Several UF faculty and staff recently attended the WISE Conference 2025 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the month of February. Paloma Rodriguez and Sebastian Rodriguez-Natali, both from UFIC, presented on “Fostering Intercultural Learning among Staff: Leveraging COIL/Virtual Exchange”; Dr. Pingchien Neo from the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering presented on “Building Global Engineers: Cultivating Intercultural Competency Through Internships Abroad”; and Dr. Hal Knowles (College of Design, Construction and Planning), Paloma Rodriguez and Dr. Tara Harvey of True North Intercultural presented on “Building Intercultural Capacity Among Faculty & Staff: An Ecosystems Approach.”
Additional UF attendees included:
· Anita Badhwar from the Office of Global Learning
· Dr. Ravi Ghadge from the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law
· Dr. Misti Sharp from the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences
· Dr. Natalie Coers from the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences
· Dr. Soohyoun Ahn from the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences
· Dr. Kim Holton from the College of Health and Human Performance
The WISE conference took place at Wake Forest University and was designed to help faculty and staff enhance their skills and knowledge to support students in developing their intercultural competence. A special thanks to our colleagues at Wake Forest University for hosting such an excellent conference!