September/October 2024
By Paloma Rodriguez
Staff in academic service and support units are recognized as crucial stakeholders in the process of achieving comprehensive internationalization (Hudzik 2011). They directly interact with and support international students, faculty, and colleagues and administer programs with global reach. As essential members of the global learning ecosystem on campus, they inform the academic and career choices of students. For instance, they have the power to influence whether a student studies abroad. Despite support staff’s agency and potential to make or break internationalization efforts, institutional strategies often lack an intentional approach to engaging staff in campus internationalization. This failure to leverage and develop staff knowledge and skills is not only a missed opportunity but also a potential pitfall on increasingly globalized campuses, as staff are one of higher education institutions’ greatest assets and contribute to the future of the field. The expansion of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) and virtual exchange (VE) offers an innovative way to provide staff with a transformative professional development opportunity and meaningful international experience based on sustained global collaborations with partners abroad.
Why Staff?
Despite university staff’s essential work in supporting internationalization, several studies have shown that these employees have limited opportunities to gain international experience. They also lack access to quality training designed to increase their knowledge and preparedness to interact effectively with domestic and international students, colleagues, and faculty (Brandenburg 2016; Hunter 2017, 2018). As campuses become ever more diverse, the role of staff in internationalization processes needs to evolve to be more active and adaptable. A top-down approach to internationalization that presumes adherence but does not engage all crucial stakeholders limits the effectiveness of internationalization strategies, impacts the quality of services that institutions provide, and has negative effects on staff engagement, potentially affecting productivity and performance (Whitsed et al. 2022).
Some broad staff internationalization programs exist and have a proven record of success. For instance, the Systemic University Change Towards Internationalisation (SUCTI) project focuses on providing staff with an understanding of the internationalization of higher education (SUCTI, n.d.; Hunter 2017; Whitsed et al. 2022). Leveraging intercultural and peer learning and skill development, SUCTI motivates and empowers staff to become agents of internationalization no matter their professional roles. However, despite its wide recognition and implementation in European universities, the program has not become mainstream in other regions of the world. Even when intercultural training or courses such as SUCTI are offered consistently, staff members seldom have an opportunity to be part of an international experience tied to their line of work that is both immersive and community oriented. This oversight often happens because it is assumed that authentic participation in internationalization requires physical mobility, making cost and time significant obstacles for the engagement of large numbers of staff members in global experiences.
The emergence of VE in the last two decades, and its expansion in the postpandemic world in particular, has challenged the reductionist view that equates internationalization with mobility. VE has reframed the curricular and cocurricular landscape for internationalization, becoming a powerful teaching modality that stands on its own. It has expanded access to global learning, broadened the geographic and disciplinary diversity of internationalization efforts, and fostered a fruitful and collaborative training ground for the intercultural skills of faculty and students (Helm and Guth 2022; Rubin and Guth 2022).
COIL Beyond the Classroom
Borrowing from the COIL methodology and expanding the definition of “learner,” COIL for staff engages nonacademic staff in a professional exchange of ideas and collaboration with their counterparts abroad. The reciprocity, authenticity, skill development, and project-based approach that are the pillars of COIL remain at the core of the staff modality. Through this program, professionals in any given field come together for a series of virtual meetings to compare operations, examine common challenges and differences, and work on collaborative projects or improvement plans based on each other’s feedback.
Organizing this program involves matching pairs of professionals from institutions in different countries working in similar or complementary fields and identifying facilitators to lead a semester-long experience. Facilitators are staff or faculty members who are familiar with COIL methodology and intercultural learning and who have the skills to lead professional development training. The program is structured as a combination of whole-group, synchronous sessions dedicated to icebreaking activities, intercultural competence exercises, and discussions of work and institutional culture, in addition to synchronous and asynchronous interactions in pairs. The program culminates with a virtual symposium in which participants present their improvement plans and collaborative projects and reflect on their intercultural and professional growth. A second phase in the project can include mobility, involving a visit to the partner’s campus for selected participants.
