UCalgary International wins Catalyst Award

The Canadian Bureau of International Education (CBIE) recently announced its 2019 Excellence Awards showcasing the innovators, leaders, connectors and emerging stars in international education.

University of Calgary International won the Catalyst Award for the International Partnership Assessment Rating Index (IPARI) — a method to assess international partnerships, identify top partners in each country, develop strategic partnerships and decide whether to re-engage or eliminate stalled partnerships. This is the fifth competitive award won by the University of Calgary for internationalization since 2016 from reputable organizations such as the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and CBIE.

This prestigious award is given to an individual or groups for bringing cutting-edge knowledge to the field of international education. Dr. Janaka Ruwanpura, vice-provost (international) led the IPARI group putting together this assessment tool.

The group includes Dr. Ruwanpura; Andrea Morrow, director, international relations; Savera Hayat-Dade, director, programs and international development; Colleen Packer, director, international learning programs; and Scott Vu, partnership officer, Asia Pacific.

“We are very pleased to receive this award for innovation and help advance international education through this assessment approach,” says Ruwanpura. “IPARI can help universities manage their international partnerships more effectively and strengthen their internationalization efforts.”

“The University of Calgary’s international team has undertaken impactful work in creating a system to evaluate and assess international university partnerships. This is only the second time in the history of our excellence awards that the CBIE Board has chosen to give this award,” says Larissa Bezo, president of CBIE.

 

“At a time when the international education community is focused on the strategic importance of international partnerships, IPARI’s collaborative effort across its campus utilizes collected data so that partnership relationships can be comprehensively tracked over both time and space,” says University of California Davis’ Elizabeth Langridge-Noti, director of faculty engagement and nominator of the IPARI team. A few other universities have consulted the University of Calgary to use IPARI or develop a similar system.

Speaking of awards, the nominations for the 2020 UCalgary Internationalization Achievement Awards are open for you to nominate an internationalization champion by January 2, 2020. Learn more.

Watch the video featuring the IPARI project and team. Click here to register and watch the IPARI webinar.