Intercom

Hello!

You are invited to join a discussion and presentation, offered via Zoom in February and in-person in April, to learn more about the opportunities with Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). 

The Fulbright mission, vision and stated values support quality education, foster service and advocacy for all people’s needs, and it is a catalyst to create channels for a peaceful interconnected world. COIL is a pedagogical tool that enables faculty prepare students with intercultural competencies for global collaboration through structured reflection across disciplines. COIL is based on an intentional and structured academic collaboration, allowing faculty and students to exercise critical thinking across cultures, and solving problems in an authentic communicative interaction. We invite you to learn more.

Virtual Event: Thursday, February 23, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EST 

• Location: Register on Zoom

In-Person Event: Thursday, April 20, 2:00 – 3:30 p.m. EST

• Location: Syracuse University Bird Library, Room 606 (map)
• Kindly RSVP here. 

~We look forward to seeing at one or both of these upcoming events!

CNY Fulbright Board

-Andrew Horsfall, Board Treasurer

Meet Our Presenters

María Cristina Montoya | Fulbright U.S. Scholar (2019) and Specialist (2022), Colombia

María Cristina Montoya is an Associate Professor at SUNY-Oneonta. Her undergraduate degree in Social Communication/Journalism is from “Universidad del Valle” (UniValle) in Cali-Colombia. Dr. Montoya completed academic English studies at Bergen Community College in New Jersey; then she completed a master’s degree from Columbia University – Teachers College in Communication Media-Technologies in Education. In 2011, she graduated from the State University of New York at Albany with a doctoral degree in Hispanic Linguistics.

Dr. Montoya has been implementing COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) in her language courses since 2014. Her Fulbright mission in 2019, “Intercultural Competence through (COIL),” focused on forming relationships to contribute to communities in becoming global. In 2022, her work continued, as a Fulbright Specialist at Universidad del Valle, disseminating and institutionalizing COIL.

Her participation in Fulbright through the implementation of COIL program facilitates the use of technology in education to create academic/social networks to fight social injustice and form mature individuals to be respectful intercultural citizens of the world. In the past few years, the implementation of COIL programs has become a very successful tool to foster the development of global intercultural competencies across the State University of New York (SUNY) campuses. At SUNY-Oneonta, these COIL projects include approximately two dozen faculty members who have been engaged worldwide. Through COIL, the college has supported a unique relationship with Colombia by allowing two COIL academies abroad, one in Cartagena and another in Cali, in addition to the Fulbright Scholar mission in 2019. SUNY- Oneonta has also supported traveling in both directions to students and faculty identified as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), after they experienced a COIL partnership. It greatly impacted students with limited international experience and faculty who have discovered course content enrichment possibilities by collaborating with others that grew up in a different culture and who were able to access higher education through unique opportunities that were available for them.

Anuradhaa Shastri | Fulbright-Nehru Scholar, (2022) India

Dr. Anuradhaa Shastri is a Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education at The State University of New York, Oneonta (SUNY Oneonta). She received her B. A. degree from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, India in Psychology, M. A. degree from The University of Mumbai, India, in Psychology, M. Phil, from The University of Chennai, India in Psychology, and M. A. and Ph. D. in Educational Psychology from The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. At SUNY Oneonta, Dr. Shastri teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation, Human Development, and Learning and Motivation.

Given that Dr. Shastri’s academic preparation is a product of higher education systems in India and the United States, she feels indebted to make contributions to both learning communities. She has persevered in doing this over the years through a series of invited international presentations and research collaborations. Her Fulbright-Nehru grant work in Spring 2022 was grounded on Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). This was built upon previous work started in Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 when 2 COIL enhanced courses were conducted with a colleague at O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), Haryana State, India. During this talk, Dr. Shastri will share the results of these studies and elaborate on continued efforts to expand and strengthen international academic collaborations by networking and facilitating COIL professional development with a goal of creating interdisciplinary partnerships between SUNY Oneonta and JGU. All of this work is directed towards the application of COIL pedagogy to facilitate internationalization on both the campuses and enriching student classroom experiences by bringing the world to the classroom.