CEA Global Campuses:

The New Landscape of Global Education

CEA Global Education has built a unique and innovative academic structure that delivers the global competence today’s university students need to understand the many ethical, social-political, demographic, and environmental challenges they will face as tomorrow’s leaders.

CEA's Global Campuses are centrally located in the heart of major European, Asian, or Latin American cities – each one managed by highly qualified and locally knowledgeable academic and administrative staff trained in industry standards of study abroad good practice and outcomes assessment. CEA Global Campuses provide American and international students with courses – transcripted by University of New Haven, a U.S.-regionally accredited institution – in both traditional and non-traditional majors, incorporating CEA's signature active learning environment, international internships, service learning, and hybrid-enrollment programs.

Guiding Principles

In addition to the emerging study abroad trends guiding CEA's vision for Global Campus program development, we look to specific fundamental truths, including the need to:

Recognize that intercultural and multicultural competence trumps mono-cultural immersion;
Identify language course learning outcomes that integrate cross-cultural understanding with grammar and style;
Ensure that instruction is technologically geared to the realities and expectations of post-millennial students;
Create global studies courses that address the critical topics of tomorrow, not simply the narrow histories of select locations;
Respond to the shorter-term realities of programs needed by professional schools and non-traditional students;
Promote the employment and career prospects of students through the intercultural skills and understanding they acquire abroad;
Design innovative curricula, focused on engaging students in dynamic activities and lessons that bring relevance to their future educational, personal and professional pursuits, and that equip students with the tools they will need to address global issues of poverty, climate change and human rights;
Add flexibility to educational design and delivery through collaborative and mutually beneficial programs through overseas partners who share CEA’s core values and mission;
Offer learning opportunities across the world in ways that democratize access to global learning, and;
Provide strategic opportunities for U.S. universities in need of study abroad, executive programs, corporate training needs, cross-border educational partnerships, distance education and other initiatives critical to achieving their mission.

Operational Infrastructure

Each Global Campus is organized into three departments – Academic Affairs, Student Services, and Student Housing – in order to provide the overseas infrastructure, academic integrity, administrative professionalism, and flexible planning required by U.S. universities to internationalize their campus and curriculum through study abroad.

A Student-Centered Academic Model

Discipline-based learning, intercultural competence, and personal and ethical development are the central goals of study abroad in higher education today. The fundamental goal of all CEA Global Campus academic programs is, therefore, to ensure that four essential learning outcomes take place that would not have developed to the same degree had our students studied at their home institutions:

That they grow intellectually, personally and ethically
That they develop higher levels of global & intercultural competence
That they develop greater fluency in foreign languages
That they are better prepared for international careers

All CEA Global Campus academic programs provide learning opportunities that are appropriate to our mission, specifically designed to match the purpose of the Global Campus, and structured to meet the four above-stated outcomes.

CEA Active Learning

A core feature to our Global Campus programs, CEA Active Learning engages students in their host culture through class activities designed to incorporate students' first-hand experience with course objectives. For example, a student taking a course on art history in the U.S. might study the masters, memorizing who did what and when. That same course at our Global Campus in Florence, Italy, would incorporate CEA Active Learning by taking that student behind the scenes at an art restoration lab to meet with professionals.

CEA Active Learning connects what students experience through study abroad to what they're learning in class by:

Inviting local experts into the classroom as guest lecturers offering personal insight to class discussions
Taking students behind the scenes to significant cultural sites where they can observe firsthand the practical application of course objectives
Asking students to analyze what they observe and experience and relate it to course objectives through discussion and assignments
Setting the expectation that student articulate the relationship between what they experience through class activities and course objectives

Other opportunities for CEA Active Learning include:

Language exchange
International internships
Community-based research
Working abroad
Civic volunteering

Global Competence: Tying It All Together

All of our efforts our governed by a shared desire to provide students with the ability to demonstrate and articulate Global Competence. While virtually all institutions of higher learning have identified intercultural skills as a key component of college education today, the amount of available resources to fund such programming is becoming more scarce.

CEA's Global Campus model – from its vision and operational infrastructure to its academic model, including CEA Active Learning – offers U.S. universities the opportunity to help fill a perceived gap in higher education.

To help students and U.S. university faculty better articulate the benefits of study abroad, CEA has designed a 45-hour, three-credit course, Communication & Global Competence, which is reviewed and approved by the faculty at the University of New Haven, our School of Record. The course is required for all students attending a study abroad program through CEA's Global Campuses. In the course, students are asked to reflect on the meaning of culture and the impact it has on their interpersonal and professional relationships. Through critical analysis, students explore their motivations for study abroad and assess their personal development in cultural awareness, ethical growth and civic spirit.

All courses offered through CEA's Global Campus programs incorporate those same objectives, reinforcing students' understanding of their study abroad experience through additional class readings, discussions and outcome assessment exercises. Our goal is for our student to return to their home campus better equipped to articulate succinctly the benefits of study abroad, their heightened cultural awareness and acquired intercultural skills, or global competence.