SIT Prof. Sora Friedman pens new column

Announcement Date: December 21, 2022   |   Faculty, SIT Graduate Institute

A woman with brown hair and blue eyes smiles toward the camera.
Dr. Sora Friedman

SIT International Education program chair Dr. Sora Friedman is writing a new column, "Practicing International Education," for GlobalEd, a website that spotlights the fields of global and international education.

Find Dr. Friedman's GlobalEd columns here.

Dr. Friedman is an award-winning writer and educator who has worked in the field of international education for more than 35 years. She chairs SIT's MA in International Education, which is delivered either as a one-year global master's degree, or a two-year hybrid program. Dr. Friedman is widely published, including a chapter on women’s leadership in international higher education in 2021, in The Wiley Handbook of Gender Equity in Higher Education, and in 2019 as co-author with Dr. Amir Reza of Careers in International Education: A Guide for New Professionals.

Launched in fall 2022, GlobalEd publishers say the site is "a platform to democratize collaboration in the field and to expand, strengthen, and catalyze it by using the power of digital media and collaboration to reach a worldwide audience and empower that audience."

In her most recent column, Dr. Friedman addresses the sometimes-overlooked fact that international education is a unique discipline. "Many senior leaders seem to assume that anyone can 'do' International Education, while in reality, they should instead know to identify IE professionals who have the skills, knowledge base, and training necessary to do the work well as of Day 1," she writes.

To overcome this challenge, she recommends that IE professionals not only talk about their day-to-day work, but also about the issues, challenges, and successes of the field at large, as well as the specific skills and knowledge international educators use in their work.

In future columns, Dr. Friedman will write about crafting a professional identity, getting started in today’s COVID-influenced world, the variety of careers in the field, how to build one’s skill set, and planning for future study. She will also explore questions around leadership including gender and leadership, skills valued by leaders, and paths to leadership.