AIEA’s virtual workshops make it easy to engage in focused, interactive professional development wherever you’re located. Designed around timely issues that global education leaders are currently navigating, our workshops combine expert insight with facilitated discussion, peer learning, and group reflection to help participants connect new ideas to their own institutional contexts. Gain practical strategies, strengthen your leadership skills, and leave with concrete action plans that you can take back to your team and put into practice.

Non-Member Registration

$225

The SIO Command Center: AI, Strategy, and Human Judgment in Global Education

Tuesday, January 19
9:00 – 11:30 AM ET

Chair

Blair Thomson

Presenter

Girish Ballolla

International education leadership is changing quickly. International education leaders are expected to advise on geopolitical disruption, visa and immigration policy shifts, international student support, recruitment strategy, global partnerships, risk management, study abroad crises, overseas operations, faculty engagement, and the responsible use of emerging technologies. These demands are now part of the daily operating environment for global education leaders.  AI creates both an opportunity and a risk. Used poorly, it can produce generic, inaccurate, culturally flattened, or institutionally inappropriate outputs. Used well, it can help leaders organize knowledge, prepare better questions, locate relevant considerations, draft communications, support scenario planning, and improve consistency across complex workflows. The strategic leadership challenge is knowing which is which.  This workshop addresses a gap in current international education professional development. Many AI sessions focus either on broad theory or specific tools. This workshop focuses on applied leadership design: how senior international leaders can structure AI-supported systems around real institutional responsibilities while preserving professional judgment, accountability, care, and context.  The SIO Command Center model is especially relevant to AIEA because it sits at the intersection of strategy, operations, technology, internationalization, and leadership. Participants will identify how a similar command center can support their own leadership environment.

Learning Outcomes: 

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

• Explain core AI concepts relevant to international education leadership, including generative AI, retrieval-based tools, workflow automation, prompt design, and knowledge management.
• Map the major functions of an international education leader portfolio across strategy, mobility, recruitment, partnerships, compliance, student support, crisis response, and campus engagement.
• Identify international education use cases where AI can responsibly support decision preparation, communication, workflow design, scenario planning, and institutional knowledge management.
• Distinguish between AI-assisted tasks and decisions that require human judgment, institutional authority, cultural interpretation, policy review, or legal/compliance review.
• Apply a practical guardrails framework to evaluate AI use in international education, including accuracy, privacy, bias, confidentiality, source quality, overreliance, and accountability.
• Identify how a similar SIO Command Center model can be adapted to the participant’s own institutional context.
• Develop a 30-day action plan for piloting one AI-supported workflow or leadership tool at their institution.

Staff Development and Your Global Engagement Strategy

Thursday, January 21
9:00 – 11:30 AM ET

Co-Chairs

Kim Rapp, Assistant Vice President, International Relations, Northwestern University (USA)
Jeff Cohen, Assistant Vice Provost & Senior International Officer, Appalachian State University (USA)

Facilitators

Chrissie Faupel, Director of International Affairs, University of Minnesota Duluth (USA)
Marina Casals Sala, Director, Member Relations – Europe & UK, ISEP Study Abroad (Spain)
Jennifer Gerard, Sr. Director, Global Engagement and Intercultural Initiatives, Director, Intercultural Learning Initiative, Office of the Vice President for International Relations, Northwestern University (USA)
Eva Leptien, Partnership Manager, Africa and Latin America Section, Strategy and Partnerships, Department of International Affairs, University of Hamburg (Germany)
Lidia du Plessis, Programme Manager: Staff Internationalisation, Stellenbosch University International, Stellenbosch University (South Africa)

This interactive workshop will enhance participants’ capacity to expand global learning and internationalization opportunities for university staff. Drawing on the experience of workshop facilitators, who lead and have created a variety of successful staff development programs, participants will explore key components of professional development program design, including funding mechanisms, stakeholder engagement, cooperation between institutional partners, and institutional alignment. Regardless of previous program development experience, participants will gain a clear sense of next steps within their own institutional context.

Developing Proficiencies in the Domains of Professional Practice for Aspiring Senior International Leaders

Tuesday, January 26
1:00 – 3:30 PM ET

Chair

Todd Lee Goen

presenters

JY Zhou
Patty Sagasti Suppe

Professional development is essential for acquiring the skills and proficiencies necessary to serve in a senior international leadership role. This workshop guides aspiring senior international leaders in using the four broad domains of AIEA’s Standards of Professional Practice to acquire the skills and abilities necessary for such roles. Using their own experiences and professional growth, presenters will share their paths to developing the proficiencies with each domain. They will also guide participants in the development of a personalized plan for advancing their professional development with these standards.

Learning Outcomes: 

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

• Identify and describe the four domains of AIEA’s Standards of Professional Practice and their relevance to senior international leadership;
• ​Assess their current professional strengths and areas for growth within each domain;
• Analyze examples from experienced leaders to understand how specific proficiencies can be developed through intentional professional practice;
• ​Apply the Standards framework to articulate a clear, personalized plan for advancing their professional development;
• Set measurable goals for cultivating the competencies, mindsets, and leadership behaviors associated with effective senior international officers.

