Written by Colin McEvoy | April 30, 2024 | SHARE
OIA will harness the pedagogical and developmental potential of coaching to shift from a learning culture to a coaching culture more focused around student and other stakeholder development as global learners and leaders
Lehigh University’s Office of International Affairs has announced a new coaching initiative, the latest step in an ongoing pedagogical reframing the OIA has been working on throughout the year.
“Our conviction is that coaching provides a particularly potent way to develop self-awareness, to hear and hold difference with others, and to contribute more thoughtfully to creating a more equitable and sustainable world,” said Angelina Rodríguez, Assistant Vice Provost for Global Learning, and Teaching Associate Professor at Lehigh’s College of Health.
Rodríguez is spearheading this initiative, which builds upon her long-running undergraduate course on coaching towards social change, a 2023 Mountaintop project, prior staff trainings, and her own practice coaching students and clients from diverse backgrounds.
“At Lehigh and OIA, we aspire for our students and other stakeholders to ‘live lives of meaning,’ and these lives include others and unfold in contexts of constant encounters with difference,” Rodríguez said, “so our approach will be through a coaching model heavily informed by this.”
Within the division, OIA will be harnessing the pedagogical and developmental potential of coaching at multiple levels to shift from a learning culture to a coaching culture more focused around student and other stakeholder development as global learners and leaders. Those goals are consistent with the priorities described in Lehigh University’s strategic plan.
One of the first projects will be to provide coaching for the Mandela Washington Fellows for Young African Leaders, a U.S. State Department program that brings 25 young African entrepreneurs to study at OIA’s Iacocca Institute this summer for six weeks.
In early fall, Rodríguez will train 16 international student orientation leaders to support the incoming freshman group of more than 100 international students through peer-led coaching circles. “Supporting international students is a key element in our Global Lehigh plan, and this will mark an effort to create something both personal and scalable at once,” she said.
Coaching perspectives are also being incorporated into Lehigh’s study abroad programs, as well as the Iacocca International Internship Program, which provides mostly funded internship opportunities for Lehigh students to work or do research overseas during the summer.
In spring 2025, OIA will launch an external-facing professional training and certification designed to bring coaching into people’s everyday work, although it will be open to Lehigh community members as well.
As coaching becomes more prevalent across campus, OIA plans to convene a gathering of those interested in this work. More information about this gathering will be provided at the start of the fall term.
Anyone interested in learning more, collaborating or being invited to the gathering is welcome to contact Rodríguez at angelina.rodriguez@lehigh.edu.