SPICE About

Our Mission

The Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) serves as a bridge between Stanford University and K–12 schools and community colleges by developing multidisciplinary curricular materials on international topics, conducting teacher professional development seminars, and teaching distance-learning courses.

Our Work

Since 1976, SPICE has supported efforts to internationalize K–12 and community college curricula. As a program of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University, SPICE draws upon the diverse faculty and programmatic interests of Stanford University broadly—and FSI specifically—to integrate knowledge, inquiry, and practice in its curriculum development, teacher professional development, and distance-learning course offerings.

SPICE addresses the Common Core State Standards and other national standards in its work, and recognizes its responsibility to present multiple perspectives and enhance critical thinking and decision-making skills in social science classrooms.

SPICE is a non-profit educational program and receives funding from FSI, several private and government foundations, and private donors.

What Is SPICE?

SPICE leverages Stanford scholarship to advance global education in three areas: curriculum development, teacher professional development, and online learning for students.

This two-minute video vignette provides a brief introduction to some of our work in curriculum and teacher PD.

Courtesy of Stanford News.

Our History

The roots of the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) date back to the establishment of the Bay Area China Education Project (BAYCEP), Stanford University, in 1973. BAYCEP was initially a joint project with the University of California, Berkeley and was developed out of concern for how China was being taught in Bay Area schools. During the mid- to late-1970s, three other parallel projects were developed: Teaching Japan in the Schools (TJS), Proyecto REAL: Recursos Educacionales de América Latina, and the Africa Project. Together with BAYCEP, these projects became the nucleus of SPICE, which was established in 1976.

As BAYCEP extended its work with teachers beyond the San Francisco Bay Area, its name was changed to the China Project. In the 1980s, TJS became the Japan Project and REAL became the Latin America Project. In 1983, the International Security and Arms Control (ISAAC) Project was added as SPICE’s first non-area-specific project. Finally, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, two other projects were added to SPICE: the Western Europe Project and the Eastern Europe and Soviet Union Project.

Today, though SPICE is no longer comprised of area- or topic-focused projects, the mission of SPICE remains the same as that of its founding. SPICE continues to focus its work on East Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Russia, and many other regions and countries of the world, and our work emphasizes many of the key thematic foci of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, such as governance, security, global health, energy, and international development. For nearly five decades, SPICE has engaged scholars at Stanford University in making Stanford scholarship accessible to young students.