Global Strategy
The leading directions that KPU endorses to expand opportunities for international and domestic students as well as educators and other employees—at a local and international level.
Internationalization
A process whereby an educational institution integrates global dimensions and perspectives into the institution’s mission. From the delivery of education through provision of services, engagement in research, and the nurturing of global partnerships, internationalization fosters and shapes the university’s values and aspirations.
Global Education
Building knowledge of diverse perspectives to cultivate greater awareness of global systems and international issues. Intercultural and international perspectives can be honed, too, by greater awareness of the many distinctive peoples of Canada.
Global Engagement
Fostering global citizenship through experiential learning; aspiring to solve complex global issues through collaboration. Key aspects of global engagement include student and faculty mobility, collaborative research, curriculum internationalization, community and global partnerships, and cultural exchange and dialogue.
The objectives and principles of the task put to the GEAC were pursued in the context of KPU’s role as a publicly-funded ‘Special Purpose Teaching University’ located in the region south of the Fraser and committed to implementation of the recommendations of the xéʔelɬ-Pathways Framework, the KPU Anti-Racism Taskforce Report, and the KPU Accessibility Report. Every effort has been made here to reflect the Mission and Values laid out in Vision 2026.
GEAC’s process has been consistently informed by what we have come to think of as the 3M’s. KPU’s actions on this brief must be meaningful, manageable, and measurable:
5 Guiding Principles
- Elevated Student Experience. Ensure the post-secondary experiences of domestic and international students meet the high standards KPU aspires to provide.
- Support for Innovation and Faculty Success. Enable faculty and other employees to thrive in a globally engaged teaching and working environment.
- Sustainable Enrolment Practices. Ensure KPU is able to attract and retain international and domestic students in numbers that are sustainable.
- Enhanced Partnerships. Promote KPU as a leader in global education and international collaborations, rooted in and aligned with our polytechnic identity.
- Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism. Foster a globally minded learning, working, and teaching environment rooted in the values of equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism.
1. Global Engagement
Fundamental to the internationalization of KPU is investment in global learning opportunities. These should be available to all members of the university, regardless of origin. It should be a defining feature of internationalized and global education at KPU. There are obstacles that need to be removed to achieve this objective and elements that need to be put in place.
Currently there are multiple organizational units and individuals at KPU engaged in aspects of global engagement and this is likely to increase. Here, we propose steps that will improve the likelihood of support for global study, research, partnerships, and development.
Develop, monitor, and maintain relationships internationally that sustain multiple goals.
Recommended actions to achieve greater impact internationally:
- Conduct an assessment of current research infrastructure and identify gaps that hinder international collaborations in research.
- Identify institutions abroad that share KPU’s values and establish strategic global partnerships that include student and faculty exchanges, research collaborations, global development opportunities, and joint programming.
- Prepare for greater global engagement by strengthening KPU’s travel safety policies, plans, and emergency response standards to ensure the safety of international travellers; review risk mitigation and provide the support necessary to protect travelling students, staff, administrators, and faculty; explore the development and management of an international travel registry for all KPU travellers.
- Create oversight of the hosting and sending of international delegations and visiting scholars to ensure that legal, security, hospitality, and financial standards are met, and that potential outcomes and follow-up plans are known, completed, and disseminated.
Achieve alignment and synergies between international partnerships for students, global development, research, and other scholarly activities
Recommended actions to promote the best use of global opportunities from across KPU:
- Establish a formal hub for an open and comprehensive online repository of international partnerships and activities, accessible to members of the university. This will include local and global partnerships, including partners with whom we have active MOUs, articulation agreements, student exchange and visiting student agreements, field and summer schools, COIL, and letters of intent; Office of Research Services partnerships/collaborations; global development projects; collaborations established independently by KPU scholars with external partners, and other global experiences for students and faculty.
- Build awareness of the contents of the global hub and the potential for identifying possible partnerships and global development opportunities and coordinate synergies across global activities.
