Declaration on University Global Engagement

THE UNIVERSITY COMMITMENT TO GLOBAL EDUCATION

As universities from around the world, we are committed to educating students who can successfully live and work in our globally connected world and change it for the better. We are also committed to discovering, producing, and sharing new solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. These missions require of universities an openness to—and engagement with—ideas, knowledge, and people from all parts of the world.

Knowledge and innovation is not bound by national borders. This has always been true, but the scope and complexity of today’s challenges make the necessity for global engagement even more critical. These challenges have come into focus through the United Nations’ adoption of a new global development agenda known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs comprise 17 transformative objectives concerning the most pressing economic, social, and environmental challenges facing the world today. The SDGs set interdependent development priorities that apply to low-, middle-, and high-income countries alike.

The SDGs are globally shared objectives that can only be achieved through international cooperation and
multi-stakeholder engagement.

As institutions dedicated to the public good, we express our commitment to global engagement through
a series of actions, including:

• Developing the global competence of all students so they have the skills to productively engage with individuals from different cultural and national backgrounds.
• Increasing our students’ understanding of the most pressing economic, social, and environmental challenges facing the world today.
• Significantly increasing student physical and virtual mobility across nations so that many more of our students experience realities outside their domestic contexts and deepen their understanding of challenges and opportunities in other parts of the world.
• Committing to cross-border and cross-sector research, knowledge sharing, and innovation in collaboration with our public and private stakeholders in pursuit of novel solutions to the SDGs.
• Communicating publicly about the progress and importance of our global engagement.