I am delighted to announce that as of Thursday, Sept. 1, the Center for International Service will be renamed The Center for Global Engagement.

Established at CSI in 1976, the Center managed the paperwork of what were then called foreign students, as well as outbound junior year abroad programs. It later expanded to include English as a Second Language (ESL) and other services to the campus. As the Center grew, it matured and the mission was expanded to reflect new roles in providing opportunities for international and domestic students alike.

Today, we take the next step in our evolution with this change as it reflects the realities of international education in the 21st century. No longer is the Center providing a simple service but rather serves as an integral part of the student and CSI community by providing guidance through the acculturation process for international students and scholars, advising for outbound study abroad students, training and counseling on cross-cultural and intercultural competence, providing resources for Deans, department chairs, faculty, and others on internationalizing the curriculum, encouraging globalized learning on campus, and providing programming that educates, promotes, and supports the tenets of an interculturally dependent world.

Our new name, The Center for Global Engagement, was selected specifically to reflect these new activities. “Global” was chosen intentionally to represent something greater than cooperation between nations and instead to encompass a wide range of viewpoints, ideas, traditions, backgrounds, cultures, and histories of people, rather than political boundaries. “Engagement” is being used to represent the nature of the work conducted at the Center – engaging with other people and cultures at home and across the globe in pursuit of our shared educational and humanitarian goals.  Our mission, “To promote the internationalization of academic life at the College of Staten Island/CUNY in order to foster an awareness of the interdependence of nations, the value of diversity, and the importance of international understanding,” remains our guiding principle.

Thank you, and I invite you join our rededication and 40th Anniversary Kick-off at our International Coffee Hour on September 8 at 4:00pm in Building 2A, Room 206.