Our in-person workshops offer immersive, hands-on learning experiences designed to help global education leaders tackle complex challenges, strengthen their leadership practice, and develop strategies they can bring back to their institutions. Through facilitated discussion, collaborative exercises, and cohort-based reflection, participants engage deeply with issues that are timely and relevant. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn alongside your colleagues who are navigating many of the same questions. Leave with new perspectives, actionable strategies, and connections with colleagues you can learn from and collaborate with well beyond the workshop.

Non-Member Registration

$450

Leading Through Complexity: Sensemaking, Awareness, and Agency for Resilient Global Leadership

 Monday, February 15
 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET

Chair

Tana D. Ruegamer, Director – Slater International Center Wellesley College

Presenters

Basma Zeidan
Chrishon Blackwell

Most international education leaders are carrying at least one problem the usual fixes haven’t solved. In this workshop, each participant brings that problem and works on it for four hours, looking at it in three ways: AI as a sensemaking amplifier, wellbeing as leadership infrastructure, and entrepreneurial thinking as adaptive strategy. Participants leave seeing their challenge differently, with one small step to take in the next 30 days. 

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Tell whether a problem needs a known fix or a new way of thinking.
• Use AI to see their challenge from other angles, question their assumptions, and notice what AI can’t understand about their institution and the people in it.
• Use social arts practices to explore where they stand in the challenge and where change is possible.
• Design a small, low risk experiment they can start now, instead of waiting for a perfect plan.

Advocacy in Action: Building Institutional and Federal Advocacy Skills for Senior International Education Leaders

Chair

 Imara Dawson

Presenters

Mihaela Metianu
Jill Allen Murray
Mark Overmann

As advocacy becomes an increasingly essential leadership competency, international education leaders must effectively engage policymakers, institutional leaders, and campus stakeholders. Building on AIEA’s Pilot Advocacy Day, this interactive workshop equips participants with practical advocacy strategies through expert-led discussions, case studies, simulations, and peer learning. Attendees will develop persuasive messaging, strengthen advocacy skills across institutional and governmental contexts, and leave with an actionable advocacy plan to advance international education within their own organizations.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Develop an institutional advocacy strategy aligned with their campus priorities and external policy environment.
• Communicate the value of international education effectively to policymakers, senior administrators, trustees, and external stakeholders.
• Apply practical advocacy techniques including storytelling, messaging, coalition-building, and relationship management to influence decision-makers.
• Create a customized advocacy action plan that can be implemented immediately upon returning to their institution.

Developing an International Partnership Strategy

 Monday, February 15
 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET

Chair

 Sylvia Johns

Presenters

Tim Barnes
Cori Crisfield
Susan Buck Sutton
Stacy Burger

This workshop explores how your institution can develop a purposeful international partnership strategy that results in an effective portfolio of linkages that advance the institution, engage a wide range of faculty, staff, and students, and can be sustained over time. Experienced practitioners provide research findings, practical knowledge, and models for establishing the goals, criteria, policies, supports, and processes that foster partnership success and bring clarity and intentionality to partnership decision-making. Geared towards international education professionals with several years of experience, especially those who are responsible for partnership building at their institutions, the workshop equips participants with the basics of how to plan, organize, initiate, sustain, and evaluate partnerships between their home institutions and those in other countries.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to: 

• Understand the current academic partnership landscape and current ways of defining international academic partnerships.
• Learn methods for preparing your campus for partnerships and setting a partnership strategy.
• ​Learn about ways to initiate, expand, sustain, and evaluate partnerships.​

Co-Created Curriculum in Transnational Education: Navigating Accreditation, Financial Sustainability, and Operationalization

 Monday, February 15
 1:00 – 5:00 PM ET

Chair

 Murat Yülek, President OSTIM Technical University

Presenters

Dr. Cihan Cobanoglu

As transnational education (TNE) partnerships evolve beyond franchise and articulation models, institutions are increasingly exploring co-created curricula to strengthen academic relevance, institutional ownership, and graduate outcomes. While co-creation offers significant strategic advantages, it also introduces complex challenges related to accreditation, financial sustainability, and operational governance. This interactive workshop provides higher education leaders with practical tools and frameworks to design and manage co-created TNE programs. Participants will work through real-world scenarios to examine how institutions can navigate multiple accreditation regimes, develop sustainable financial models, and establish governance structures that support long-term program success. Through facilitated discussion and collaborative exercises, participants will leave with actionable strategies for developing jointly owned academic programs that are both innovative and sustainable.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

