Center for Global Leadership

News from the

As global citizens and as a community of faith, we pray for the health and safety of all nations and people affected by the COVID-19 virus. When safe and appropriate, the global exchanges and collaborative learning activities which have distinguished Notre Dame’s Center for Global Leadership will resume.

Students Participate in Sketchbook Exchange This winter, Notre Dame’s art students participated in an art exchange with students from The Study, in Montreal. Students from each school responded to the prompt, “What is important to you?” by adding their own artwork and creative messaging to sketchbooks which were then mailed between the two schools.

Junior Model UN Students Attend Cultural Diplomacy Conference On January 9, Middle School students in the Junior Model UN club participated in a conference hosted by the World Affairs Council and the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. The program explored the importance of cross-cultural understanding and diplomacy.

SPARKS Robotics Team Goes Global In February, Notre Dame’s FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics team, the SPARKS, hosted Skype sessions with students on the FIRST Lego League (FLL) robotics team from Notting Hill and Ealing High School, the Academy’s sister school in London, and with the sixth grade robotics class from our sister school in Montreal, The Study. The students described their robotics programs, demonstrated their robots, and were excited to learn that they participate in similar robotics programs. We look forward to deepening this collaboration with our STEM sisters!

New Date Announced for STEM Symposium For the health and safety of our participants, the Academy’s inaugural International Sisters in STEM Symposium will now be held at Notre Dame in July 2021. During the week, multinational teams of eight students will work on one of four tracks: design thinking and entrepreneurship, environmental science, robotics and coding, and the medical sciences. A special track for faculty will run parallel to the student teams and will address 21st century teaching opportunities and challenges. More information is available on Notre Dame’s website, ndapa.org. Seniors Participate in Model UN Impact Summit In February, ND’s Model UN senior leaders traveled to Prague, Czech Republic, to attend a United Nations Impact Summit which focused on the UN Sustainable Development Goal, “Quality Education.” The students discussed and wrote resolutions on both discrimination and inclusion in the classroom with students from twelve other countries. After the conference, the group visited noteworthy sites throughout the city.

Upper School Students Participate in Model UN at Columbia University Twenty members of the Academy’s Model UN club participated in Columbia University’s 19th Model UN Conference from January 16-19 in New York City. Our ninth through eleventh grade students researched, debated, and negotiated their way to resolution on a variety of problems ranging from The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1978 to the Amazon Headquarters 2 Bidding Process. The Academy congratulates Katherine Lanzalotto ’21 on her Verbal Commendation. The group also visited the Permanent Mission to Denmark and met with staff to learn about the process of negotiating policy for climate change and energy.