By Laurel White
Several faculty and staff from the School of Education contributed to a recently released book documenting UW–Madison’s history of global impact.
The book, “Wisconsin in the World: Internationalization at the University of Wisconsin–Madison,” was published this summer. With contributions from dozens of faculty and staff across the university, along with colleagues from other institutions, the book explores how UW–Madison has a strong history of engaging and partnering with people, places, and ideas across the globe.

“While not comprehensive, the project provides a robust cross-section of examples of how UW faculty, staff, and students have been engaging globally throughout the 20th and 21st centuries,” said Elise Ahn, director of the International Projects Office and the book’s editor, in an International Division story about the book’s publication.
“Wisconsin in the World” is organized into four sections: internationalization of the curriculum, experiential learning, establishing linkages, and administration. Contributors to the book from the UW–Madison School of Education are Nancy Kendall, Tom Owenby, Jon Nordmeyer, and Esther Bettney Heidt. A former School of Education faculty member, Gail Prasad, also contributed.
Nordmeyer and Bettney Heidt co-authored a chapter outlining the impact of the WIDA International School Consortium, a global network of over 500 K-12 schools in over 100 countries, which operated from 2013 to 2023. The co-authors say the chapter explores how the consortium helped educators shift from a deficit-based to an asset-based view of multilingual learners, as well as the organization’s shift from a university-based dissemination network to a reciprocal global learning network.

“While the WIDA International School Consortium ended earlier this year, it laid the groundwork for the Multilingual Learning Research Center School Network, a global research-practice partnership focused on advancing educational outcomes for multilingual learners,” Bettney Heidt says.
Nordmeyer and Bettney Heidt both work at the Multilingual Learning Research Center — Nordmeyer as co-director and Bettney Heidt as a school network researcher.
Nordmeyer says the global dialogue that grew around the WIDA standards and assessments helped broaden the impact of UW–Madison by identifying problems of practice in teaching multilingual learners.
“Building on this foundation has allowed us to reimagine how we support international educators in the new Multilingual Learning Research Center,” he says.

Bettney Heidt earned her doctorate from the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction. She says working on the project helped her foster a sense of connection across campus with colleagues focused on internationalization.
“During my PhD, I often struggled to find my place at UW–Madison, as a Canadian international student who had moved to Wisconsin after 10 years working at a school in Honduras,” she says. “Throughout the project, I had the opportunity to connect in different ways with other chapter authors, which opened my eyes to projects and people all over campus focused outside the US context.”
More information about Nordmeyer and Bettney Heidt’s chapter is available here.
Bettney Heidt also partnered with a former faculty member in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Gail Prasad, on a chapter that outlines development of a research-practice partnership between a local school and the Office of Global and Multilingual Education of the Madison Metropolitan School District.
“The genesis of this partnership was a local school principal and parent council’s desire to build a sense of belonging and community in a school that served an increasingly culturally, linguistically, and socially diverse school population,” the chapter authors explain on the book’s website.
Tom Owenby, the School of Education’s associate dean for teacher education, partnered with several co-authors, including Department of Educational Policy Studies professor Nancy Kendall, for a chapter on how graduate students were drivers of course-level internationalization in the School of Education.

“In this project, university faculty worked to center the knowledge and expertise of graduate students and the Global Engagement Office in order to internationalize three School of Education courses,” Owenby explains. “Working in a non-hierarchical fashion paid huge dividends in regard to project outcomes.”
Owenby says the project deepened his knowledge of approaches to curriculum internationalization and allowed him to explore the possibilities of building global competence in future teachers through the lens of Indigenous framings of social studies.
Kendall added that those who participated in the process, led by former Global Engagement Office director Kate McCleary, not only learned how to internationalize their curricula, but also gained invaluable skills related to integrating cross-cutting issues — such as intersectional inequities, the climate crisis, and Indigenous sovereignty — more generally.
Kendall also partnered with several colleagues on a chapter dedicated to the UW–Madison 4W Initiative (Women and Wellbeing in Wisconsin and the World). The initiative is an interdisciplinary effort that works to promote gender equity, global wellbeing, and the full participation of women in society.

In addition to describing 4W’s origins, the chapter identifies lessons for other institutions of higher education interested in developing similar programs. It also discusses 4W’s plans for the future and its own long-term sustainability.
Several “Wisconsin in the World” book events are planned for this school year, including a networking lunch, followed by a panel discussion, on Oct. 20.
The edited book can be ordered from Information Age Publishing here, as well as wherever books can be purchased. It is also available through the UW–Madison Library here.