Dear LMU Community:
I am pleased to announce that Roberta Espinoza, Ph.D., has been reappointed as vice provost for Global-Local Affairs. When Vice Provost Espinoza joined Loyola Marymount University in 2018, she quickly set to work developing a framework for the office of Global-Local Initiatives and establishing herself as LMU’s inaugural senior international officer (SIO). Vice Provost Espinoza put us on a path toward comprehensive internationalization by facilitating collaborations and building meaningful professional relationships among LMU faculty, staff, alumni, and contacts at other institutions.
Under her leadership, LMU completed the American Council on Education Internationalization Laboratory (ACE Lab) in fall 2021, an undertaking that involved campus-wide consultation, a steering committee, and nearly forty staff and faculty serving on five working groups in areas such as education abroad, faculty/staff development, and collaborations and partnerships, to name a few. This two-year engagement led to a self-study report and an external review team report that effectively serve as LMU’s first strategic plan for institutional internationalization. Vice Provost Espinoza and her team are well on their way to implementing many of the recommendations from the ACE Lab, which include staff changes to build business operations and selecting faculty leaders to impact curricula and research.
Also in fall 2021, Vice Provost Espinoza led the creation and launch of LMU’s inaugural Global Engagement Directory which will allow us to visualize and identify official partnerships and collaborations with institutions of higher education, organizations, and governments. This database will serve as an invaluable tool for the LMU community to connect globally and locally with our partners and the Lion network.
Vice Provost Espinoza has built a stellar team of study abroad and postgraduate success professionals. Through their efforts and her leadership, LMU has secured many new memoranda of understanding with international partners, hosted dozens of international delegations, and gained official non-governmental observer (NGO) status from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As the largest university in Los Angeles County with UNFCCC NGO status, LMU will be able to send delegations of students and faculty to meetings of the U.N. Conference of the Parties.
Vice Provost Espinoza and her team have positioned LMU as an institution with an incredible community presence and a truly global reach. This was especially evident during the COVID-19 pandemic through the “Bringing the World to LMU” initiative that provided online and remote global learning options for students, faculty, and staff, including a virtual summer Global Internship Program for students and website resources for remote teaching and learning. LMU resumed in-person study abroad programs in spring 2022 with 102 participants and continues to provide a diverse portfolio of programs based on new COVID-19 health and safety protocols.
As Vice Provost Espinoza announced in the fall newsletter, the office of Global-Local Initiatives has been renamed “the office of Global-Local Affairs” to reflect a more permanent and sustainable office structure that oversees various facets of the university’s local and global learning and engagement. I couldn’t agree more. Please join me in congratulating Vice Provost Espinoza on her successes and for her contributions to LMU and our global community.
Sincerely,
Thomas Poon, Ph.D.
Executive Vice President and Provost