Stockton University doesn’t want a student’s zip code to be the ceiling on their education.
The Galloway-based university signed three new memoranda of understanding during the 2025-26 school year — with Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University in South Africa, Universidad Panamericana in Mexico, and the National Academy of Art in Bulgaria — expanding a roster of international partnerships that already included Germany’s Nürtingen-Geislingen University and Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences.
The push is being led by Patty Sagasti Suppes, Stockton’s director of Global Engagement, who is trying to weave international perspective into the university more broadly, not just through students who study abroad.
“I want to integrate policies, programs, initiatives and individuals to make Stockton more globally oriented and internationally connected,” she said. “I want to see us embed much more internationalization in our curriculum and in the campus life.”
And here’s a catch on international education that many don’t realize: Not every student wants to leave campus.
Sagasti Suppes has built a program for them, too. Last year she launched a collaborative online international learning pilot, pairing professors from two countries who bring their classes together virtually. Over a five-week stretch, students from both schools have to work through a shared problem despite language and cultural gaps.
“Research shows that COIL can help students learn these intercultural competencies in a very similar way that study abroad does,” she said. “So, my hope is that students will decide well this wasn’t bad. I’ve been working with somebody in a different country. Maybe actually going abroad isn’t so horrible or scary. Maybe it’s attainable.”
Sagasti Suppes believes the fastest way to get students thinking globally is to get their professors abroad first.
“Nobody has more influence over the students than their professors,” she said. “They trust them. They look up to them. If a professor says studying abroad is going to be beneficial to your career and it’s a wonderful life-changing experience, that’s a much stronger message.”
Sagasti Suppes is also pushing more faculty toward the U.S. Fulbright program. She recently became one of only 17 people nationwide to receive a Fulbright International Education Administrator Award and will spend two weeks in Berlin this November studying Germany’s higher education system and building new partnerships to bring back to campus.
Other recent Stockton Fulbright honorees include Associate Professor of Business Studies Behnam Tavakkol and Professor of Mathematics Chia-Lin Wu, both named Fulbright Specialists, which will match them with international universities for projects lasting two to six weeks over the next three years.
Political Science and Sustainability graduate Eline Xia ’25 was selected as a Student Fulbright recipient and will pursue an Erasmus Mundus joint master’s in global environment and development through the University of Copenhagen this fall.
The Office of Global Engagement has also stepped up training for faculty who want to lead their own travel courses abroad.
“In the past, Stockton faculty did not have a lot of preparation for teaching travel courses abroad. This training will better prepare them to develop and run successful programs,” Sagasti Suppes said. “The ultimate result should be faculty-led programs that will be stronger, and we might even have more of them.”
For Sagasti Suppes, none of it requires a passport to count.
“Internationalization doesn’t mean everybody has to go abroad. It means being willing to see the world in a different way,” she said. “It’s about learning to see yourself and your place in the world. It’s about self-reflection because our own cultures are invisible to us.”
