Who We Are
COIL Connect is an initiative of the COIL Virtual Exchange Foundation, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation authorized in the State of New York. Our mission is to support the international growth of COIL Virtual Exchange at the institutional level. General membership in COIL Connect is free and is open to all, however this website is specifically designed to support higher education institutions that have developed or are in the process of developing COIL VE programs, and which appoint a COIL coordinator/administrator to manage their program.
COIL Connect also supports more recent COIL VE practitioners as they seek to develop, integrate, and institutionalize their programs.
CVEF presently has a nine-person Board of Directors based in five countries plus an Operations Manager:

Jon Rubin, President
From 1975 to 2005, Jon Rubin was a practicing media artist. From 2002-11 he implemented his Cross-Cultural Video course in which students collaboratively co-produced videos with peers in other countries. He founded and directed the SUNY COIL Center from 2006-2017. In 2017, he created COIL Consulting and in 2020 COIL Connect, to support higher education institutions which are developing COIL initiatives. In 2022, Stylus Publishers released The Guide to COIL Virtual Exchange, which Rubin co-edited.

Gail Vachon, Treasurer
Gail Vachon is an artist and graphic designer. Since the early days of the web, she provided web design services in a variety of settings. Over the past decade, her focus has been interactive and online training, primarily for corporate clients. She has developed various visuals for the SUNY COIL Center, COIL Consulting, and COIL Connect.

Sarah Guth, Secretary
Sarah Guth is the president of UNICollaboration and teaches English as a foreign language at the University of Padova, Italy. She was the Program Coordinator at the SUNY COIL Center from 2013 to 2014. She currently focuses on the role of professional development in VE and the integration of VE into internationalization-at-home strategies.

Olga Aksakalova, Board Member
Olga Aksakalova is Professor of English and COIL Coordinator at LaGuardia Community College. She founded the COIL program at LaGuardia in 2016 and since then supported the development of over 100 COIL projects. Her research, teaching and curricular/administrative projects emphasize transnational approaches.

Jenifer Cushman, Board Member
Chancellor of Penn State Beaver since 2016, Cushman earned her PhD in German from Ohio State, and served as assistant, then associate professor of German and Russian at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Cushman was dean of international education at NAFSA Simon Award-winning Juniata College 2007-2014, and 2015 AIEA president.

Keiko Ikeda, Board Member
Keiko Ikeda is Professor of International Affairs, and KU-COIL Coordinator at Kansai University. Recently, she became the principal project manager for the Inter-University Exchange Project funded by MEXT, 2018-2022 ("COIL Plus Program to Develop Global Career Mindset"). Keiko is also Vice-Director of the Institute for Innovative Global Education (IIGE) at KU.

Brenda García, Board Member
Brenda García is Director for Internationalization at Home and coordinates COIL/VE projects at Universidad de Monterrey, Mexico. She is a board member of the LatAm COIL consortium and is on the IVEC conference steering committee. She is also the creator and coordinator of the ODUCOIL platform for ODUCAL, and content developer and consultant for the PIC AMPEI US-MX program.

Alfonso Diaz, Board Member
Alfonso Díaz Segura is Corporate Director for Business Operations and Internationalization of CEU Educational Group in Spain. He is responsible for international policies at the three CEU universities and has implemented the CEU Global Classroom to foster VE. He conducted the process to gain the CeQuInt certificate the European Consortium of Accreditation on Quality in Institutional Internationalization, being the first Spanish Institution to achieve it. He has also recently organized and host IVEC 2022. Alfonso is also steering member of the EAIE’s Expert Community Internationalization at Home.

Stephanie Doscher, Board Member
Stephanie Doscher, Ed.D., Director of Florida International University’s Office of Collaborative Online International Learning (FIU COIL), is co-author of Making Global Learning Universal: Promoting Inclusion and Success for All Students (Stylus & NAFSA, 2018) and contributing editor of The Guide to COIL Virtual Exchange (Stylus, forthcoming), comprehensive handbooks for engaging all undergraduates in collaborative global problem solving with diverse others. She hosts the Making Global Learning Universal Podcast (https://globallearningpodcast.fiu.edu), is a Faculty Fellow with FIU’s Center for Leadership, and serves on the editorial advisory board for AAC&U’s Liberal Education.

Daysi Rueda C.
Operations Manager
Daysi Paola Rueda Cordones worked in International Education for seven years at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador. She holds a master's degree in International Relations. Presently, Daysi is a Ph.D. student at the University of Cadiz – Spain. Her research focuses on the internationalization and digitalization of higher education institutions, and spin-offs.