New Dean of Global Education
Over the summer Minnesota State appointed William Coghill-Behrends to the position of Dean of Global Education.
“My job is to really support, encourage, and nudge in some ways internationalization efforts on this campus. Most college campuses accomplish that through a variety of means, including students we recruit to come here to be in our programs, either as fully fledged degree seeking students at the undergraduate or graduate level or exchange students who are coming from one of our partner universities,” said Coghill-Behrends.
The center for global education oversees a variety of programs on campus, including the Center for Global Engagement, the Center for English language Programs, and the Kearney International Center.
According to Coghill-Behrends, his new position is keeping him busy as he tries to learn more about Minnesota State’s specific needs.
“I’m spending a lot of my days in meetings, meeting new people, talking about what excites them and what aspirations they have for global education in their curriculum or in their course work, or in their colleges if I’m meeting with academic leadership,” said Coghill-Behrends.
Coghill-Behrends identified study abroad programs as one area that he wanted to encourage more students at MSU to participate in.
”I think when it comes to study abroad there are a lot of perceived barriers. One of them obviously is cost, sometimes it’s access. If you’re somebody who hasn’t traveled abroad or isn’t somebody who’s had family who’s traveled abroad, maybe that world just feels like, no pun intended, so foreign to you. And we want to work really hard this year to help everybody understand that there is probably a program for everybody here on campus.”
Previously, Coghill-Behrends had served as the director of global education initiatives at the Linda R. Baker Teacher Leader Center at the University of Iowa.
According to Coghill-Behrends there were multiple reasons that he accepted the position. These reasons included the way he had been treated during the interview process and the high quality of global programming at MSU.
“I will tell you what brought me here is that every step along the way during the application and interview process, I just felt so cared for and I felt people appreciated my thoughts and valued what I had to say. When I got here for my on campus interview especially, I was super impressed with the quality of programming we have, the depth of programming that we have,” said Coghill-Behrends.
Coghill-Behrends succeeds Ann Dahlman, who had served as interim dean. Dahlman had accepted the post of provost and vice president of academic affairs at Northern Michigan University in April.
Coghill-Behrends said that he is looking forward to his work here at MSU Mankato and claimed that just coming here had made him feel young again.
”I love this place. In fact my husband and I were laying on the couch last night and I was just like, I really love this house. It’s super exciting to be here. It’s just, it’s fun. I feel young again,” Coghill-Behrends said.
Caption: New Dean of Global Education William Coghill-Behrends. He said he came to Minnesota State from University of Iowa. (Alexis Darkow/The Reporter)
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