lunchtime colloquia 2025-2026

Lunchtime Colloquia 2025-2026

Connect with the Glocal: A Research Initiative on Transnational First-Generation Student Pathways to College Readiness

Presented by Dr. Jeremy Rinker, Peace and Conflict Studies

Dr. Ana Hontanilla, Languages, Literature, and Cultures

April 14^th 11:45 AM – 1:30 PM

Present:

Dr. Aaron Allen, Musicology, Director of Environment and Sustainability

Dr. Maria Anastasiou, Global Engagement Office

Dr. Christopher Hodgkins, English

Dr. Ana Hontanilla, Languages, Literature, and Cultures

Dr. Magana Kabugi, English

Dr. Carl Mattacola, Health and Human Sciences

Dr. Christian Moraru, English

Dr. Sherine Obare, Research and Engagement

Dr. Jeremy Rinker, Peace and Conflict Studies

Louise Scoville, Atlantic World Research Network Graduate Assistant

Dr. Selima Sultana, Geography, Environment, and Sustainability

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Connect with the Glocal: A Research Initiative on Transnational First-Generation Student Pathways to College Readiness

Project Purpose: Investigate how First-Gen students at UNCG understand the relationship between global issues and local realities without studying abroad, with particular attention to transnational positionality, cultural capital, and pathways to college and career readiness.

Current Challenges with Project:

• First Generation UNCG students are underrepresented in exposure of study abroad programming
• Definitions of “global” remain abstract and ill-defined, insufficiently connected to lived experience
• UNCG students have gaps between global knowledge and local impact
• Existing models of global learning often overlook multilingual and multicultural lived realities already present on campus.

Project Approach:

• Reframe “global” as as lived and grounded in local experience beginning at home.
• Connect lessons to Greensboro lived experiences and community contexts.
• Make learning in the classroom more equitable and relevant by positioning the classroom as a site of transnational knowledge production.
• Framing learning as globalization. This begins with the interpretation of the global and the local, resulting in unique outcomes in different geographical areas, recognizing students’ existing global awareness.

Methodological Framework:

• The project would incorporate a structured research component led by undergraduate student researchers.
• Students will conduct interviews, questionnaires, and community-based observations focused on first-generation and transnational experiences.
• Monthly collaborative sessions will support the co-development of research instruments, data analysis, and iterative inquiry.
• The project will document how students mobilize cultural, linguistic, and transnational capital in navigating higher education.

Project Background/ UNCG Student First Approach:

• Many students speak another language besides English at home.
• Education Levels of Multilingual and Multicultural Households in Guilford County:
  • Professionals, Well-Educated, often working in local jobs below their levels of education in their countries of origin, are heavily invested in their children going to school and receiving education in Greensboro. These households demonstrate strong investment in education and upward mobility.
  • Optimism in students coming to UNCG.
• Announced Project Proposal for the Ignite Grant

Discussion Questions for the Group

• Where does global knowledge come from?
  • How can communities become spaces for developing global understanding?
  • What forms of cultural knowledge that multilingual students use to navigate higher ed?
  • How can universities transform global learning into an inclusive experience accessible to all students?
  • What type of local engagement will help students develop their critical thinking and intercultural awareness?
• Connect with the Glocal
  • Global Knowledge, is understood as relational, lived, and embedded in everyday experience rather than distant or abstract
  • College belonging: The project emphasizes transnational positionality and local-global entanglement.
  • Future pathways
  • Cultural Strengths, Global awareness is recognized as already present in students’ lived realities, particularly among multilingual and multicultural populations
  • First-Gen student pathways

Expected Outcomes:

• A research-based curriculum toolkit integrating glocal/transnational perspectives.
• A report synthesizing findings on first-generation transnational student experiences at UNCG.
• Identification of best practices for inclusive global learning beyond study abroad models.
• Preparation of materials for external funding and scholarly publication.

Feedback and Discussion:

• Culture as Crossroads
• Inclusive but not Intrusive programming in the classroom.
• Group work in the classroom to bring in new perspectives, how to build and assign groups.
• International and cross-cultural students in the classroom as educational resources.
• Study Abroad Learning and programming.
• Place as a jumping off point for discussions in the classroom. What does “place” mean to you?
  • Rural vs. Urban
  • Coming to the city (Greensboro) from the rural
  • How do students define their own setting and place
  • Student comfort and exploration
  • Learning vs. tourism
• How do we increase curiosity from local students?
• Food and food traditions as a tool of learning, a vehicle of trust and interest.
• Where are our students growing up?
• UNCG students are highly aware of where they are coming from.
• Students don’t want to ask questions or be invasive.
• Asking students to identify what they are experiencing in their place or community.
• How to facilitate dialogue between students who have different experiences of place.
• Global does not erase the Local.
• Global courses refigured with the inclusion of international students.
• The proposal of a first-year experience seminar instilling glocal values.
• Teaching students how to travel and dissolve international binaries.

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