Letter from the President
On behalf of the entire School for International Training community, I am pleased to introduce you to SIT and to offer my vision for the future of the school.
SIT was founded in response to society’s call. In the early 1960s, the school served as the original training center for Peace Corps volunteers and a few years later was established as an academic institution offering accredited degree programs in peacebuilding, socially responsible management, sustainable development, and international education. SIT Study Abroad followed soon after, offering undergraduate students the opportunity to examine critical global issues such as climate change, global health, and human rights in program locations across the globe.
Today, SIT Study Abroad offers more than 80 accredited field-based semester and summer study abroad programs in more than 40 countries worldwide. SIT Graduate Institute has prepared thousands of practitioners in fields central to social justice, peace, and cross-cultural understanding. Our graduates work across the globe in international education, teaching, sustainable development, peacebuilding, and policy advocacy. Our distinguished alumni include US diplomats, international education directors, English and ESL professors, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, development specialists, grassroots organizers, and many other professionals working to shape the world in new and positive ways.
SIT continues to respond to the ever-changing needs of a complex society. As president, I have taken on a twofold responsibility: to uphold our foundations and mission and to ensure our ongoing relevance in shaping our world. SIT’s mission is critical for the challenges we face today, and we will work together to express that mission and make sure it remains alive and relevant. We need to keep changing lives. We need to ensure that this generation, and many to come, are ready and able to take on the problems that confront us at home and across our world.
To that end, I intend to leverage SIT’s worldwide academic and institutional networks to develop an expanded portfolio of graduate degree offerings and to continue to innovate in our study abroad programs, as seen in our growing internship program providing international professional experience for undergraduates. We will work to provide ever clearer pathways to careers for our students. We want our students to find homes in change-making organizations across the world, so we must ensure that we combine our social justice core with the hard skills needed for employment.
My vision is to build SIT as a global network of faculty and students, a network that seeks to understand complex problems in situ, and through that knowledge and experience develop the tools needed to act for change locally and globally. At a time when it feels like parts of our world are closing down, SIT will continue to open up—as an organization, but more importantly as a community.
I invite you to join us as a prospective student, parent, or friend.
Sincerely,
Sophia Howlett
President, School for International Training