9:00 – 9:15 am
Opening Remarks & Welcome
9:15 – 10:15 am
Keynote by Dr. Gloria Ramírez and Dr. Jenna Woodrow
Building Connections and Bridging Cultures
10:15 – 10:30 am
Break with coffee and snacks
10:30 – 11:15 am
Poster Sessions
International Expeditions: 30 Years of Adventure Studies around the world
Presenter: Jerry Isaak (Faculty of Adventure, Culinary Arts and Tourism)
Additional Presenters and/or Contributors: James Rodger, Sharman Learie, Bridget Orsetti, Simon Ward-Able, Fred Amyot
Description: The Adventure Studies Department has facilitated internationalization for more than three decades through capstone expeditions in the Adventure Guide Diploma and International Field Schools in the Bachelor of Tourism Management degree. This poster will celebrate the accomplishments of students and faculty on international expeditions and will highlight the key pedagogical principles that support and guide these experiences.
Envisioning Resilient Community Futures
Presenter: Bala Nikku (Faculty of Education and Social Work)
Description: I read the TRU’s 2025-2035 Strategic Internationalization Plan, which outlines five goals. I see my work with TRU and EDSW aligns with all of these goals but more impactfully with goals number five: To lead the way in cultivating a culture of community mindedness with a global conscience by sharing educational practices, exchanging knowledge worldwide and taking a proactive role in addressing regional, national and global challenges through education and scholarship. I practice teaching as a scholarship that aligns with my teaching philosophy of crafting my classroom as a sanctuary and a dynamic, interactive place where I incorporate knowledge with the learning. I teach International Social Work, Community Social Work, and Green Social Work at TRU. I use MOOCS, Zero Textbook, and Open Educational Resources that allow diversity of learning and equity in accessing higher education learning. I derive and tailor teaching content to align with the learning outcomes and deep learning by integrating and embedding global justice and decolonial thinking in teaching and research I conduct with diverse communities in BC, Canada, and South Asian countries. I prepare and invest my skills to ensure that my pedagogical approaches create transformative educational experiences for TRU, domestic, and international learners. Building global partnerships and intercultural connections rooted in equity is central to my teaching and service projects. The research projects on envisioning disaster-resilient community futures, climate justice, Blue Carbon-based livelihoods, and circular economies are aligned with UN Sustainable goals, Canada’s Indo-Pacific strategy, and TRU’s vision and EDSW’s goals. I practice transdisciplinary work spanning Canada, Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka. I investigate how local knowledge systems, community science, and participatory research can inform more effective disaster risk reduction strategies. Over, my teaching, research, and service in the last 8 years with TRU have demonstrated leadership in global knowledge exchange and synthesis, focused on regional (wildfire disasters in BC) and international issues like Climate Justice and sustainable communities, which are core to TRU’s vision.
Experiential Learning Beyond the Borders: International Field School on Microorganisms, Human Impacts, and Climate Change
Presenter: Naowarat Cheeptham (Ann) (Faculty of Science – Biological Science)
Partners: Dr. Alice Sharp (CMU) and her team of staff, Dr. Joanna Urban (TRU)
Description: This poster presentation will showcase the International Field School (IFS) Thailand on Microorganisms, Human Impacts, and Climate Change that was offered in collaboration with the Chiang Mai University (CMU), Faculty of Science, Environmental Science International Program in May 2023.
For this IFS, the place-based and experiential learning approaches were employed as the centre for the curricular design. We aimed to develop global citizenship skills within the young generation of microbiologists through local and international contexts. The concepts of “Interconnectedness” and “One Health” were emphasized during our time in Chiang Mai, and specific case studies in Canadian and Thai contexts were assigned to students at both CMU and TRU before departure. The student participants, including 19 students from TRU and 9 from CMU, jointly worked in small research teams to identify the impacts of climate change on humans, the environment, and microorganisms. The outcomes of their work proposed solutions for the impact of climate change. The 2-week field school activities included lectures from local and international institutions, fieldwork, laboratory analysis, and group discussion and presentations. The cultural events augmented the academic program and provided opportunities for students. Reflections from students indicated that first-hand learning experience changed their perspective regarding the world and our crises. Collaboration of higher education institutes should be further strengthened to ensure that the young generations are equipped with the skills required for the future.
