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What role does academic development have to play in responding to radical cultural shifts in the global landscape? Whose voices and identities are contributing to institutional change? This reflective essay encompasses the perspectives of the four international panellists in the opening plenary of the International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED) 2018 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, USA -- Torgny Roxå on ideologies; Chng Huang Hoon on agency and empowerment; Joy Mighty on voices and identities; and Mary Deane Sorcinelli on evidence and outcomes. These perspectives set the stage for the conference, and, brought together in this paper now, they address key conference themes, offer coordinates for reflection, and pose further questions about our profession.

In the last 30 years, teaching centers in American colleges and universities have moved from the margins of their institutions to the mainstream. Their roles have expanded exponentially: To their core task of providing instructional support for individuals, they have added cross-campus initiatives to promote pedagogical innovation, curriculum reform and redesign, assessment, interdisciplinary work, re-accreditation, and (most recently) leadership and organizational development training. Meanwhile, during the last decade, there has been an escalating interest in globalizing American higher education, reflected in efforts to internationalize the curriculum; recruit international faculty and students; promote study abroad; and build international research, community-development, and outreach collaborations. Campus leaders are turning to their teaching centers to assist not just domestic but also international faculty and students, enabling many of those centers to build their capacity. This essay provides a framework for building international collaborations in a post-colonial world; describes four cases involving partnerships between US faculty developers and campus leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Singapore, and Thailand; and concludes with the lessons learned from those experiences. (Contains 10 resources.)