In June, 2025, Erin Titter, Senior Director of Advancement Services & Donor Relations, and Kristen Gurreri, Senior Director of College Development, were invited to represent York College of Pennsylvania at Hellenic Mediterranean University (HMU) in Chania, Crete, Greece.
They attended the 12th International Week Conference along with 40 universities from 30 different countries, making them the only two representatives from the United States.
During their stay, they presented to different institutions worldwide on topics related to fundraising and alumni engagement.
“...[I]t is a conference about higher education internationalization,” Titter said. “Very much focused on cross-border partnerships with other institutions around the world.”
Titter and Gurreri were able to make this trip out of the country by connecting with York College’s Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence, Konstantinos “Kostas” Petridis, Associate Professor for the Department of Electronic Engineering and the Vice Rector of Internationalization and Extroversion at HMU. During his visit to York College in the spring, Petridis met with many staff members but took a special interest in the Alumni Relations department.
“We met with him back in March, and he wanted to learn about our work because he said that in Europe, they don’t do a lot with alumni relations and fundraising,” Gurreri said.
Petridis suggested that Titter and Gurreri attend the conference in Greece and even helped them get funding to send them on the trip. He was adamant that their knowledge and experience in higher education alumni networks could be beneficial to share with other European universities that struggled or were unfamiliar with how to engage with their graduated community.
“The reality is European fundraising doesn’t exist in higher [education] the same way it exists here,” Titter said. “And so it was actually really applicable to many of the people who are looking to find funds to support their international programs, but have never actually come up with a plan on how to ask their alumni or other partners to help support them financially.”
Titter and Gurreri did two presentations at the conference; one on York College’s fundraising strategies and the other on a more general look at the College, highlighting its background and work with service and experiential learning, and other stand-out features such as Marketview Arts, the CCE, and Knowledge Park.
In the end, York College was very well-received. Many administrators, faculty, and students could find major takeaways from Titter and Gurreri’s work and apply them to their cross-cultural programs and research projects. York College also learned more about internationalization work and other potential ways for students to achieve more cross-cultural experiences. One popular medium being used was video call programs.
“You can collaborate with universities around the world through Zoom,” Gurreri said, “and [get] people to think differently about what internationalization looks like and how we can expose our students to different cultures and different things without having to have them fly halfway around the world and pay for it in that regard.”
Titter and Gurreri returned to the U.S. with plenty of information to help York College and its students thrive and connections for future internationalization projects. They are confident that other members of the College campus would benefit from attending the conference next year and are hopeful that they will continue to foster more international relations and discover future opportunities.
“We would love to see others around campus attend this because we do think there’s a lot of value and a lot of opportunities to collaborate,” Gurreri said.
"I definitely think we have enough people on campus doing work that is applicable to the conference,” Titter said. “We could send people for decades, and every year, have something unique to share, which is important."
