SUNY COIL
Connect. Engage. Collaborate.
The SUNY COIL Center promotes and professionalizes the practice of Collaborative Online International Learning and Virtual Exchange, offering services to higher education institutions around the world. Connect with our global community of practice, the SUNY COIL Global Network, for information and ideas, professional support, partner matching, and resource sharing!
GET STARTED
Celebrating Our New Global Partner Network Members!
View All Members
Welcome!
Welcome to the SUNY COIL Center! SUNY COIL is the pioneer of the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) virtual exchange model, standing at the forefront of empowering professors, students, and institutions to engage in high impact teaching and learning.
COIL enhances students’ intercultural interaction through proven approaches to meaningful virtual engagement, while providing universities with a cost-effective way to offer global opportunities to students.
Explore our website to find numerous ways to enhance your efforts to bring COIL into your teaching and learning practice.
What is COIL?
COIL Collaborations are developed by partnering professors from different institutions who want to enrich their courses with student interaction and collaborative learning.
Professors work together to design and implement the COIL Collaboration, allowing COIL to be customized to meet the needs of any class, in any discipline. It takes planning and careful attention to design to have a successful COIL Collaboration that benefits students, professors and institutions.
What is COIL?
What We Do
Workshops and Consultancies
SUNY COIL Center professional development workshops are designed to prepare and improve your COIL practice – whether you’re a professor planning your first COIL Collaboration, an experienced COIL instructor looking to improve, an administrator supporting the scaling of COIL at your institution, or the point-person for COIL activities on your campus.
We’ve identified the important elements to ensure your COIL Collaborations have the greatest positive impact on students, professors and institutions. Our highly participatory hybrid workshops mirror your students’ experiences meeting and working with people from all over the world!
Workshops
SUNY COIL Global Partner Network
Joining the SUNY COIL Global Network brings the world to your campus!
With a SUNY COIL Global Network Membership, your institution is joining a world-wide community of practice dedicated to Collaborative Online International Learning and the benefits it brings to higher education. SUNY COIL has 20 years of experience working with hundreds of participating institutions, offering dozens of interactive professional development workshops and a wide variety of networking opportunities: we are the blue-chip standard of this modality and stand on the forefront of virtual exchange.
Global Partner Network
Networking & Empowerment
SUNY COIL believes in the power of community to strengthen and encourage COIL practitioners!
We prioritize networking and ongoing professional development by offering monthly webinars, COIL coordinator support meetings, a YouTube channel, regularly scheduled newsletters, and community of practice idea hubs focused on student career development, critical interculturality, and research. We continually iterate to ensure COIL members and the larger COIL/VE community are equipped and ready for implementing meaningful exchange.
Meetings, Webinars & Idea Hubs
SUNY COIL Ambassador Program
The SUNY COIL Ambassador program recognizes exemplary SUNY COIL educators for being enthusiastic and effective in COIL teaching practices. Click the link below to learn more and view the 2025-2026 Ambassadors!
2025-2026 Ambassadors
Allan Brockenbrough
Salem State University
United States
Kathryn “Katie” R. Mercurio
California State University, Chico
United States
Jie Zhang
SUNY Brockport
United States
SUNY COIL News
Blast From the Past: Stevens Initiative COIL Participants Visit Cairo
In March 2016, the SUNY COIL Center was awarded a Stevens Initiative grant to further partnerships with MENA region schools. This grant helped SUNY COIL to link teachers, students, and institutions with one another at a time when such connections are critical to national and…
: Blast From the Past: Stevens Initiative COIL Participants Visit Cairo
Not sure where to start?
Review our COIL Readiness Checklist
Sign Up for an Intro to COIL Webinar
Visit the SUNY COIL YouTube Channel
Attend a Community Webinar
Review the COIL & OSCQR Standards
Our Host Campus
SUNY COIL is hosted on the campus of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oneonta, a mid-size, public university with a commitment to expanding global education, applied learning and active pedagogy, and an institutional priority of building a more inclusive, equitable and diverse campus community where all students have the chance to thrive and succeed.