Welcome to UNBC’s Global Engagement: Ready for Student Success Plan (“the Plan”) development webpage. Here, you will find an overview of the planning process, engagement events and opportunities, and links to important documents and resources.
What is a Global Engagement Strategic Plan, and why now?
UNBC's 2023-2028 Strategic Plan Ready defines UNBC’s mission to Ignite, Inspire, and Lead Change, and serves as a guiding framework for the entire University. A global engagement strategic plan typically supports the institution’s broader strategic and academic plans by focusing on internationalization initiatives to support institution-wide priorities.
For UNBC, the Global Engagement: Ready for Student Success Plan focuses on student success through an international education lens. The Plan supports other institutional plans such as our Strategic Research and Academic plans, and in future may become part of a broader comprehensive internationalization plan. The scope of the Plan includes inbound and outbound student success, including services, experiences, enrolment initiatives, staff and faculty supports, as well as broader community engagement. The plan was approved in May 2025. Final version can be found here.
Why now?
The federal and provincial governments mandated specific initiatives and practices within institutions engaged in international education. As of 2024, the BC government required institutions to have an international strategic plan as part of their EQA and DLI processes and Code of Practice. At UNBC, we looked beyond this requirement to enhance sustainable student success that aligned with our institutional mission, vision, values, goals and themes.
In alignment with the Ready plan, The Plan ensures relevance and innovation in UNBC's response to local and global trends in the post-secondary environment.
What was our planning process?
It is through feedback from everyone within the UNBC community that we shaped the future of our international engagement and student success. A series of engagement opportunities on campus and online were offered where your input was invaluable. All faculty, staff, and students were encouraged to share their perspectives. Input was also sought from alumni, community members, and other relevant interest-holders.
We recognized that multiple engagement processes were taking place concurrently. Where possible, we have worked with other planning teams to avoid overlap and share insight. The Plan was developed alongside the UNBC Academic Refresh and UNBC Strategic Research Plan and supported UNBC's 2023-2028 Strategic Plan Ready.
What was our timeline?
Our goal was to present a Global Engagement: Ready for Student Success Plan to the UNBC Senate and the Board for approval in the second quarter of 2025.
- Preparation phase (concluded)
- Targeted engagement and feedback with interest-holders (concluded)
- Synthesizing data and generating draft plan (March/April, 2025)
- Refinement, completion and endorsement through Senate (May 2025)
- Approval at the Board (May 2025)
- Launch and begin implementation planning (Summer 2025)
How you engaged in the process
The engagement phase of The Plan development process concluded. A summary of the results from the Global Engagement survey will be posted (summer 2025).
Information from the CBIE 2021 International Student Survey was also used to inform The Plan and is available here.
Feedback is always welcome and you can reach out to share ideas, comments, questions, at globalengagement@unbc.ca.
Project team
The project sponsor was Dr. Bill Owen, Interim Vice-President Academic & Provost.
The Project Team was composed of internal representatives and external consultants and was responsible for contributing to and steering the Plan’s development.
Members include:
- Kimberly Read, University Registrar
- Amy Beyer, Associate Registrar, International
- Saeedeh Goodarzvand Chegini, Executive Assistant to the University Registrar
- Kate Jennings, External Consultant
- Sarah Mines, External Consultant