January/February 2026
By Janelle S. Peifer
The campus environment has always played a critical role in identity formation for emerging adults (Arnett 2016). During these pivotal years and developmental period, students begin conceptualizing and placing themselves within the context of the wider world. McCoy and colleagues (2023) highlighted the role of campus experiences in supporting students' identity exploration and formation, solidifying a sense of belonging, and developing skills to prepare for post-graduate functioning. For many, the college campus offers unique opportunities to interact across cultural differences. For example, students who grew up in predominantly White neighborhoods who then attend colleges with more diversity, report living in more diverse neighborhoods and working in more diverse environments post-graduation (Gurin and Hurtado 2002). On aggregate, college and university campuses tend to offer more diversity than neighborhoods and residential environments. On campus, students encounter people and ideas that expand and offer opportunities to practice global learning knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) in ongoing, iterative ways. Because the college years coincide beautifully with this period of exploration and growth, global learning can play a critical role in this important process.
Impacts of Campus Environments
According to Zhou (2022), global learning encapsulates an interconnected constellation of KSAs:
- Knowledge: verbal definitions, facts, and concepts as well as contextual and procedural knowledge
- Skills: both activities and performances that develop as well as metacognitive activities that promote global awareness
- Attitudes: perspectives and stances as well as motivations and goals toward global learning
The higher educational experiences that support global learning encompass a broad and diverse group of activities both within the classroom and outside of it. Examples include curricular, cocurricular, community-based experiences locally, and travel-based experiences. For the individual, global learning is shaped intrapersonally, for instance as students question their own perspectives, identity, and openness to new perspectives. Global learning also occurs interpersonally, as students develop the KSAs to connect effectively with people from different cultural groups.
Many higher education institutions aim to influence students’ social, professional, and personal development as whole beings prepared to engage in an increasingly globalized world. In order to do that, institutions must offer various ongoing, interconnected experiences. Yet, offering and maintaining such a variety of activities simultaneously and harmoniously can challenge the resources of any institution. Thus, my colleagues and I (Peifer, Meyer-Lee, and Taasoobshirazi 2021) set out to better understand: Over time, what global learning experiences might yield the most growth in students’ intercultural competence? As decades-long global educators, practitioners, and travel leaders, what we found surprised us.
Primary Findings
Our longitudinal study revealed a surprising finding. When comparing travel and non-travel based global learning, campus-based, non-travel experiences led to greater gains for college students’ intercultural competence and were more related with peer diversity. For example, students who engaged in international living-learning communities, global research, or took foreign language courses, also were more likely to report stronger intercultural competence growth and more diverse friendships.
These patterns remained consistent for historically dominant (e.g., heterosexual, White) and marginalized (e.g., queer, racially minoritized) groups of students. In many ways, this aligns with greater promotion of at-home, hybrid, and sustainable alternatives to travel-based experiences via campus internationalization (2024 Internationalizing the Campus). It also underscores the focus on the outcomes of campus internationalization (e.g., students’ civic engagement, cultural humility, skills for post-graduate success in a globalized workforce), as opposed to the experience alone. As international educators specify which global learning KSAs they are pursuing with an initiative, they are situated to evaluate the success of achieving these goals more precisely. These findings became particularly salient as the COVID-19 pandemic brought most travel-based global learning to a standstill.
Our article specifically contributes to the conversation around this critical developmental period, underscoring the vital role of the peer social environment in college students' growth and change. Our research found that regardless of racial or cultural background, on-campus global learning outperformed travel-based experiences for intercultural competence and peer group diversification. But why was that the case? For one, students’ social relationships were a critical pathway leading to growth in intercultural competence across time. The campus environment offers a space for lasting, relational approaches that help students develop affective awareness and empathetic skills to support intercultural relationships. More specifically, ongoing friendships with other students in a diverse home campus environment offers years’ worth of practice in intercultural competence and intergroup contact. For students who seek out and sustain diverse peer relationships, they have countless opportunities to not only read or think about intercultural competence, but to embody and practice these skills in real, meaningful ways.
This awareness helps enhance the understanding of internationalization beyond travel, aligning with goals of offering multiple and different types of global and intercultural experiences both on campus and in the community, in addition to physical mobility and travel abroad. International education leaders can build from the research’s main takeaways to support campus-based experiences and foster the development of diverse peer groups. International educators can also enhance approaches to travel-based experiences to focus on relationship building, cultural exchange, and human connections as key vehicles toward intercultural competence building. Moreover, global learning at home in the form of community-engaged research, globally focused coursework, and internationalized internships and service opportunities can enrich and continue development that could be sparked via travel-based experiences like semester-long or short-term study abroad. These findings highlight the importance of intercultural competence growth as a product of sustained, meaningful relationships and engagements with global learning at home.
Campus as a Global Learning Laboratory
As we consider this all together, we can envision the campus as a global community, highlighting the benefits of campus diversification and student engagement in a variety of academic and nonacademic experiences. Intentional collaborations across academic and student life divisions can open doors for immersive and accessible pathways for all students to engage in cross-cultural learning. Colleges and universities can thereby weave internationalization more fully into their institutional fabric. With intentionality, the campus and its surrounding communities offer an ideal laboratory for ongoing cross-cultural exchange, understanding, and enrichment in dormitories, cafeterias, quads, classrooms, and beyond campus walls.
Informed by our research (Peifer, Meyer-Lee, and Taasoobshirazi 2021), institutions and international educators interested in building a more globally minded campus community can consider how to:
- Build stronger partnerships across curricular and cocurricular units. Take advantage of cultural programming, events, and activities to bridge global learning on campus. Consider partnering with staff, administrators, and faculty to highlight opportunities to leverage campus internationalization. This may take the form of large-scale events (e.g., international education weeks) or smaller initiatives (e.g., inviting guest lecturers to share about field-based, cross-cultural learning in a specific discipline).