Using Google Earth to Engage Students with Global Geographic Knowledge
Presenter: Thomas Waldichuk (Faculty of Arts – Geography & Environmental Studies), Madelene Kajusa (TRU M.Ed. student)
Description: Google Earth projects (or tours) can increase student engagement with geographic knowledge. This is exemplified by the curriculum in Geography 3900 Japan, in which students have worked in groups to create tours. It is also exemplified by a fourth year directed studies project where the student created a regional geography course of South Sudan using Google Earth.
In the Fall 2022 version of Geography 3900, students shared their tours with university students in Japan. Students who were studying to be elementary teachers at Kyoto Bunkyo University in Japan shared their tours of the Kyoto area with the TRU students, while students in the Geography 3900 class created tours of the Kamloops area for the students at Kyoto Bunkyo University. The students at both institutions then took the tours created by the other institution. Some students from Kyoto Bunkyo University sent video messages to the TRU students in which they described their impressions of the tours. TRU students gave video presentations of tours that the Kyoto Bunkyo students had shared with them. The students from both classes met online as a group once during the term. Some of the students from both classes met in Uji, Japan in the spring of 2023 while the TRU Geog3700 field course was taking place.
This experience enhanced TRU students’ geographic and inter-cultural learning, touching on the TRU Institutional learning outcomes: Connection, e.g., working in teams; Engagement, e.g., promoting lifelong learning; Exploration, acquiring knowledge, and Local-to-Global, e.g., intercultural awareness.
The directed studies project touched on many of the institutional learning outcomes above as well as some sustainable development goals, e.g., #4 (quality education). While referring to the SDGs, the student was able to decolonize how she viewed places like South Sudan and show how we are more globally connected than we think we are.
Paths to Empowerment: A Spotlight on TRUe Global Learning
Presenters: Amber Archibald, Shari Caputo (School of Nursing)
Description: This poster will address how the faculty led field school in Nepal for 3rd year BScN students aligns with SIP goal #1. The poster will examine the history of TRU’s collaboration with Dhulikhel Hospital in Nepal and to the culture and people of Nepal. This was TRU’s first international collaboration which ran from 2000-2003 and allowed for reciprocal exchange of Nepali nurses and TRU students. The collaboration was re-initiated in 2023, led by faculty, Shari Caputo, who participated in the first exchange in 2000 as a BScN student.
The poster will address BScN students’ “lightbulb” moments of understanding the theory and practice connection during the field school. For example, TRU students observed Nepali nursing students complete health teaching and food preparation for toddlers during community home visits and students’ participated in a trash ‘challenge’ in the town both of which lead to empowerment of students and the community.
Lastly, the poster will highlight how experiential learning through cultural integration assists in the development of TRU students to become community minded and globally conscious. A key theme that emerged from TRU students during the field school has been an increased awareness of doing more with less. For instance, seeing Nepali nurses create a small garbage container out of newspaper for dressing changes waste, and being very mindful of not wasting supplies because patients were charged for this expense.
Tourism and Internationalization
Presenter: Tara Duncan (Faculty of Adventure, Culinary Arts and Tourism)
Description: Tourism is a global activity yet practiced, experienced, performed and taught in local places. At TRU, the Tourism Department has always been deeply embedded in the local community. At the same time, Tourism also always looks outward, aware of the global challenges the tourism industry faces and what that might mean for our students. In this poster, we focus on the interconnections that the Tourism Department has to our global world. The poster will illustrate our regional embeddedness, our national reach and our international reputation. The poster will emphasize our scholarship, student experiences and faculty engagement. The goal is to highlight how the Tourism Department engages with TRU’s Internationalisation Strategy through our globally diverse, richly cultural and well interconnected faculty, students and industry.
11:15 – 12:00 pm
Roundtable Sessions
Culturally Responsive Custom Content Creation: Generative AI for Indigenous Student Success
Presenter: Vivek Kumar, Ajay Dhruv, Ghazanfar Latif, Md Moniruzzaman, Quan Nguyen (Faculty of Science – Computing Science)
Description: Thompson Rivers University has long carried a mandate to create welcoming pathways for Secwépemc and other Indigenous learners. Despite well-intentioned recruitment drives and student-support services, first-year withdrawal and course incompletion rates for Allied Health and STEM programs are quite low.
Cultural dissonance to Indigenous world-views and classroom instruction abstracted from land lead to disengagement of Indigenous learners when their study and assessment activities remain abstracted from local realities. Inclusion of locally relevant material, place-based pedagogy, land-based curricula and listening-to-learn model have shown significant potential to reverse these trends to strengthen Indigenous retention and identity. Considering these, we propose to combine two potent forces: Land-based Indigenous knowledge and recent advances in Generative artificial intelligence.
