Borderless Leaders UCI spearheads cross-border collaborations to prepare the next generation of leaders.
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By Christine Byrd
ur greatest global challenges – pandemics, climate change, poverty, refugees – span the world, regardless of national borders. In an effort to prepare a new generation of leaders to tackle transnational issues by collaborating across borders, the UCI School of Education launched its first Borderless Leadership Conference through its Center for Educational Partnerships this summer, taking dozens of California students to Mexico to forge research connections and international relationships. “Whether we are responding to an enduring pandemic, climate change disasters, or the eternal movement of people around the globe, we have learned the border does not stop a virus, a tornado, or human migrations, but the concept of the border
Photos by Alan Vega
has limited our thinking and our collaboration,” says Stephanie Reyes-Tuccio, UCI assistant vice chancellor for educational partnerships, in opening remarks at the conference.
Immigration impacts Undergraduate and graduate students from disciplines ranging from public health to social ecology participated in the conference, coming from UCI, UC San Diego, Long Beach City College and DREAM Fellows from other UC campuses who were funded through UC Collaborative to Promote Immigrant and Student Equity (UC PromISE) – a multicampus research initiative with the goal of informing policies and practices to advance equity and inclusion for undocumented and immigrantorigin students.
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