Transforming the College's Mission Into Action
Established through an anonymous endowment gift of $17 million, the Gordon-Zeto Center is led by ‘Dimeji Togunde, Ph.D, vice provost for Global Education & professor of international studies, to translate the College’s comprehensive and integrated internationalization initiatives into action.
As an institutional space to expand Spelman’s long history of commitment to international education, the Center provides leadership for the College’s efforts to internationalize the Campus through curricular and co-curricular program enhancement; increased recruitment of international students and visiting scholars; promotion of study abroad and faculty/staff-led study travel programs for students; international service learning; and support for faculty global engagement.
Forging Meaningful Collaborations Across Disciplines
The Center serves as catalyst for forging fruitful collaborations and synergistic relationships among Spelman’s traditional academic departments; interdisciplinary studies programs; faculty committees; offices of enrollment management, undergraduate studies, college relations, institutional advancement, and student affairs to expand students’ conceptualization of the global community and their interactions with the local. Moreover, through cross-fertilization of ideas among diverse constituencies, the Center aims at ensuring that students see the interconnectedness between domestic diversity and global diversity.
Providing the Spelman Community With Global Opportunities
The Gordon-Zeto Center comprises seven constituent parts including:
All the Gordon-Zeto programs are intentionally designed to provide a learning environment that engages students in comparative analysis of social systems that deepens their understanding of and appreciation for intercultural variation, as well as their ability to show openness to cultural difference.
The Gordon-Zeto Center provides leadership for the assessment of all global initiatives and streamlining of all global travel experiences. It also serves as a clearing house for building international partnerships with overseas institutions in a way that can achieve the realization of the learning outcomes of Spelman’s Going Global initiative.