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UT’s Global Vision

UT Vision: A world enriched by our ideas, improved through our action, and inspired by the Volunteer spirit of service and leadership.

Global Vision: To enrich Tennessee through international development, global awareness, and service on the world stage so that the University of Tennessee fulfills its promise as a modern R1 land grant university.

Global Values: Building on UT’s distinctive history as a land grant university, we value improving the lives of Tennesseans in their interconnections with the world through commitments to:

  • Producing innovative global research and teaching
  • Engaging meaningfully with existing partners and developing new long-term partners
  • Fostering lifelong engaged learning among UT students, UT alumni, and Tennesseans

Global Mission:

  • Create a campus that embraces global engagement as a core value. Empower and facilitate cutting edge research that meets community, state, and global societal needs.
  • Provide opportunities for our students through academic and experiential learning to prepare them to adapt to a changing world and contribute to bettering it.
  • Promote a culture of collaborative innovation in research, learning, and engagement.
  • Foster global cultural diversity and inclusiveness to benefit our university stakeholders and the residents of Tennessee.
  • Extend the impact of our work with international and national partnerships that reflect our university Vision and Global Values and increase the visibility and reputation of the university.

Preeminent Goal: Development and support of a university culture in which global engagement is prioritized and encouraged.

Strategies:
  • Increase the number of international students at all levels and ages.
  • Increase the number of faculty with international and intercultural backgrounds and experiences.
  • Foster an inclusive environment for and with our international students, scholars, staff, and faculty.
  • Review policies to ensure that they encourage and value global engagement at all levels.
Tactics focused on campus culture:
  • Connect this global vision to our diversity, engagement, and inclusion strategy.
  • Provide professional and personal development programming to our faculty and staff that enables their growth as global citizens. Prioritize their role in developing a global culture on campus through the development of programming and setting expectations for performance engagement.
  • Develop programming that has a focus on building awareness of cultural complexities, language, and cultural awareness and enhances the global citizenry of the communities we serve.
  • Consistent communication of our global values and the impact of our global work.
Tactics focused on the composition of our campus community:
  • Broad campus engagement to increase the international student population.
  • Broad campus engagement to increase the number of Fulbright scholars coming to our campus.
  • Broad campus engagement to increase the number of UT faculty participating in Fulbright.
  • Commitment to reduce the financial and remove the administrative barriers in place for recruiting international students (tuition rates, application process, collaborative action among Colleges and administrative units to recruit through our networks).

Goal 1 | Student Success: Educate students to transcend national and cultural boundaries.

Strategy:
  • Equip all students with the understanding and ability to contribute to knowledge and discovery of global problems by deepening their knowledge of the cultures, languages, diversity, and societies of other countries.
Tactics:
  • Critically evaluate current programming and experiences offered on campus
  • Develop and implement the Global LEAD program – (LEAD: Learn, Engage, Act, Discover) to provide all students with opportunities to engage globally and define their identity as a global citizen.
    • Integrate the Vol Core – Global Citizenry component into the Global LEAD program.
  • Develop global competencies and achieve expected outcomes for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students using the Global Learning Value Rubric of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
  • Articulate a set of outcomes focused on global self-awareness, cultural diversity, and action to embody the Volunteer Spirit of the following:
    • Awareness: students explore global systems from an interdisciplinary perspective
    • Diversity: students learn to view diversity, equity and inclusion through the lens of language, culture, and history
    • Action: students incorporate their values, knowledge, and passions into their personal global engagement strategies
  • Build additional support in the Vol Success team for international students.

Goal 2 | Support faculty, staff, and students’ ability to extend their research across the world with international partnerships

Strategies:
  • Encourage UT faculty to extend their research and reach across the world to cultivate mutually beneficial partnerships and international research initiatives.
  • Facilitate the rapid deployment of solutions-focused researcher teams who work to solve global grand challenges.
Tactics:
  • Expand funded international research conducted by faculty, staff, and students.
  • Expand UT’s global partnerships to enhance scholarship, science, and international understanding.
  • Increase faculty with international background.
  • Increase external funding and major scholarly collaborations on at least five of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
  • Consistently share the story of our global research impact with international, national, and state-level stakeholders.

Goal 3 | Cultivation of relationships with our international alumni and key stakeholders of the university

Strategies:
  • Build a global network of international alumni support, providing international alumni with opportunities to build ties to other Volunteers around the world and remember the qualities that make being a Volunteer special.
  • Broaden our global reach and strengthen our distinction in key locations through relevant, accessible, and impactful engagement strategy.
Tactics:
  • Create overseas alumni chapters.
  • Design a model for lifelong engagement that fosters their loyalty and commitment to UT.
  • Involve alumni in recruitment and retention efforts to create two-way interactions to strengthen the university-alumni bond, and to leverage the unique values our international alumni bring to the university.
  • Develop a robust database of international students, parents, alumni, and donors in order to improve connections and develop opportunities for current and future engagement.
  • Provide services to local and international communities and leverage community resources to create a mutually beneficial and collaborative environment.
  • Strengthen university relationship with UT Government Relations office to identify opportunities that can positively impact the campus community and are mutually beneficial for the state, nation, and the world.
  • Engage with international organizations and industry leaders statewide to deepen partnerships and increase opportunities for students, faculty, and staff.