• Analyze accreditation and regulatory requirements for co-created transnational education programs across multiple jurisdictions.
• Develop a financial sustainability framework that incorporates curriculum development, accreditation, quality assurance, and ongoing maintenance costs.
• Design governance structures that support shared academic ownership, quality assurance, assessment moderation, and intellectual property management.
• Evaluate institutional readiness for co-created curriculum initiatives and identify potential risks and mitigation strategies.
• Apply practical planning tools to support the design and implementation of sustainable co-created TNE partnerships.

From SIO to the Presidency: Leveraging the power of the SIO role in Advancing to the C-Suite

 Monday, February 15
 1:00 – 5:00 PM ET

Chair

 Hilary L. Link, Ph.D., President, Drew University

Presenters

Jenifer Cushman
Carl Jubran

This hands-on workshop is for attendees looking to leverage their SIO role into career advancement. At a moment when complex problem-solving, intercultural understanding and managing diverse teams–among other competencies–are more necessary than ever, we demonstrate how SIO experience can be a launchpad to a university presidency. Facilitated by three former SIOs and now University presidents, this workshop for later-stage SIOs serves as a counter-balance to the AIEA Presidential Fellows program for early-stage SIOs.

Learning Outcomes: 

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

• Have a clear sense of how to position themselves for their next leadership role and what that role could be;
• Have crafted and refined materials for future searches;
• Be connected with one or more of the workshop facilitators for ongoing mentoring and guidance;
• Have built a cohort of like-minded colleagues for support and connection beyond the SIO role.

Safeguarding Global Engagement: A Leadership Roadmap for Managing Partnership and Compliance Risks Across All Institution Types

 Monday, February 15
1:00 – 5:00 PM ET

Chair

David L. Di Maria, Vice Provost for Global Engagement University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Presenters

Christine Mallinson
Mike Miller

Managing risks in international partnerships is an essential competency for all Senior International Officers, regardless of institutional size or research intensity. Drawing on an NSF-funded multi-institutional project, this interactive workshop provides a practical roadmap for identifying, evaluating, and mitigating global engagement risks—including compliance, export controls, and travel security. Participants will gain actionable strategies to cultivate cross-unit partnerships, build institutional capacity, and protect their campuses’ global footprint.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Identify and evaluate operational, legal, and reputational risks inherent to international partnerships, agreements, and travel across diverse institutional profiles.
• Build strategic, cross-unit alliances between international offices, compliance units, and research administration to foster an institutional culture of informed global engagement. 
• Deploy practical, scalable toolkits and open-source resources to vet international partners, secure global travel, and maintain compliance without exhausting institutional resources.

Internationalization of the Home Curriculum: Beyond Mobility

Facilitators

Katy Rosenbaum
Jos Beelen
Eva Janebova

For the past 25 years, higher education institutions have been challenged to rethink internationalization beyond traditional mobility and study abroad. This workshop focuses on Internationalization at Home (IaH) as a strategic approach to creating meaningful and relevant international and intercultural learning opportunities for all students. We will introduce key approaches and practices in Internationalization at Home and share lessons learned from different European countries. Participants will explore European Universities Alliances, the workings of Blended Intense Programmes (BIPs), the role of COIL/VE and Professional Learning Communities. We will discuss how these initiatives can support the systemic development of internationalization of the curriculum and its impact on learning and teaching, and the wider campus environment.

We will explore a systemic, institution-wide ‘Mestenhauser’ perspective to leading IaH through distributed leadership. We will use a Stakeholder Model (Beelen, 2015) to map stakeholders across the institution to engage them in a shared Internationalization at Home agenda.

Through interactive exercises, discussion and reflection, participants will identify relevant stakeholders, explore strategies for building institutional buy-in, and consider how IaH can be embedded into existing institutional structures and priorities.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the workshop, participants will have:

• Gained insights into relevant and European developments within curriculum internationalization
• Discussed the relevance of experiences from Europe for their own contexts
• Have concrete ideas for advancing Internationalization at Home within their own institutions
• Reflected on the role of internationalized curricula for future transatlantic academic collaboration