Mesa Community College faculty program helps develop student skills for global workforce

A new program offered to Mesa Community College faculty to integrate global content into their courses assists students in better developing the skills needed to be competitive in the world economy.

MCC is one of only three colleges selected to participate in the training program, according to a release.

The program is a partnership between Digital Promise, a global education nonprofit working to expand opportunity for every learner, and the Association of Community College Trustees. It offers select faculty members a $1,000 stipend, courtesy of the ECMC Foundation, to incorporate global content and skills into one of their existing courses.

Programming consists of four, one-hour virtual synchronous sessions per month and equips faculty members with strategies for incorporating global content into their courses to more actively engage students while still meeting required standards.

Due to the success of the pilot program introduced in 2024, the Digital Promise training program was extended into 2025.

“MCC faculty who participated in Digital Promise found value in this professional development activity, so we chose to continue it another year,” said Michael Voss, MCC dean of instruction in applied sciences & technology and business and computer information systems. “MCC met the deliverables of the partnership with Digital Promise and many of the faculty who participated used what they learned to provide international context to one or more learning outcomes in their courses.”

Ten residential faculty members in the fields of applied sciences and technology (veterinary technology and sustainable horticulture), art, education and computer information systems enrolled in the program in 2024.

Heather Singmaster, director of career and technical education at Digital Promise, noted, “We were really pleased with the outcomes from the training. The MCC faculty taking part in our project are teaching their international courses and embedding global content into additional courses as well.”

Singmaster added that the new MCC bachelor’s degree in early childhood now has global content embedded in all 10 classes.

“The faculty who participated in the project reported that students were gaining key 21st century skills as a result of their engagement with the global content,” Singmaster added. “For example, some faculty identified critical thinking skills, perspective-taking skills, communication and empathy as some key takeaways for students. In addition, faculty noted that their overall teaching skills improved.”

Harmony Turley, an MCC faculty participant teaching marketing and the arts, explained that she created an entire module on global marketing dealing with how companies market internationally and how marketing can be tailored for a specific global audience.

Taking her experience in the program a step further, Turley is working with students at Universidad de Guanajuato in the Mexican state of Guanajuato on a joint art project focusing on a culturally sensitive design. She and her MCC students are collaborating on three walls of canvas art and will travel to Guanajuato to install the art they jointly created with their Mexican counterparts.

Go to https://digitalpromise.org/ and https://www.mesacc.edu/