Valencia College celebrated International Education Week (IEW) in global style the week of November 13-17! This joint initiative of the U.S. Dept. of State and the U.S. Dept. of Education takes place every November and is an opportunity to showcase the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide. This year’s celebration included a record number of 36 events and over 1300 attendees! In order to ensure that the IEW events were accessible to all students, roughly half of the events took place in person (at West, East, Osceola, Downtown, Lake Nona, Winter Park, Poinciana Campuses) and half of them were online.

IEW is a unique way for Valencia College to internationalize our campus and promote the concept of global citizenship to our students, which in turn helps prepare them for entering today’s global workforce. Events are planned with the following learning outcomes in mind:

• Help students gain a greater level of understanding and appreciation for different world cultures.
• Create cultural opportunities for international and domestic students to interact.
• Allow international students to share information about their home country.
• Promote study abroad opportunities.

For a full overview of all of the internationally themed activities and events that took place, visit the IEW website here: https://valenciacollege.edu/iew

And a special thanks goes out to all the campus partners who organized and orchestrated the events, especially International Student Services (ISS), Valencia Intercultural Student Association (VISA), Valencia Intercultural Club (VIC), Continuing and International Education, Student Development, and WEC Department of Arts and Humanities, who organized the largest events. The whole week would not be possible without all the support of our students, faculty and staff coming together to make IEW unforgettable.