The History of CILMAR

Most people at Purdue University know Michael A. Brzezinski, now retired, as the past Director of ISS, or the Dean of the Office of International Programs, or the Vice President of Global Partnerships and Programs, but the CILMAR staff know him as our founder and first director. Even visionaries and strategists such as Mike Brzezinski don't do their thinking in a bubble. For Mike, there were all sorts of elements swirling around in his context that led to the founding of CILMAR, but perhaps most important was the publication of Student Learning Abroad: What Our Students Are Learning, What They're Not, and What We Can Do About It (Vande Berg, Paige, and Hemming Lou, 2012). That book created in Mike a determination that a next giant leap for intercultural learning (ICL) at Purdue would be to create a Center which would serve all Boilermakers--faculty, staff, and students--by helping to embed ICL into the curriculum.

Mike has an extraordinary ability to surround himself with people who share his vision and could activate it. Among these would be his then associate directors Kris Acheson-Clair and Katherine Yngve who worked alongside Mike to craft the proposal which inaugurated the Center's existence in the Fall of 2016. Mike christened the Center as CILMAR--Intercultural Learning, Mentorship, Assessment and Research all being important to the vision and mission.

Besides past vice president of Global Partnerships and Programs Michael A. Brzezinski, one of the key architects of CILMAR was Charles A. "Chuck" Calahan. Hired by Purdue University's Center for Instructional Excellence (CIE) in 2012 to serve as the assistant director of global faculty development, Chuck served as a guiding force for CILMAR as he did what he likes to call "running ahead of the headlights," casting a vision for what could be.

As was alluded to before, CILMAR was not created in a vacuum. One of the key Purdue initiatives which formed the vision for CILMAR was the adoption by Purdue's faculty senate of the AAC&U VALUE rubrics as the definition and measure for various embedded outcomes, including intercultural learning. In the Winter of 2018, Chuck published an article entitled "A Six-Year Journey of Global Learning Faculty and Student Development" in the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) publication Peer Review. In the article, he explains the multi-layered context which necessitated the creation of CILMAR, including:

• Purdue's adoption of the embedded outcomes
• Internationalization at Purdue
• Integration initiatives at Purdue
• The study abroad Big Move
• Perspective taking

Please navigate through the hyperlinks above to continue reading the history of CILMAR, as told by Chuck Calahan.