of this privilege and tried to use Google Translate and to communicate using gestures and body language to navigate the language barriers. Overall, the students really enjoyed taking their learning outside the classroom and expanding their perspectives by learning about another culture and discovering new ways to look at issues around the world.
The COIL project allowed me to further understand how many similarities there are between the daily lives of people throughout the world, although of course differences still exist. When discussing accessibility, many of the same issues arose in both the United States and Taiwan.”
UW StudentEnvironmental Issues of East Asia
I was inspired to propose the idea for this course after noticing an increase in awareness about teaching about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) in social studies across the K to 12 curriculum. I wasn’t aware of much curriculum being developed around these goals at the higher education level and I was curious to see if there were other faculty members or researchers or staff at the UW who saw their work aligned with the goals. So in 2022, I applied to be a Global Engagement Fellow through the Global Innovation Fund to create a community for faculty and staff at the UW to explore pedagogical tools to engage with the UN SDGs through their courses to promote global literacy and cross-cultural competence.
What I like about the UN SDGs is that there are 17 goals that foster peace and prosperity for people and the planet. While my own field relates more to the environmental elements of those goals, the goals encompass a wide range of critical issues, including poverty, social issues, gender equality, population health, education, infrastructure, global partnerships and policies and more. It’s a unique framework to think about how to address issues that every country in the world is facing and to discover solutions for how to improve the world.
During the Spring 2023 and Spring 2024 quarters, I was fortunate enough through a partnership with the Office of Global Affairs and the Population Health Initiative to offer a one credit General Studies course to introduce students to the UN SDGs called “United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Global Goals, Local Actions“. The seminar invited experts and scholars from across the UW and the Seattle region to address each of the 17 goals. I reached out to UW faculty across campus to focus on different aspects of the UN SDGs to provide students with an interdisciplinary perspective.
My goal was to cultivate a strong commitment to global citizenship among UW students.
Dr. Yen-Chu WengProgram on the Environment
After offering the course twice so far, I have been contacted by several faculty members at the UW who are also thinking about using the UN SDGs framework to develop a course in their own majors – such as in Food Systems, Nutrition, and Health and in Landscape Architecture. For future iterations, I plan to create more opportunities for the students in the course to build community and connect with the guest speakers.
Are you a UW faculty member interested in learning how to support international students?
Join International Student Services for a virtual information session on employment options available to international students. This session will cover key work authorization types, eligibility requirements, and tips for navigating on-campus and off-campus employment. Learn how international students can gain valuable professional experience through options like Curricular Practical Training (CPT) and Optional Practical Training (OPT), and discover resources to support their employment journey.
COIL is a virtual exchange pedagogy that fosters global competence through development of a multicultural learning environment, linking university classes in different countries. Using both synchronous and asynchronous technologies, students from different countries complete shared assignments and projects, with instructors from each country co-teaching and managing coursework. COIL is an innovative way to traverse boundaries and make the “classroom learning” experience globally connected.
In 
