New federal funding to help more than 600 Sheridan students gain career-boosting international experience

Sheridan has received $500,000 in federal funding that will allow more than 600 students to pursue rich international educational opportunities over the next four years.  

The college’s newly launched Reimagining Student Mobility project will introduce a range of online and in-person learning initiatives with educational partners around the world, combined with enhanced supports and training to remove barriers to international mobility. The goal of Sheridan’s project is to expand mobility access across disciplines and increase student participation, particularly among target groups who are traditionally underrepresented in student mobility opportunities. 

The Reimagining Student Mobility project is funded by Global Skills Opportunity, the Government of Canada’s Outbound Student Mobility Pilot Program. 

“This federal grant complements Sheridan’s robust efforts to build a holistic, comprehensive, and integrated approach to internationalization as outlined in our Internationalization and Global Connectivity Strategy,” said Dr. Amira El Masri, Director, Center for Global Education and Internationalization at Sheridan. “Through this opportunity, we will facilitate access to a wider range of inclusive and accessible global learning programs, and offer our students more transformative intercultural experiences both at home and abroad.” 

The funding will support the following initiatives at Sheridan over the next four years:

• eight new Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) offerings with eight different international partners in Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Egypt, Brazil, Denmark, and the United Kingdom 
• four new physical mobility opportunities to Spain, Denmark, Kenya and Brazil 
• a new student COIL support module  
• a comprehensive intercultural training module for all participating students 
• a suite of wraparound supports aimed at enhancing the overall student mobility experience including updated risk management protocols and policies 

The project will be led by Sheridan’s Centre for Global Education and Internationalization, and engage faculty and students from the Pilon School of Business, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Faculty of Applied Science and Technology, and the Faculty of Animation, Arts and Design.

Global Skills Opportunity is a national outbound student mobility program that is expected to enable more than 16,000 Canadian college and undergraduate-level university students from across the country acquire the global skills employers want and the Canadian economy needs. A key component of the Government of Canada’s International Education Strategy, Global Skills Opportunity is funded by Employment and Social Development Canada and is administered jointly by Colleges and Institutes Canada and Universities Canada. 

While open to all Canadian post-secondary students, the national program targets groups for whom international experiences have traditionally been less accessible — specifically Indigenous students, students from low-income backgrounds and those with disabilities. It also aims to diversify destination countries where Canadian students pursue international learning. 

Read Sheridan’s Internationalization and Global Connectivity Strategy.