September 20th, 2024

Yes indeed, it's that time of the year again when I write one of my twice-yearly blog posts about my progress as a doctoral student at the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation (CHEI) at Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore!

In my last post, I marveled at being halfway through my first year. As you might expect, I'm now wrapping up that first year entirely and moving into my second year. I'm told that this is the year that things really start to heat up! I'll try to keep this post brief, both for your sake and mine :)​

The "CHEI Autumn 2024 Seminar" was amazing, as always. A great group of newcomers joined us, along with the esteemed members of the Academic Board. If logistics would allow it, I'd love for these seminars to be two weeks long. The sheer volume of excellent conversations, challenging feedback, and deep connections that CHEI can pack into five days is remarkable, and I always come away from these seminars feeling a sense of gratitude...sprinkled with exhaustion. But hey, it's a PhD program, not a day at the beach.

I'm continuing to move forward with all of the prep for launching my study in earnest - firming up my methodology and plans, building out my surveys and data analysis tools, and still doing LOTS of reading. That's probably never going to stop, I suppose. My supervisors are both very supportive, and now is when I'll really start leaning on their support as I get into the thick of things. 

I submitted my ethics clearance request during the seminar week, so a few months and rounds of revisions from now, I should have the greenlight to launch my study. I won't go into too much detail on that since a few things are still up in the air, but suffice it to say that I'm hoping to get a big chunk of data that I can tear apart all sorts of interesting ways. 

COIL and virtual exchange are still babies. Realistically, we're all still in the start-up phase with these things, and I'm hoping that I can push the needle slightly forward with my research and the findings that come out of it - whatever those findings may be. The future is extremely bright for web-enabled intercultural engagement, and I'm honored to be playing a small part in getting us to the next step in my own small way.

That's all for now - back to reading.

​Ciao.