Leading Internationalization Across the Americas: Academic Diplomacy, SIO Leadership, and a Continental Community of Practice

Thursday, February 4
1:00 – 3:30 PM ET

Chair

Elizabeth Trejos

presenters

Cristina Alfaro 
David Julien 
Katy Rosenbaum 

The role of the Senior International Officer (SIO) has evolved significantly in response to geopolitical shifts, changing patterns of student mobility, financial constraints, emerging technologies, immigration policy, and rising expectations for comprehensive internationalization. Increasingly, SIOs serve not only as institutional leaders but also as strategic advisors, coalition builders, and academic diplomats who advance their institution’s global mission while navigating a complex and rapidly changing higher education landscape.

At the same time, the growing interdependence of higher education systems across the Americas creates opportunities for intentional collaboration, mutual learning, and sustained partnership among international education leaders. Shared geographic proximity, interconnected economies, and overlapping cultural and socio-political realities create both common challenges and distinct institutional and regional contexts.

This highly interactive 2.5-hour virtual workshop will examine how SIOs and other international education leaders can use academic diplomacy, strategic leadership, and regional collaboration to advance comprehensive internationalization. Developed in partnership with the Inter-American Organization for Higher Education (IOHE), the workshop draws on IOHE’s more than 45 years of experience connecting higher education institutions throughout North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. 

Rather than focusing primarily on presentations or institutional case studies, participants will engage in facilitated discussion, scenario-based problem-solving, peer consultation, and individual action planning. Participants will examine shared and differing challenges across the Americas, explore opportunities for regional collaboration, and identify practical strategies that can be adapted to their own institutional contexts.

Participants will leave with new professional connections, practical strategies, and an individualized framework for advancing institutional internationalization through strategic partnerships, academic diplomacy, and regional collaboration. Participants will learn more about how to become a part of a community of practice. 

Learning Outcomes: 

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

• Evaluate emerging trends influencing internationalization across higher education institutions in the Americas, regional trends, and their implications for SIO leadership.
• Apply principles of academic diplomacy and strategic leadership, cultural humility, and critical consciousness to institutional internationalization challenges.
• Identify strategies for developing sustainable, equitable, and mutually beneficial partnerships across North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
• Develop concrete next steps for an institutional internationalization priority that leverages regional relationships and networks.

Regulated Leaders, Resilient Systems: Trauma-Informed Executive Leadership for Sustainable Change

Tuesday, February 9
1:00 – 3:30 PM ET

prsenters

Fabiola Riobe
Imara Dawson

Every leader carries something. Some of it is theirs. Some of it was never meant to be carried alone. Most leaders were never taught the difference.

This session begins with that distinction: what is mine to carry, what can we carry together, and what was never mine to carry alone? Dr. Fabiola Riobé and Imara Dawson bring the question from the inside; each having lived through significant transition and supported a partner through transition of their own. Neither speaks as expert to lived experience. Both carry, and both have been carried.

Across 2.5 hours, participants map their own response to uncertainty, work through the signature Leadership Load Map exercise, and apply it to real institutional scenarios, restructuring, leadership departure, crisis response, to separate individual load from organizational responsibility.

Learning Outcomes: 

By the end of the workshop, participants will leave with a:

• Leadership Load Map
• Transition Response Profile
• Way to audit what their institution is asking people to carry alone

Building Together: Project-based Learning and Teaching and Collective Impact as a Framework for Transnational Education

Thursday, February 11
1:00 – 3:30 PM ET

Chair

Andrea Stiefvater

presenter

Dr. Gulbahar Beckett

Transnational education (TNE) initiatives — joint degrees, faculty development partnerships, exchange programs, dual enrollment pathways — are among the most complex endeavors international education leaders undertake. They require coordinating stakeholders across cultural, institutional, and national contexts, often without a shared vocabulary, clear accountability structures, or adaptive mechanisms for when conditions change. This four-hour, hands-on workshop introduces two complementary theoretical frameworks as practical tools for designing and advancing TNE initiatives: Project-Based Learning and Teaching (PBLT), rooted in the Deweyan tradition of experiential, inquiry-driven learning, and Collective Impact, as articulated by Kania and Kramer (2011). Together, these frameworks offer international education leaders a rigorous yet flexible architecture for moving collaborative initiatives from concept through to sustainable implementation. Participants will leave with an initial draft of a Transnational Education Project Map — a structured working document that frames a transnational education initiative — one they are currently leading, planning, or exploring in real time — through both a project design lens (Layer 1) and the five conditions of Collective Impact (Layer 2). The map is designed as a living tool rather than a finished product, reflecting the adaptive, co-evolved nature of effective TNE work.

Learning Outcomes: 

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

• Articulate the core principles of Project-Based Learning and Teaching (PBLT) and explain how its Deweyan foundations apply to the design of transnational education initiatives.
• Apply the five conditions of Collective Impact — common agenda, shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support — to a specific TNE context.
• Construct an initial draft Transnational Education Project Map integrating both PBLT design elements (Layer 1) and Collective Impact conditions (Layer 2) for a current or planned initiative.
• Articulate how PBLT and Collective Impact together support an adaptive, co-evolved approach to transnational education partnership.