The Global Pathways Initiative:
College-Based Strategies for All WKU Students to Meet International Learning Outcomes
Western Kentucky University is committed to internationalizing the education of all WKU
students through college-based curricular infusion and program design. Each of WKU’s six
academic colleges will determine its best strategy to ensure that every student has an
opportunity to understand its offered disciplines in a global context. These approaches will vary
by college, but collectively they will generate synergy, substance, and scholarly engagement to
raise the international dimensions of teaching, research, and service across the institution. Key
components of the Global Pathways program include:
 Faculty development
 Curriculum development (college core and/or major courses)
 International disciplinary partnerships
 International research, practicum, & internship programs
 College/major-specific study abroad & exchange programs
Goal: Design strategies to ensure that every undergraduate student in each participating college
who earns a degree from WKU has acquired knowledge, skills, and attitudes to meet the
University’s five standards of international reach. These standards were developed and
approved by the University in 2009-2010 and include the following:
 Outcome 1: Graduating students will appreciate and demonstrate their knowledge of
the global diversity of peoples, ideas, theories, cultures and values and incorporate this
knowledge into their academic, social and personal lives.
 Outcome 2: Graduating students will utilize global perspectives to think critically, solve
problems and cope in unfamiliar situations.
 Outcome 3: Graduating students will demonstrate their ability to negotiate meaning,
communicate and interact with people of different nationalities and cultures.
 Outcome 4: Graduating students will demonstrate respect for global diversity and our
common natural and physical environment.
 Outcome 5: Graduating students will develop the capacity to be engaged as citizen
leaders in global issues, at the local, national or international level, acting as agents of
change within campus and beyond.
These five outcomes are expected of all WKU graduating students, but each college will define
the inputs, processes, indicators, and assessment measures that will reflect the achievement of
each outcome in ways that are relevant and appropriate to its disciplinary areas. The ability to
employ global perspectives to solve problems (Outcome #2), for example, will likely require
different types of knowledge and skill sets for students in environmental sciences than for
students in nursing. Respect for global diversity (Outcome #4) might be demonstrated in very
different ways by anthropology majors than by geology majors.
The goal is to ensure that every student who receives a WKU diploma will in fact have earned a
degree with international reach. The ways in which this occurs will be many and varied.
Colleges, and even individual departments within a college structure, will design and implement
international plans that ensure that its students have pathways to acquire global knowledge,
skills, and attitudes that are relevant and appropriate to their disciplines and to the mission of
each college.
Colleges are encouraged to review best practice models of internationalization that have been
recognized by national agencies and organizations such as the U.S. Deparment of Education, the
NAFSA Paul Simon Awards, and the Goldman Sachs Foundation prizes, among others.
The review process to determine whether a college receives Global Pathways funding is
essentially a structured conversation. The primary steps in the process include the following:
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Assemble team of core faculty who will drive the GPI process within the college.
Analyze each college’s student population: Assess enrollment profile. Use data to
determine points of intervention in the curriculum and degree structures that have
largest impact.
Identify points in the curriculum where students encounter global perspectives.
Identify major gaps where students could, but don’t, encounter global perspectives.
Identify points where global perspectives will be infused into the curriculum.
From these steps, each college will design an internationalization plan that will:
 Determine what changes will be made.
 Determine who will be responsible for making those changes.
 Determine what training, support, and resources are needed to make those changes.
 Establish a timeline for accomplishing those changes.
WKU expects to invest more than one-half million dollars in one-time, non-recurring funds from
multiple sources to provide necessary support to complete the internationalization process in all
six colleges. This represents an average of $85,000 per college, with individual awards to
colleges likely ranging from $60,000 to $100,000, depending on the size of the college and the
needs identified in its internationalization plan. Potential uses of funding include:
a) Compensation (course release, summer stipend/benefits, student assistants) for faculty
to design and implement course revisions, co-curricular offerings, degree-program
restructuring, and other strategies.
b) Library resources and curricular materials to support each college’s Global Pathways
plan
c) Faculty development, curricular development, and advising workshops
d) Travel to develop international research, internship, and exchange programs tied to
college’s Global Pathways plan