Visioning Higher Education for Contemporary Global Challenges by Peter H Koehn

Visioning Higher Education for Contemporary Global Challenges by Peter H Koehn

Visioning presents a roadmap for university leaders to vitalize higher education in response to global problems. It addresses structural, programmatic, and curricular gaps in ways designed to prepare current and future generations for unfolding socio-ecological challenges.

The book introduces five urgent and interconnected global challenges (sustainable development, climate change, migration, global health, and social justice) demanding attention from higher-education institutions worldwide. Each of these five chapters explores the challenge and then shifts focus to the needed roles of forward-looking higher-education institutions. These roles include building critical consciousness, developing competencies, inspiring global actions, exercising leadership at all levels, conducting evaluations, and undertaking innovative initiatives. The book also proposes three specific initiatives: (1) creation of linked academic Centers for Contemporary Global Challenges; (2) establishment of South-North Higher-Education Consortia; and (3) initiation of a Global Challenges Corps, supported by transnational-competence preparation. It also provides an evaluation methodology to assess the traction of the proposed educational vision. The concluding chapter offers a pathway to fill existing programmatic gaps and equip future generations to address global challenges.

This authoritative and insightful book is essential reading for university leaders, educators, and learners worldwide. It provides practical strategies and a future-preparatory vision for universities to address rising global challenges.

The authors are experienced and thoughtful, and they provide key insights into the global capacity-building dimension of higher educationGlobalization is integral to universities’ core missions of education, research, and problem-solving. Microbes and weather do not know national boundaries, nor do ideas, knowledge, or learning. Research and problem-solving must incorporate these realities and make important far-sighted contributions. Universities have made substantial progress in the last generation, but much more leadership is needed. The advances set forth in this book are well-worth considering, even in these busy times. – Peter M. McPherson, past President of the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU) and Michigan State University and former Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development

Visioning Higher Education for Contemporary Global Challenges offers a timely, comprehensive roadmap for universities in preparing future generations to tackle the pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges facing our interconnected world. This thought-provoking contribution outlines bold, practical initiatives that can help higher-education institutions worldwide fulfill their vital role in building a more sustainable, equitable, and resilient future. -- Masaru Yarime, Division of Public Policy and Division of Environment and Sustainability, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Global scale problems are a particular challenge for humanity, requiring international cooperation that is difficult to sustain. This book identifies tangible strategies for addressing global issues that our universities need to be pursuing now. -- Steven W. Running, University of Montana Regent's Professor Emeritus and IPCC Nobel Laureate

This important book encourages institutions of higher education to embrace a leadership role in addressing key global challenges. The authors lay out a transformative action agenda to move us toward the university of the future. -- Lynne M. Healy, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of Connecticut School of Social Work and Main Representative to the UN, International Association of Schools of Social Work

At a time when institutions of higher learning in the Global South and the Global North are forced to search for their true mission, caught in the vortex of politics influenced by self-serving politicians' intent on pushing dangerous disinformation, some properly informed and insightful sense of direction should be welcome. While many isolationists are arguing “nation first” and curtail immigration, this volume advocates for trans-national competence when dealing with global uprooting, world health, and other challenging issues that affect all our lives. Here comes a beacon held up by life-long educators in a book that provides a welcome vision for higher education going forward. – Krishna Tummala, Professor Emeritus, Kansas State University

Youths are the future. This book examines curricula in higher education that best prepare young people to meet the global challenges that lie ahead. It proposes a transnational, interlinked network of academic centers that will prepare university graduates to meet these challenges through innovative curricula in cross-disciplinary programs in climate change, development, migration, social justice, and public health; programs that will be supported through practical experience in different contexts around the world. Visioning provides a roadmap for higher education in global development and a detailed platform of value for preparing those who have to deal with current and arising challenges. --Ronald Skeldon, Emeritus Professor, University of Sussex and Maastricht University

Visioning Higher Education for Contemporary Global Challenges: In Pursuit of Well-being, Social Justice, and Sustainability is a timely book that speaks to topics of critical importance in higher education around the world. In a unique way, the book elucidates and brings together sustainability, social justice, South-North collaborations, transnational student competencies, and, above all, the indispensable role of far-sighted higher-education institutional leadership if we are to succeed in addressing complex and urgent global challenges. This is a must-read book for policy makers, higher-education professionals, professors, and students across the world during this third decade of the 21st century. -- Solomon Gofie, Professor, Department of Political Science, Addis Ababa University

This essential book re-visions higher education around vital issues of sustainability, justice, migration, and public health, and provides a critically informed roadmap for confronting global challenges. The authors’ thoughtful, action-oriented approaches are made for educators and policy makers and are bound to catalyze crucial dialogues and transformative effects in sites worldwide. – Lisa Parks, Distinguished Professor and Director of Global Media Technologies & Cultures Lab, University of California, Santa Barbara

This work represents a significant contribution to our understanding of a crucial and largely neglected set of emerging challenges to global higher education. As the authors demonstrate, our future will depend upon our ability and willingness to address these challenges in a deliberate and learned response. -- Daniel Zirker, Professor Emeritus, Political Science, and past Dean of Arts and Social Science, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Peter H. Koehn is University of Montana (UMT) Professor Emeritus in Political Science and a Fulbright New Century Scholar. He established UMT’s Migration Studies, Global Public Health, and International Development Studies programs and co-founded its Climate Change Studies program.

Phyllis Bo-yuen Ngai is the Director of the International Development Studies Program and Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Montana and a member of the National Council on Social Work Education's Council on Global Learning and Practice.

Juha I. Uitto is an international evaluation advisor and expert focusing on evaluating at the nexus of environment and development. He is a visiting scholar at the Environmental Law Institute and past Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the Global Environment Facility (GEF).