- Train professors on how to facilitate intergroup contact and intercultural exchange. Support training, workshops, professional development, and faculty learning communities that help professors learn how to foster global learning knowledge, skills, and attitudes in the classroom. Promote sharing of materials and course design tools that help professors foster intergroup contact and exchange effectively and ethically to deepen campus-based global learning (e.g., creating shared digital repositories of faculty’s globally related research, syllabi, and community-engaged pedagogy; creating faculty fellowships for peer training).
- Support the development of globally minded community-based partnerships and civic engagement in the community. Look off-campus to highlight community-based internships, volunteer work, or other experiential learning. Curate cross-cultural and global local (glocal) opportunities at sites such as nonprofits that work with refugees, international schools, or corporate environments with a strong global presence. Support staff, faculty, and students with resources, documents, and guides as they consider integrating these off-campus experiences with the program of study (e.g., providing funding to bring faculty and staff into the community to listen and learn from globally focused nonprofits).
- Develop identity-reflective programming and facilitate peer dialogues with student leadership. Consider integrating reflective practices, such as video or written journaling, for students to practice skills of self-reflection and self-awareness building. Build orientation and other campus-based activities to support peer-led engagement with global questions and topics. Encourage students to examine their growth and change as global citizens across their college years through reflection, capstone projects, and portfolios (e.g., digital portfolios clearly linking undergraduate global experiences to long-term post-graduate goals).
- Provide structured support for peer group/friendship diversification on campus. Develop formal and informal opportunities to support intergroup contact and exchange. Design international and domestic student peer mentoring programs or cultural exchange cafes. Support residence life departments with designing programming and living learning communities that help students form connections with those from other countries (e.g., host globally related pre-orientation retreats for international and domestic students, encourage ongoing relationship support via peer meet-up and mentoring groups).
Conclusion: Moving Forward in Times of Crisis
Our research and thought leadership (Peifer, Meyer-Lee, and Taasoobshirazi 2021) focus on campus internationalization escalated during a time of crisis: the COVID-19 global pandemic worldwide. At this time, many students could not take advantage of travel-based experiences like study abroad. Industry reports such as those produced by the Institute of International Education and NAFSA (2020a; 2020b) showed steep drops in study abroad enrollment from spring through winter 2020, and even longer for many campuses (Martel 2020). In response, global educators grappled with how to maintain the pursuit of targeted outcomes of campus internationalization (e.g., intercultural competence, global exchange) with limited mobility. It forced campus leaders to think critically about the key goals of international education and exchange and undertake creative, novel ways to leverage localized solutions to meet those aims.
As we fast forward, additional headwinds have come into play for international educators. At a societal level, people are weighing and questioning the value of pluralistic thinking, intercultural competence development, globalization, and engaging across differences, leading to restrictions on U.S. federal funding for research and programs in this realm (U.S. Department of Justice 2025). This context has made it even more important to leverage the educational context and campus environment of higher education institutions to illustrate the practical and philosophical value of intercultural competence on identity formation for students.
Intercultural competence can and must be nurtured and continued across the settings where students learn, live, connect, and grow. As colleges continue to plant, cultivate, and maintain seeds for students’ inclusivity, cultural competence, and global mindedness, every educator can nurture a campus environment that leverages the rich fields and resources of global learning, right in our own backyards.
References
Arnett, Jeffrey. 2016. “College Students as Emerging Adults: The Developmental Implications of the College Context.” Emerging Adulthood 4 (3): 219–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167696815587422.
Gurin, Patricia, Eric L. Dey, Sylvia Hurtado, and Gerald Gurin. 2002. “Diversity and Higher Education: Theory and Impact on Educational Outcomes.” Harvard Educational Review 72 (3): 332–36.
Martell, Michael. 2020. COVID-19 Effects on U.S. Higher Education Campuses, Report 3. COVID-19 Snapshot Survey Series. New York: Institute of International Education. https://www.iie.org/publications/covid-19-effects-on-us-higher-education-campuses-report-3/.
McCoy, S. S. 2023. “College Students’ Subjective Experiences of Emerging Adulthood: A Mixed-Methods Study.” Routledge Open Research 1: Article 17. https://routledgeopenresearch.org/articles/1-17/v2/pdf?article_uuid=a29b77d7-3d7e-4ffb-b209-53686d67a202.
NAFSA: Association of International Educators. 2024 Internationalizing the Campus. NAFSA: Association of International Educators. Accessed October 15, 2025. https://www.nafsa.org/itc/2024.
NAFSA: Association of International Educators. 2020a. Spring 2020 Report: https://www.nafsa.org/policy-and-advocacy/policy-resources/survey-financial-impact-covid-19-international-education.
NAFSA: Association of International Educators. 2020b. Fall 2020 Report: https://www.nafsa.org/policy-and-advocacy/policy-resources/fall-2020-survey-financial-impact-covid-19-international-education.
Peifer, Janelle S., Elaine Meyer-Lee, and Gita Taasoobshirazi. 2021. “Developmental Pathways to Intercultural Competence in College Students.” Journal of Studies in International Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/10283153211052778.
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General. Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding Regarding Unlawful Discrimination. Memorandum to all federal agencies, July 29, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/ag/media/1409486/dl?inline=&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery.
Janelle S. Peifer, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and associate professor of psychology at the University of Richmond. Her research focuses on college student development, identity/culture, mental health, and complex trauma. Peifer received the 2025 Innovative Research in International Education Award for her article: “Developmental Pathways to Intercultural Competence in College Students” in Journal of Studies in International Education, coauthored with Drs. Elaine Meyer-Lee and Gita Taasoobshirazi.