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For more than fifty years, PACIE has advanced global education quality and access across the Commonwealth. These efforts have supported Pennsylvania’s strong role within the global economy, by ensuring our young people comprehend languages, global systems, and the kinds of critical understanding that enable productive collaboration on global teams. Every year, PACIE gathers the Commonwealth’s leading global educators for an accessible and dynamic conference, but PACIE outputs and the Commonwealth’s needs go well beyond the conference.
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Founded in 1969 on the campus of Pennsylvania State University by four research universities (University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University, University of Pittsburgh, and Temple University) and several four-year colleges, PACIE works to strengthen international education in the Commonwealth and provide professional development and networking opportunities to college and university faculty, administrators and students, K-12 teachers and administrators, and businesses. As a statewide consortium and non-profit (501c3) organization, PACIE actively promotes linkages between K-12 and tertiary institutions.
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Since its founding, PACIE’s accomplishments have been many and varied, including:
Working with the state to found the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Global and International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
Developing annual conferences convening state leaders on critical topics in global education, supporting network building that has led to various iterations of statewide and/or regional consortia, shared grant applications, and dissemination activities tied to Title VI Grants.
Creating, organizing, and sharing global skills curricula examples for K-12 educators, aligned with PA State Standards, housed on our website.
Developing a professional network, sharing job opportunities, and recognizing and amplifying state leaders in global education through awards, a set of practices that also serves to support early career global educators with networking and securing jobs in the sector, here in the Commonwealth.
Developing a statewide network of global educators in PA K-16 institutions, including more than 2,000 individuals who receive the newsletter and more than 100 annual members and conference attendees every year, as well as scores of individuals who attend webinars and networking events outside the conference cycle.
Partnering with the PA Department of Education and Pennsylvania State Modern Language Association to promote the Seal of Biliteracy.
Offering Act 48 credit to K-12 educators at the annual conference, in order to further support their professional development and implementation of global education in the classroom.
Building relationships with key international education stakeholders in Pennsylvania and around the United States, including the US Commercial Service, Study Pennsylvania, the PA Department of Education, the PA Department of Community and Economic Development, and NAFSA: Association of International Educators, to strengthen coordination and support international education strategies at the state and national levels.
State of Global Education and Opportunities in Pennsylvania
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Across the US and around the world, education is continuously questioned and reimagined - and in the last several years those efforts have often focused on return on investment and economic opportunities. Global education is essential to a flourishing economy and workforce, as business leaders regularly clarify, and just as importantly: global education supports the development of not only economically vibrant communities but also communities more likely to prioritize respectful inclusion and consideration of shared public goods, such as the environment. As robust educational opportunities are frequently under threat, PACIE serves as a continuous advocate for the various components of global education that are vital to critical global thinking, including language instruction, social studies, global business, and science. PACIE offers K-16 educators and civic leaders a platform to clarify these commitments, and in turn, these efforts support and enhance civic discourse. One example of this is PACIE’s support for the Seal of Biliteracy, which equips high school students with language skills needed to meet workforce demands and to acquire cross-cultural communication skills that prepare them for meaningful contributions in their personal and professional lives.
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For the past decade and longer, international education has been moving to become global education, with this shift in terminology signaling a shift away from student mobility as a measure of success and toward demonstrable global learning, which can occur on-campus, in nearby communities, or elsewhere around the world. Pennsylvania is especially well-positioned to draw on its history as a cosmopolitan colony and its contributions to democracy, human rights, and abolitionist work in the US and around the world as global education shifts to focus student attention toward the transnational flows, ecological interdependence, and competing ideologies and systems of governance that lead to more or less inclusive, connected, and flourishing societies in our interdependent world. Several opportunities and challenges exist in this area in particular, supporting translation of new research in ways that reach K-12 classrooms. Former PACIE Board Member and University of Pennsylvania Faculty Member Ameena Ghaffar Khucher has modeled this with the development of curricular resources for K-12 teachers that explore alliances between South Asian Americans and Irish Americans in early 1900s Philadelphia.
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Our communities and campuses benefit mightily from Pennsylvania’s nearly 50,000 international students (IIE Open Doors Report 2023) - especially as the state’s demographics signal a decrease in traditional college-going young people. Yet demonstrating our global comparative strengths as a state rich in higher education resources is an under-leveraged opportunity. As a component of global education commitments, and building on meetings with the Department of Community and Economic Development, the US Commercial Service, and Study Pennsylvania in 2024, PACIE is eager to cooperate with PA’s institutions, Study Pennsylvania, and other stakeholders such as the Department of Commerce to develop a shared strategy for highlighting the Commonwealth and ensuring legislators and civic leaders are fully aware of the cultural, educational, and economic values international students bring to the state.
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As global education is concerned with the development of civic thinkers who understand the world within which they live, while recognizing the local civic opportunities to make that world more vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable, global education programming is increasingly aligning with sustainability and inclusion programming on campuses and in local communities. PACIE’s 2021 and 2022 conferences offered programming at this intersection, highlighting, for example, the relation of UN Sustainable Development Goals to undergraduate student research at Lehigh University dedicated to an environmentally cleaner and safer Bethlehem, PA. Penn State, Temple, Haverford, and Dickinson also shared their global education sustainability initiatives at the 2022 conference, exposing Pennsylvania’s leading institutions to one another’s best practices without the excessive costs and carbon footprints of national and international conferences.
