UW–Madison’s Global Higher Education (GHE) Master’s Degree Program is celebrating its 10th anniversary during the current academic year.
The program, housed in the School of Education’s highly ranked Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, focuses on training future generations of professionals and scholars and is known for its family-like, collaborative learning community that utilizes a cohort model. Students follow the course sequence together, which provides a daily platform for exchanging ideas, sharing experiences, and sharing expertise regarding current and critical issues in international higher education.
As they move through the program together, students have opportunities to expand their professional networks, build lifelong friendships, and provide support to each other among cohort fellows. Students who have completed the program describe the cohort experience as one of the most valuable aspects of the GHE program, which features a good mix of students who grew up in the United States learning alongside students who are coming to Madison from abroad.
GHE also centers its efforts on connecting education with career development, including embedded internships, and on individualized mentoring and career coaching from Weijia Li, the GHE program director.
To further help people understand the Global Higher Education Master’s Degree Program, the School of Education’s communications team caught up with some alumni of the program.
Following is one such Q&A conducted with Clara Hoff, who graduated from the program in 2018. Today, Hoff is working at the University of Virginia as senior assistant dean for the International Commission, where she does international admissions work for UVA.
“I really like it,” Hoff says of her role. “I get to work with really interesting students who are bringing diverse experiences to the university. I went into the GHE Master’s Program thinking that I’d be doing study abroad work — but I discovered international admission and I really enjoyed it.
How did you end up in the GHE Master’s Program? I was an undergraduate student at UW–Madison and I majored in Spanish and international studies. I had an interest in working in education in some capacity, but I didn’t think that being a teacher was for me, so I wasn’t really looking at teacher education programs. But I knew that I wanted to get into this field somehow. Doing the GHE program kind of opened my eyes to all of the different parts of global higher ed.
How did you get interested in global higher education? Although I grew up in Eau Claire and came to UW–Madison, I had some global experiences growing up and traveled to Spain and grew up speaking Spanish and going into a Spanish language summer camp. I was always adjacent to the international education space, but I think when I started the GHE Master’s Program, I didn’t know exactly what I could do in the field. It opened my eyes to the options and the possibilities that are out there.
Weijia Li has often talked with me about the family atmosphere of the program. Does that resonate with you? Yeah, it definitely felt like a family to me. UW–Madison can be such a big place, especially having been an undergraduate student. But I really enjoyed the cohort model and getting to know my 14 different classmates. I’m still in touch with many of them today. I’ve been to people’s weddings and we’ve kept in touch over the past few years, and I’ve always appreciated having Weijia as a mentor.
What aspects of the program did you like the most? I enjoyed the cohort model, getting different perspectives. Everyone had different work experiences and different undergraduate experiences. I enjoyed having class with the same students over and over and really getting to know each other well. I also really enjoyed the faculty members in ELPA. They all brought different kinds of expertise to us and I learned a lot from them.