The History of Global Education at JCC

Johnston Community College set off on its journey into global education in 2004 when a federal USAID grant formalized The East-West Community College Partnership, a relationship between Thailand’s Ministry of Education and several US community colleges and community college systems. The goal of the grant was to assist the fledgling Thai community colleges with their development. An essential part of this development was to offer training to the 18 new trustees at each college who would now be making decisions on their college’s direction, rather than the Thai government. Johnston Community College became the lead US institution on the trustee training project and in 2005, college president, Dr. Don Reichard and selected trustees visited Thailand to facilitate a training workshop.

As a result of JCC’s role in the training of trustees, a sister college relationship was formed with Ranong Community College in southern Thailand in 2006. Dr. Reichard and several others from the college and community college system office traveled to Ranong to provide further professional development opportunities. Since then, JCC has hosted two representatives from Ranong and has sent two more of its employees to Thailand. Pam Earp, Director of Basic Skills, and Debby Parnell, a Nursing Instructor, spent nearly 3 weeks traveling in Bangkok and southern Thailand in January 2008, and while based at Ranong Community College, assisted with ESL instruction and the development of the ESL Learning Lab and held an informational session on Ranong’s Older Adult Health Care program.

We continue to be in touch with our friends at Ranong Community College, and since our sister college relationship was established, there has been a greater focus on Global Education at JCC. We have hosted students from a variety of countries as part of the Department of State-sponsored Community College Initiative Program, study abroad and exchange opportunities are increasing, students are being exposed to a wider range of global topics in classes, and have a variety of extracurricular cultural activities to choose from. Many of these trips and events are open to the community, so please continue to check the Global Education Events page for updated information.

For further information about Global Education programming, please contact
Heather Murphy, Global Education Coordinator
(919) 464-2277
hemurphy@johnstoncc.edu