This special issue of Research in Comparative and International Education, which we have titled "Promoting Global and Intercultural Competencies through Internationalization," is intended to encourage dialogue between and among scholars from multiple disciplines, international education professionals, and academic program accreditors regarding how best to instill and assess global, international, and intercultural (GII) competencies. The articles included here build upon a conversation started as part of a small invitation-only conference funded by the Spencer Foundation which was held at the SUNY Global Center in April 2018 to examine how institutions consider the quality of internationalization efforts in the promotion of GII competency development. Because quality assurance and accreditation have shifted from their historical focus on input measures to place increasing emphasis on measuring learning outcomes, educational quality is no longer simply measured or limited to reductive output measures (e.g. graduation rates). Instead, accountability for educational quality is increasingly based on measuring whether students have the knowledge and skills promised to them by their educational institutions and programs, as well as measures of whether the education is contributing to broader societal goals (Billing, 2004; Martin and Stella, 2007). While great strides have been made in the assessment of learning outcomes as it relates to some aspects of the higher education experience, there are other areas where the practice and the scholarship is less advanced. Internationalization falls into the latter category particularly as it relates to the development of GII competencies (Soria and Troisi, 2014). Among specialized accreditors of professional degrees, assessing cultural competencies remains among the most challenging tasks, and programs continue to struggle to define, measure, and assess intercultural competencies (Rubaii and Calarusse, 2014). In an effort to prepare students with the global mindset and cultural competencies necessary for effectiveness as professionals and citizens in an increasingly globally interdependent world, universities are placing greater emphasis on providing students with international experiences as part of their education (ACE, 2011). The gold standard of international experiences for students is presumed to be study abroad (Ballestras and Roller, 2013; Deardorff, 2006). Conversely, there is growing recognition that direct-enrollment semester-or year-long study abroad programs are not financially or otherwise feasible for the majority of students (Parkinson, 2007). As such, universities are placing an increasing emphasis on short-term faculty-led programs, many of which involve international service learning (ISL). These short-term ISL programs have the potential to 901950R CI0010.