- Coordinate and support efforts to achieve diversity in international student populations with global engagement of faculty and staff.
Increase in-person and virtual global education opportunities, such as field schools, study abroad, and student and faculty exchanges
Recommended actions to advance global engagement:
- Inventory and increase opportunities abroad for study, student research and dissemination of findings, online learning including collaborative online international learning (COIL), and other in-person and virtual global experiences for students and faculty.
- Enhance KPU's global reach in international development projects through a capacity-building approach that establishes KPU as a key player by transferring the university’s expertise abroad, developing partnerships, and fostering sustainability worldwide.
2. EDI and Anti-racist Internationalization
KPU has established a commitment to becoming a leading anti-racist, equity-advancing institution committed to reconciliation and decolonization. Achievement in this process will distinguish KPU abroad, as well as regionally and nationally.
Identify and provide support to develop impactful cultural and anti-racist competencies
Recommended actions to enable sustainable intercultural growth:
- Invest in professional development for faculty to support a diverse classroom in which all students feel welcome.
- Identify cultural competencies along with justice and EDI practices as desirable qualities in new employees. Further internationalize hiring processes by articulating KPU’s values of global thinking, teaching/serving diverse student populations, and an enthusiasm for gaining cultural competencies. This is not to diminish but augment other values in selections, including equity for all under-represented groups, inclusion, and anti-racism.
- Embed global competencies within the curriculum.
Globalize student learning, interrogate Eurocentric models of pedagogy and content, and embrace decolonizing and anti-racist content and pedagogy, whether at the level of curriculum, programming, or experiences
Recommended actions to achieve greater intercultural competencies and achieve EDI and anti-racism goals:
- Integrate intercultural training as part of KPU’s onboarding and professional development for senior leaders and establish regular workshops for the members of the University.
- Produce a coordinated plan to adapt and improve delivery in the internationalized classroom, one that involves departments, Deans’ Offices, and the Teaching & Learning Commons.
- Provide meaningful and manageable opportunities for professional growth for faculty and staff so they are prepared to succeed in a diverse classroom and on campus.
- Regularly identify and provide access to meaningful and manageable cultural competencies to be attained by employees of KPU.
- Address the areas that give rise to additional pressures placed on faculty in their efforts to implement the goals of internationalization and continue to provide a rich and safe learning environment.
- Acknowledge and celebrate faculty, other employees, and alumni for their leadership in internationalization.
3. Advance Global Education
KPU is fundamentally an institution that embraces and champions educational opportunity. We aim to assist and support a diverse range of learners in coming to KPU. KPU has been at the forefront of open educational resource adoption. KPU aspires to hold open the door to students from many backgrounds, at any part of their journey, taking active steps to reduce financial and structural barriers to education.
KPU goes out into the world and offers people around the globe the opportunity to achieve educational aspirations. These are values that KPU takes into every exercise, including internationalization and global education.
Respect and protect the educational accomplishments of KPU’s students
Recommended actions to reduce barriers to educational success among international students:
- Establish measurable projects to advance and better leverage recognition of prior learning and transfer credit so that it is better reflected in KPU’s approach to international students. Likewise, in the global learning of domestic students.
- Explore opportunities for Transnational Education (TNE), some of which include educational delivery of KPU programming in another country, partnering with global campuses abroad, providing customized training opportunities for international partners, distance learning delivery to other countries, joint degree program alliances with institutions abroad, and other partnership models between institutions in different countries.
Advance KPU’s commitment to open-ness as an asset to instruction and as an ethos, one that reduces costs and removes boundaries
Recommended actions to ensure alignment between institutional values and educational delivery:
- Identify and encourage expanded use of Open Educational Resources, such as KPU’s zero textbook cost (ZTC) initiative, to support global education.
- Explore authentic and open assessments that combine the knowledge of international and domestic students in the production of open educational assets.
- Organize and host safe, candid, and regular roundtables and dialogues for faculty, staff, and students regarding classroom effectiveness, pedagogical/technical opportunities, and aspirations for improved community on campus.
