Student Mobility Projects

This mobility project addresses the challenges of a quickly changing, pluralistic, and globalized society through a one-week international mobility program to the UAE. This program impacts several domains of students’ life such as personality development, identity, intercultural competencies, self-efficacy, academic development, and professional opportunities.

Our objective is to provide students with unique international experiences involving faculty and partners in non-traditional countries. Studying abroad can be overwhelming, especially post covid – being in a group setting will help overcome the challenges. An experienced chaperone can help students in adapting to new situations while working on cultural competencies and employability. 

Taught and Term Abroad programs provide more students with the ability to travel safely in groups and for shorter lengths of time. This innovative new project aligns with several USask signature research areas: Water; Communities and Sustainability; and Agriculture, Energy, and Mineral Resources.  This project also incorporates issues of Indigenous cultures, sustainable development, equity, social and environmental justice, and climate change from a water perspective. It provides an international experiential learning opportunity and allows students to submerse themselves directly into the culture of our partners to appreciate the language and indigenous peoples of both Yucatan and Costa Rica.

Students are powerful change agents. Through lenses of intercultural effectiveness, competency development and advancing the SDGs; students who are Indigenous, have disability needs or face barriers of low-income will undertake transformational International Work-Integrated Learning (iWIL), student exchanges, Global Experience Certificate (GEC) activities, and embedded field course experiences via established and new international exchanges, partner social enterprises, private companies and not-for-profits placements located in 20+ non-traditional destinations. In keeping with Waterloo’s Strategic Plan, Waterloo and the World will enable future-ready talent from these targeted groups to realize their fullest potential with outcomes of this innovative programming shared with the larger community. 

Through this innovative centralized initiative, up to 100 under-represented UM students participate in physical outbound mobility, engaging in experiential learning opportunities abroad, acquiring intercultural skills and gaining global perspectives. 
Prior to travelling, UM offers customized wrap-around and financial supports to target groups, leveraging existing programs, investments, and partnerships both within UM and abroad. Depending on the nature of the program, students complete Intercultural Leadership co-curricular certificate program and a 6-module pre-departure course to maximize their experiences. Upon return, they continue their involvement by sharing their learnings, becoming mentors, and participating in the selection of future participants. 

A Multi-Disciplinary Partnership Between Athabasca University and Relationships Inspiring Social Enterprise (RISE) in the Training of Architecture, Heritage Resources Management and Computer Science. 

The Study Abroad in Lesotho program is an international and intersectoral suite of training activities scheduled to running from February 2023 to March 2025. It includes a partnership between Athabasca University and the not-for-profit organization RISE, focusing on three training areas: Architecture, Heritage Resources Management, and Computer Science. The program involves a series of two-week workshops in Lesotho. Students are working directly with RISE and their fellows to gain social and technical knowledge in community projects. Through the experience, the students are gaining a diverse global perspective on the overarching social, economic, environmental, and cultural regeneration theme.