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Lee Sternberger has retired as executive director of the Institute for Global Engagement, effective January 31. She began working at Western Jan. 2, 2020, just months before the nationally instituted quarantine shut down the campus. 

(IGE) coordinates the university’s internationalization initiatives, working with education abroad and international students and maintaining institutional partnerships and the International Studies curriculum. With no international activities to manage at the onset of the global pandemic, Sternberger had to assume an entirely new set of responsibilities. 

“I was hired to do one job and almost everything about that job ground to a halt,” she said. “There were still plenty of things to do and we were surprisingly busy, but we spent a lot of time —and I certainly spent a lot of time— trying to keep morale up.” 

“Winter quarter of 2020, we brought all our students abroad home. So that was the first challenging and demoralizing thing that folks had to do,” Sternberger said. 

Sternberger said they tended to projects the institute put off, updating policies and reviewing contracts, “so we were able to get caught up with some of the nuts and bolts of the office.” 

“A lot of my time was spent working with the staff to come up with other things we could do. For example, international online internships, or other kinds of international experiences that students might be able to have even though they couldn’t leave the country,” she said. 

Despite the pandemic and the challenges it posed to international education, Sternberger said she was able to enjoy her experience at Western. 

“I’ve had a really wonderful staff, we’ve been a great team working together,” Sternberger said. “To the extent that I’ve been able to get to know the campus community, the folks that I met, whether in person for the first two or three weeks I worked there or electronically, were really kind and helpful.” 

“The thing I’ll miss most is the people with whom I’ve worked, including my supervisor, Brian Burton. He’s been fantastic, supportive, helpful, always right behind me and the office. He’s always valued internationalization and he made that very clear,” she said.  

Burton, the associate vice president of Academic Affairs, expressed disappointment that Sternberger’s time at Western was cut short.  

“I’m sad she’s not going to be able to keep going and reach her vision, because I think Western has the potential to be a really top-end school in terms of attraction for international students, students going overseas, faculty going overseas, faculty relationships across borders. All those things,” he said. “I think she saw Western’s potential, and given time she would have realized it. But unfortunately, she didn’t even have six months to realize that vision.” 

Despite that, Burton was impressed by the way Sternberger was able to manage her team under the difficult circumstances she faced almost immediately in her tenure.  

“When you are in a position where you are charged with growing internationalization at a university and the students at the university can’t go abroad and students abroad can’t come to you, that’s a real problem. It’s hard to keep up morale, it’s hard to keep things going under those circumstances,” Burton said.  

“I think she did a really amazing job pivoting from her vision to just supporting her staff, supporting their efforts, supporting what they could do during the times when their normal jobs were not operational,” he said. 

Sternberger ended her tenure at Western in response to family matters at home, a decision she prefers to call a “new chapter” because “retirement” sounds too strange. Ryan Larsen, the current director of Western's EdAbroad office, has been appointed to succeed her.