DATE: Monday afternoon, March 5 through Wednesday noon, March 7, 2001
PLACE: Sheraton Imperial, Research Triangle Park, NC
EVENT: Three-day work session to develop action plans for global education in North Carolina's community colleges

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK: How do we train North Carolinians to work for foreign-owned businesses? How do we teach supervisors to work with people who don't speak English? How do we help entrepreneurs break into international markets? How to we attract and keep good students from other countries? Can students in Mexico enroll in courses taught by Pitt Community College on the Internet?

These are the kinds of questions that will be on the table for more than 350 people representing almost all the institutions of North Carolina's Community College System starting Monday, March 5. They are scheduled to come to the Sheraton Imperial in Research Triangle Park for a three-day work session devoted to global education.

The theme of the conference is "Globalizing the North Carolina Community College System: Commonalities, GeoPolitical Trends, Cultural Diversity." The goal is to equip every community college with a specific, comprehensive action plan for making global education part of its daily operation.

"Each participating community college is sending a team of five, and every team member is ready to work on a real set of goals and objectives that will move our state forward in global education, " according to Dr. Delores Parker, Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs in the North Carolina Community College System. "We're not just there to listen and learn, although we will have lots of opportunity to learn new skills. We're there to do, to act, to make things happen."

Dr. Parker worked with advisory and planning committees from the System Office and institutions statewide to organize the conference. Major funders are the Stanley Foundation and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

Activities begin 12:50 Monday afternoon, March 5, in the Sheraton Imperial Center in Research Triangle Park. They continue through dinner Monday, reconvene for all-day sessions Tuesday, and conclude Wednesday morning.

Highlights for Monday afternoon include the opening session with remarks by System President H. Martin Lancaster, musical performances, and presentations from students from Colombia, Afghanistan, and China now enrolled in North Carolina community colleges. Later in the afternoon, James Peacock of UNC-Chapel Hill will explore global commonalities, and Sherry Gray of the Stanley Foundation will outline geo-political trends. The dinner speaker is noted author and speaker Dr. Jeffrey Rosensweig of Emory University in Atlanta.

Tuesday begins at 8:15 a.m. with a general session on globalizing the curriculum. The rest of the day will be devoted to concurrent sessions on opportunities, planning, global perspectives, and economic/workforce and social development presented by an impressive array of leaders in education and business from inside and outside North Carolina.

Wednesday, the general session begins at 8:30 a.m. with remarks on the impact of recent immigration in North Carolina from Nolo Martinez, director of Hispanic/Latino Affairs in the Office of the Governor. The conference finishes with reports from the work teams on their action plans.

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