Land-based education sees land as a living relative and teacher, involving experiential learning with a deep connection with nature. It has demonstrated its power to foster relational accountability and ground abstract scientific concepts in the stories of place. Recent research shows that on-the-land modules improved student resilience, cultural pride, sense of belonging and year-to-year retention. Further, integrating Indigenous protocols (e.g., talking circles, Elder mentorship, local ecological examples) was found to be the most cited support category for Indigenous students staying in STEM programs.
Generative AI, when guided by ethical protocols and Indigenous community authority, offers a toolset for rapidly adapting instructional materials to Indigenous cultural contexts while maintaining academic rigour. A generative AI model can ingest authoritative Indigenous knowledge, institutional learning outcomes, discipline-specific content and assessments package, and then produce lesson plans, readings, revised assessments and rubrics. Such responsiveness demands a dynamic system that learns with the community and evolves with the integration of land-based Indigenous knowledge and content.
Formalizing the International Engineering Field School
Presenter: Geoff Fink (Faculty of Science – Engineering)
Description: This proposal outlines the next phase of development for the Engineering International Field School. In May 2024, a successful 19-day pilot program was delivered in Guadalajara, Mexico, for seventeen students. The program integrated technical workshops in Python and machine learning with deep cultural immersion. Key successes included collaborative projects between Canadian and Mexican students, the establishment of a formal Letter of Understanding with the University of Guadalajara, and a unique, facilitated knowledge exchange between Canadian and Mexican Indigenous students.
The field school demonstrated a replicable model for integrating meaningful international experience into a rigidly structured engineering program without disrupting academic progression. While successful, the program currently operates as an ad-hoc, non-credit event. The next critical step is to transition this proven concept into a sustainable, for-credit course to ensure its long-term viability and deepen student learning outcomes through structured reflection.
This roundtable session invites colleagues to provide feedback and share insights on strategies for this transition. The discussion will focus on navigating the curriculum approval process, designing appropriate assessments for experiential learning, securing sustainable funding now that the initial GSO funding is ending, and expanding the Indigenous knowledge exchange component within a formal course structure.
Built With, Not For: Student Voice in Internationalization Supports at TRU
Presenter: Dr. Tanya Manning-Lewis (School of Education), Mamathashree Yogananda (TRU M.Ed student) and Victoria Elliot (TRU M.Ed student)
Description: The first thought that came to mind when I saw the call for proposals was how can we claim to support internationalization and international learners if we are not listening to them? The second thought was how many international students I could reasonably invite to be part of this roundtable! For the team submitting this proposal, providing exceptional support services that ensure the academic and personal success of international learners and contribute to the regional and global community must start with students, which begs the question, why can’t they lead a session at the Global Horizons conference? They will challenge us to rethink what true support for success looks like and how to shift from services added for students to support built with them- a central tenet for success. The session emerges from students’ shared stories and the work I have been doing for the last two years with international students, which includes extensive supervision of projects and theses and supporting many students annually to national and international conferences. I have gained immensely from these collaborations, and as such, I argue that universities must move beyond transactional approaches in internationalization and build support services for international learners that view them as knowledge holders whose contributions enrich our communities. Student voice is not simply an addition to existing structures but a catalyst for reimagining them. The recent decline in international student enrollment reveals that much is at stake, as we witness a profound loss of intercultural development, cultural enrichment, connection in university spaces and a ripple effect far beyond campus.
As such, this roundtable will invite participants into a candid conversation with the team to explore what exceptional support built and defined with students looks like. We will also challenge participants to think about where we go from here, with and without student input.
The John Hull Memorial Field School – Italy
Presenters: Anne Terwiel, Kellee Caton, Adam Florence (Faculty of Adventure, Culinary Arts and Tourism)
Description: In June of 2025, 21 members of the TRU community attended a Field School in Montespertoli, Italy. Of those 21 participants, 5 were First Nations and Metis, 4 were trades students (Culinary Arts) who had an opportunity for a leadership role in an academic setting, 3 were faculty, 1 was staff. Several international students applied for the program but were unable to attend due to VISA problems. Under the umbrella Slow Tourism (a sustainable form of tourism) the Field School focused on Food Tourism, Agritourism and Sport Touring. Students experienced lectures by local Italian professors, experiential activities with scholars, farmers and guides, and created experiences for out hosts. It was a true cultural exchange.