At the 2023 conference in Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh invited several of its community partners in order to highlight opportunities to enhance civic sustainability. During the Showcase and Advocacy Engagement Session of that conference, members of the PACIE board met together with several non-profit organizations with whom Pitt Global partners to discuss capacity-building, in order to advocate for global education across Pennsylvania while also advancing the inclusion of refugees. This came at a time when the US has made significant efforts to create durable pathways for refugee inclusion in higher education (through IIE, The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, and the UNHCR).
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Across the US, in-migration and diversity increases are occurring outside of major cities. This is also the case in Pennsylvania. This well-documented pattern presents an opportunity to leverage diversity toward holistic community growth and flourishing, as has been demonstrated in small towns and mid-size cities across the Commonwealth, from Erie to Lancaster to Upper Darby. It also presents a challenge to navigate for educators and community leaders, as some communities struggle to see increasingly diverse curricula and students as the definitive strengths that they are. Global education leadership is essential to supporting inclusive, vibrant classrooms, and communities across the Commonwealth. Moreover, as initiatives such as the Intercultural Cities Programme, Welcoming America’s Rural Welcoming Initiative, and Pennsylvania’s proposed higher education blueprint suggest, when diversity is seen as an asset (as well as increasing reality), and intentional programs and policies are implemented, communities thrive and workforce development opportunities can be introduced for the benefit of the broader population.
Action Steps
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- In June 2024, updated PACIE Mission to reflect who the organization serves and certified 2024-2030 Strategic Plan.
- Revised Board Structure in summer 2023 to enhance stability, adding two Vice President roles (for Higher Education and for K-12), and introduced new Historian role.
- Communications: PACIE shares a monthly newsletter throughout the academic year, publishing on the 15th of February, March, April, May, September, October, November, and December, and additionally as needed. PACIE also has a social media presence on Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), and LinkedIn.
- Business Model: PACIE is a membership organization that primarily dependent on institutional memberships from leading Pennsylvania higher education institutions whose mission includes research, teaching, and service that helps people become knowledgeable about the world and enables them to act civically and ethically within it. PACIE also permits individual memberships and memberships from other organizations. In 2023, Global Learning Champion and Global Learning Advocate sponsorship levels were introduced to offer accessible ways to engage K-12 schools and non-profit organizations.
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- PACIE continuously works to amplify global competence recognition for K-12 institutions.
- Act 48 credits for PA Educators offered at annual conferences
- Continue to build an open access repository of global education resources aligned with PA Standards, collaborating with state institutions and agencies to determine the best way to link across various open access resources.
- PACIE will offer (or facilitate connections for) professional development days at schools, as part of school-wide commitments on in-service days, in coordination with state intermediate units and higher education institutions, as well as other stakeholders.
- In April 2024, following PACIE's Spring Board Retreat, the Board met with the Pennsylvania Department of Education to develop partnerships through which they regularly amplify, mobilize, and prioritize K-12 global education, potentially including opportunities for teachers to earn a certificate in global education.
- Identify and secure grants that support professional development for educators and university faculty in delivery of locally-rooted global education best practice workshops across the state.
- Work with legislative allies to articulate and enact leading global education standards expectations across Pennsylvania.
- PACIE strives to secure relationships with every state intermediate unit as a key component in a statewide strategy to engage a diversity of regions in global education, learning from and offering resources to a statewide collection of curricular leaders and innovators.
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- 2021: Global Inclusivity, Justice, and Sustainability - From Pennsylvania, In Pennsylvania (Online/ Virtual)
- 2022: Building Belonging: Advancing a Global and Inclusive Pennsylvania (Haverford College)
- 2023: Building Bridges for Global Learning (University of Pittsburgh)
- 2024: Foundations for a Global-Ready Future (Temple University)
- PACIE actively works to coordinate and develop a statewide network to amplify K-12 mobilization opportunities connected with Title VI or other grants that encourage mobilization to broader publics.
- Identify currently existing networks at Title VI institutions.
- Clarify mobilization gaps by geography.
- Enlist additional school and district leadership in mobilizing efforts, developing a statewide network.
- Work with Pennsylvania education abroad providers and higher education institutions to develop accessible global education programming for high school students and higher education students at institutions traditionally underrepresented in education abroad.
- Facilitate the development of a multi-institutional network of PA institutions with the express goal and outcome of enhancing affordability and breadth for PA students interested in education abroad.
- Amplify and mobilize leading-edge research from top universities and colleges to inform constituencies across the state about Pennsylvania’s global context, role, and opportunities.
- Enlist and enroll the full breadth of PA higher education institutions as involved and contributing members, including through roles as institutional sponsors at platinum, gold, silver, and bronze levels.
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- Serve as the resource for the State Department of Education, the Governor’s Office, and State Legislative Leaders (PA State House and Senate Education Committee Members and Chairpersons) in respect to updates on the state of global education in relation to Pennsylvania. Annually visit Harrisburg to deliver a report on:
-- Best practices, strengths, and opportunities for Global Education in PA’s K-12 environment.
-- Total number of international students, their contributions to their respective campuses and communities, and the economic impact of their education here.
-- Total number of PA students studying abroad, coupled with how that relates to their workforce preparation.
-- A snapshot of the relationship between global education and PA’s place in the global economy. Specifically connect with the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development in alignment with the Department of Education.
- Work with the state government to secure a continued funding line to encourage global education in Pennsylvania, supporting PACIE and/or affiliated organizations.