4. Connect Community, Campus, and Alumni with Internationalized initiatives
Internationalization is a connected and complex process that includes recruitment, retention, and support of a diverse international student base that studies alongside the majority domestic student population. We must not lose sight of the fact that international students come here to be here.
Achieve a sustainable international student population and greater balance in the composition of the student body.
Recommended actions to achieve better balance in KPU’s student body:
- Build on our recruitment efforts to diversify the international student population within the constraints of provincial and federal regulations.
- Maintain a measured approach to international student recruitment that ensures alignment with institutional, classroom, and service capacity.
- Commit financial resources to international recruitment efforts, such as international entrance scholarships, tuition awards, and merit scholarships in support of attracting a more diverse student body in an increasingly competitive recruitment landscape.
Increase initiatives that facilitate the building of relations between domestic and international students to foster a sense of local and global community.
Recommended actions to build connections:
- Create mentorship programs where alumni, especially those with international experiences, mentor current students to offer cultural insights and professional advice, particularly for students preparing for study, work or live abroad.
- Develop chapters of KPU alumni, both locally and abroad that can:
- help support the preparation of new international students for some of the challenges and opportunities they will encounter in Canada,
- serve as global ambassadors, promoting and representing KPU at international events,
- Support events for alumni in key cities worldwide to foster a sense of community and international engagement.
- Nurture the forming of peer and cohort connections between all students by creating welcoming spaces, events, and environments on campuses that are intersections of cultures (e.g.: events, food, signage, student clubs) and where all students can easily meet and bond.
Take steps toward grounding international students in our communities
Recommended actions to improve international students’ experience of the KPU region and enable better relations with domestic students:
- Regular roundtables and dialogues for faculty, staff, students, and alumni on developments and needs to connect international students to the KPU region and give them a sense of place.
- Develop cross-institutional and cross-discipline programming that provides international students with foundational education on Indigenous and Canadian experiences and cultures, and domestic students with foundational education on the experiences and cultures of international students.
- Regularly obtain feedback from students on their particular concerns, needs, and aspirations in an internationalized KPU.
- Flesh out a network of community partnerships with alumni, municipalities, and organizations in our region that support KPU's international students and provide a sense of welcome.
- Regularly review and enhance the supports in place that assist new students in their transition to KPU, including pre-arrival supports, transition programming, and first semester learning communities to ensure currency and effectiveness.
- Continue efforts to influence provincial and federal policy to ensure the security, success, and welfare of all students at KPU.
Ensure student supports that recognize the whole person by addressing the many obstacles that may impede a student’s success
Recommended actions to address systemic and personal impediments:
- Investigate best practice markers of student preparedness, recognizing that our international students come from a variety of educational systems.
- Identify, improve, and monitor student supports that address housing precarity, food insecurity, and student well-being.
- Dismantle institutional systems and cultures that promote the ‘othering’ of international learners at KPU.
- Support student success and engagement based on addressing student needs rather than origin.
- Regularly review and enhance the supports in place that assist new students in their transition to KPU, including pre-arrival supports, transition programming, and first semester learning communities.
Next Steps
This report outlines KPU's strategic approach to advancing internationalization, global education, and global engagement. It seeks to identify the priorities KPU will focus on as we look to the future, and the types of partnerships we will develop and sustain in alignment with our guiding principles. We will continue to build on our strengths and past achievements, with students always remaining our core focus.
Aligned with Vision 2026, this global strategy is designed to support and guide operational plans at the Divisional and Faculty levels as they seek to incorporate specific internationalization goals and actions that are complementary to and reflective of each area's unique needs and contexts.
KPU will regularly review the progress of these priorities to ensure we are meeting our internationalization objectives. As KPU continues to evolve, so too will our approach to global engagement, adapting to new opportunities and challenges. This strategy will undergo periodic updates in line with future university-wide planning discussions.