A pilot project conducted by the CEU Cardenal Herrera University in Spain and the University of Florida (UF) in the United States revealed the potential of this COIL adaptation as a transformational professional development opportunity for staff. The project was implemented over four months in spring 2024 and was based on a template previously developed by Cardenal Herrera in collaboration with the Universidad Católica de Manizales in Colombia. In the pilot between UF and Cardenal Herrera, eight participants from each institution were paired according to their professional roles in the areas of finance, human resources, institutional data analytics, marketing, international student and scholar support, recruitment, student life, and language learning support. The pairs met virtually eight times and worked asynchronously on their projects.
Participants from both institutions expressed high satisfaction with the experience and reported gains in global self-awareness, adaptability, empathy, and perspective taking within their professional fields. Viewing their jobs and administrative systems through the eyes of their international partners helped participants gain awareness of the idiosyncrasies of their operations and prompted them to think creatively about making improvements. Participants also displayed a deeper understanding of the aims and scope of internationalization on their campuses and reported experiencing increased motivation and engagement in their work. The feeling that the program had changed their role from helpers or mere spectators of internationalization into active players and agents was common. This thought was best expressed by one of the participants through a soccer metaphor: “After years of watching others play and bringing them water, this program finally gave me an opportunity to play on the field.” For those who were already involved in internationalization, the program deepened their professional knowledge and brought concepts to life through experience. A seasoned international educator who participated in the pilot program concluded, “I knew about virtual exchange but only now I fully understand it.”
In addition to being empowering, the COIL for staff program at Cardenal Herrera and UF has also been identity affirming, as it gave Spanish heritage speakers in the United States an opportunity to use their language skills in a professional setting. This underscores the program’s value as a strength-based strategy to foster belonging. For the nonnative speakers of Spanish in the group, the program showed enormous potential to promote language learning. These participants explained that facing the difficulty of interacting professionally in a foreign language helped them develop insights into the experiences of foreign language speakers on campus, such as international students, faculty, and fellow staff members.
Participant comments and survey responses indicate that the COIL for staff exchange between Cardenal Herrera and UF adequately addressed some of the staff internationalization gaps documented by Hunter (2017, 7), namely the need for staff to communicate in a multicultural environment, develop an understanding of internationalization, and build team spirit and a shared commitment. The pilot also applied some of the best practices for staff engagement and empowerment proposed by Whitsed et al. (2022) by adopting a bottom-up and community-based approach.
In addition to leading to positive internationalization-related outcomes, this COIL program also produced tangible benefits in workforce development. Participants acquired new expertise using office tools such as software and data visualization applications and expanded their knowledge of business strategies in the areas of search engine optimization, marketing, and recruitment. They also applied their newly acquired knowledge by developing improvement plans for their business operations using the feedback and collaboration provided by their international partners. Such findings offer an opportunity for international offices to partner with the human resources department in their institutions to formalize and broaden access to VE opportunities as part of the centralized training and organizational development offerings for staff on campus.
Why Now?
Concerns over sustainability and access, equity, and inclusion as well as the expanding availability of digital forms of internationalization have transformed the international education landscape in the past decade. An increasing number of colleges and universities are adopting COIL as a mainstream global learning strategy, as is evident from recent surveys of the field (COIL Connect for Virtual Exchange, n.d.). Many of these institutions are committing to permanently supporting these initiatives and VE coordinator positions, and faculty VE training is becoming more common. As institutions solidify and expand their VE expertise and capacity, they will see the implementation of initiatives for staff as a low cost and workable diversification of their digital internationalization strategy. In addition, like other forms of VE, the COIL staff modality offers an opportunity to strengthen existing international partnerships by engaging a different set of stakeholders. For instance, institutions with partnerships dedicated to the exchange of students or the creation of COIL courses could expand their engagement by having staff members at both institutions work collaboratively to tighten and broaden interinstitutional links.
