Ian Andrews, the 2010 Staff Achievement Award winner for leadership, has spent the past 16 years leading the internationalization of the Faculty of Education.

Andrews is the faculty’s director of international education, and his work has established the faculty as a leader in the field, collaborating with universities and governments around the world to offer international programs. They include student-teacher exchanges, undergraduate field schools and professional development programs with international placements.

The faculty also has graduate MEd International for TESL/EFL English-language teachers, with more than 200 graduates. And it currently has more than 200 international graduate students from more than 12 countries.

Andrews has travelled to more than 15 countries to establish new international partnerships and programs for the faculty and its students.

“He has truly been a global ambassador for SFU,” says one nominator.

He also established and championed the International Teacher Education Module, which sends student teachers on nine-week, family-hosted study programs in countries such as Mexico, Trinidad, China, India and Mali.

“I have always believed that all student teachers, before they enter a classroom, should have international experience of some kind,” says Andrews, who was a charter student at SFU and earned his own teaching certificate in 1970.

International experience, he says, is critical to understanding other educational philosophies and cultures and then applying that knowledge at home.

“We say that we want to think internationally,” he says. “I say we have to act internationally.”

Andrews defines his leadership style as one of advocacy, while a nominator says it is best described in Taoist terms as “leading from behind” or “leading by presence”.

In 2002, Andrews’ leadership abilities garnered him a one-year term as interim dean (a first for an APSA member) that was described by one nominator as a “year of lightness…and hope.”

Andrews is poised for retirement next year, but plans to continue international consulting, whether for SFU or other institutions.