Building on Lessons from the Pandemic
How has the Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) integrated diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into the graduate student experience?
We believe that diversity is critical to building a better, more challenging, and more successful learning environment in order to train the new generation of international leaders. In the summer of 2020, SFS established a dedicated DEI o ice to ensure that our curriculum, pedagogy, and culture fully engage with issues of social justice and equity. We have created new graduate student scholarships, such as the MSFS Futures Scholarship and the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy McHenry Fellows program in our functional and regional studies master’s programs, expanded our e orts to update curricula and student initiatives, and broadened our admission and recruitment e orts to reach students whose holistic experiences contribute to the diversity of the school and its mission.
What kind of benefits resulted from the virtual learning during the pandemic, and how will this be integrated into the graduate program going forward?
As challenging as the pandemic was to life and learning on campus, we found new ways to improve our pedagogy in the virtual learning environment. Being online allowed us to become truly global in the sense that authors and leaders joined our virtual classrooms and gatherings from cities all over the world, including World Bank President David Malpass, HRH Princess Ghida Talal of Jordan, and the CFOs of Gap, Inc. and UPS. Students were not deterred from doing study abroad programs and internships virtually in the far corners of the earth. In addition, we continued to build our curricular o erings coming out of the pandemic to include new specializations in science, technology and international a airs, refugees, humanitarian disasters, and migration. While we will all be happy to return to campus in the fall, we will capitalize on the best elements of online learning going forward.
How did SFS build community networks during the pandemic?
Whether it was active SFS alumni going the extra mile to find jobs and internships, faculty holding additional one-on-one Zoom office hours, or the dean bringing together political and corporate leaders from around the world for virtual co ee chats with students during the pandemic, SFS emerges with an even stronger community going forward. Our ability, for example, to bring the most diverse group of recruiters to campus virtually greatly enhanced job and internship placements for our students. We will build on those newly strengthened networks to give students greater access to novel learning, research, and internship opportunities that can be augmented by the virtual possibilities opened up by the pandemic. Not unlike the moment of SFS’s founding in 1919, SFS faculty and students are inspired today to rebuild an inclusive, open, and transparent post-pandemic world, each in their own unique and impactful way.