Southwestern Magazine | Spring 2019

34 SOUTHWESTERN ith individuals and industries connecting more fluidly across national borders in the digital age, higher education in the past two decades has prioritized its responsibility to promote students’ sense of global citizenship. Competing definitions of this concept abound, but theWorldEconomic Forum(2017) suggests, “There’s ageneral consensus that the termorients towards recognizing the interconnectedness of life, respecting cultural diversity and human rights, advocating global social justice, empathizingwith suffering people around the world, seeing the world as others see it, and feeling a sense of moral responsibility for planet Earth.” Laurie Gallun Fitzgerald ’97 succinctly defines a global citizen as “a personwho is aware of the larger world and appreciates the incredible diversity that other places and cultureshave tooffer.”Shewouldknow: AsaSouthwestern alumna,FitzgeraldhasbeenabeneficiaryoftheUniversity’s commitment to preparing students for global citizen- ship, which it fosters through domestic and international programs such as community-engaged learning, study away, and study abroad. And although becoming a long- term expat is not a required qualification for global citizenship, Fitzgerald andmany other alumni have gone on to find “their countries” all over theworld after leaving SU, whether sparked by a sense of adventure and the desire to inhabit the unfamiliar or propelled by external circumstances to live andwork beyond their homelands. "All of these terms are used, often interchangeably, to refer to individuals living outside of their country of birth or nationality.” —The Migration Policy Institute "EMIGRANT" "EXPATRIATE" "EXTERNAL CITIZEN" "DIASPORA" Southwestern alumni take the path to global citizenship. B Y L E A H F I S H E R N Y F E L E R FINDING COMMON GROUND W