CONAHEC Conference Time!

I'm excited to announce that the 19th North American Higher Education Conference “Strategic Higher Education Internationalization in North America:  Successful Practices & Lessons Learned” of the Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC) and the concurrent 3rd meeting of CONAHEC’s North American Center for Collaborative Development on the theme of “Climate Resilience & Clean Energy” will take place in Las Cruces, New Mexico next week.  I'm confident that this meeting will be valuable for participants and hope they'll become ongoing participants in the North American higher education community CONAHEC has been building for over twenty years.

CONAHEC is a not-for-profit membership-based network of over 160 higher education institutions and organizations in Canada, the United States and Mexico with Affiliate members in 16 additional countries.  The purpose of the network is to foster international higher education collaboration and academic exchange among our member institutions.  We offer international academic exchange and mobility programs for students, faculty and staff of higher education institutions, as well as networking opportunities, familiarization visits and a series of international conferences on international education and collaboration themes.  These conferences celebrated on campus at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces will focus on both successful practices in internationalization of higher education institutions as well as on international collaboration to build climate resilience and adopt cleaner energies in the North American region.

Higher education institutions occupy an important position in North American societies in preparing our future leaders and innovators and addressing themes of regional importance.  Collaboration with international partners presents the opportunity to leverage each other’s strengths, mitigate barriers and address challenges of common concern.  Engaging in this way also provides opportunities for intercultural interaction and development of critical skills increasingly important for successful societies and economies.  Together higher education institutions can create stronger more resilient communities and societies and can be key drivers of success in addressing challenges of regional and global concern.

CONAHEC is honored to be hosted in Las Cruces by such a prominent land grant institution, New Mexico State University, with its leadership in research, teaching and service and substantial and growing binational presence in the US-Mexico Border region.  With thanks to NMSU for its generosity and hard work, we look forward to this exciting event, and many future years of collective work to strengthen our societies through international engagement in higher education!