First moves: Implementing Western’s global engagement plan

Nancy Stewart

Executive Director and Senior Advisor to the President, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of EAB.

In June of 2023, Western launched a new Global Engagement Plan. My capstone project focused on two key questions:

1. What first moves should we make to set us up for success in implementing our new plan?
2. How do we make our first moves such a way that builds institutional ambition and motivation for implementation?

Context:

In June of 2021, we launched our overall institutional strategic plan. A key metric featured in the plan was a desired international student population of 30% at Western. A memorable metric that has caught the attention of our campus community.

In June of 2023, we launched our Global Engagement Plan which contains many key metrics and measures of success, that the university needs to become better acquainted with.

Internal Challenges:

• We’re still collectively building our knowledge of the levers available to us to propel our international aspirations named in the new plan.
• People are tired and implementing strategies related to internationalization requires extra effort.
• In our decentralized environment, university-wide priorities often result in uneven uptake and a sense that others are leading them.
• The multiple measures of success in the new plan haven’t yet broken through to the Western community.

Solutions:

In my review of relevant EAB research, I arrived at five first moves that could strengthen our approach as we enter the implementation phase of Western’s new Global Engagement Plan:

1. Convene a small operations team: to focus on a few things at a time.
2. Embed goals in unit plans and align to budget: consult and prioritize accordingly.
3. Introduce radical transparency: initiate peer-to-peer sharing of targets.
4. Redefine the role of Western International: shift from asset manager to communicator, educator and facilitator.
5. Ignite our story-telling: share new signs of success to create momentum.

The capstone project provided a great opportunity to connect EAB resources with real work happening here at Western.