Although several organizations support the professional development needs of international education staff in a technical sense, the recent launch of the International Education Professional Certificate (IEPC) by NAFSA, Times Higher Education, and Common Purpose is proof of an increasing interest in a more holistic approach to staff professionalization that emphasizes job competencies and broadens access through self-paced virtual options. COIL for staff can complement professional development opportunities for staff internationalization and enhance the outcomes by providing a hands-on and immersive opportunity to put into practice the concepts and competencies acquired through foundational courses. For instance, the COIL for staff pilot between Cardenal Herrera and UF provided opportunities to develop several of NAFSA’s International Education Competencies 2.0, including relationship cultivation, communications, people development, and inclusion and equity. Working in combination with IEPC or other formative programs, such as intercultural trainings or SUCTI courses, COIL for staff and other VE programs can help bring concepts to life and provide opportunities for meaningful practice in areas that truly require an experiential component, such as intercultural competence development.
Improving Engagement
Staff engagement and retention remain a challenge for higher education leaders. International educators are still rebounding from the COVID-19 pandemic while concurrently facing changing demographics, geopolitical challenges, and unsettling political climates. The time is now for international educators to rethink old strategies, adapt to new realities, and engage everyone on campus in internationalization efforts through a sense of community and common purpose.
In NAFSA’s GSLR 2024, which focused on community in international education, Landorf and Wadley stress the importance and peace-building potential of global learning as a collaborative process in which “students, faculty, and staff create and engage in problem-solving within global learning communities” (2024, 1). Such groups, they argue, provide a “space in which participants feel they can present their ideas, are listened to with respect, and different courses of action are taken seriously” (Landorf and Wadley 2024, 5). The authors acknowledge the powerful role of global learning communities in advancing collective well-being through the exposure of their members to new perspectives and the design of negotiated and mutually beneficial solutions to common problems.
COIL for staff and other VE opportunities can be a valuable response to this call to action to recreate a sense of community in international education as well as a useful tool for senior international officers to reengage staff in the international office and beyond. No matter their role on campus and regardless of their degree of exposure to international experiences, staff can find in these programs a learning community of peers around the world with whom to discuss common challenges and find shared and creative solutions. By opening a door for such relationships and collaborations, COIL for staff and VE can help turn staff into more visible, empowered, committed, and productive agents of internationalization.
References
Brandenburg, Uwe. 2016. “The Value of Administrative Staff for Internationalization.” International Higher Education no. 85, 15–17.
COIL Connect for Virtual Exchange. n.d. “Surveys.” COIL Connect for Virtual Exchange (website). Accessed September 9, 2024. https://coilconnect.org/surveys.
Helm, Francesca, and Sarah Guth. 2022. “Internationalization at Home through Virtual Exchange.” In The Handbook of International Higher Education, 2nd ed., edited by Darla K. Deardorff, Hans de Wit, Betty Leask, and Harvey Charles. Routledge.
Hudzik, John K. 2011. Comprehensive Internationalization: From Concept to Action. NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
Hunter, Fiona, ed. 2017. SUCTI Report on Training Provision on Internationalisation for Administrative Staff in European Higher Education. Systemic University Change Towards Internationalisation. https://suctiproject.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/sucti-report-o1-vf-final2.pdf.
Hunter, Fiona. 2018. “Training Administrative Staff to Become Key Players in the Internationalization of Higher Education.” International Higher Education, no. 92, 16–17.
Landorf, Hilary, and Catherine Wadley. 2024. “Making Meaning of Community in International Education.” In Global Studies Literature Review (GSLR): Recentering, Reprioritizing, & Reengaging a Sense of Community within International Education, edited by Nick Gozik. NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
Rubin, Jon, and Sarah Guth, eds. 2023. The Guide to COIL Virtual Exchange: Implementing, Growing, and Sustaining Collaborative Online International Learning. Taylor & Francis.
SUCTI (Systemic University Change Towards Internationalisation). n.d. “Strategic Partnership.” SUCTI (website). www.suctiproject.com.
Whitsed, Craig, Jeanine Gregersen-Hermans, Marina Casals, and Betty Leask. 2022. “Engaging Faculty and Staff in the Internationalization of Higher Education.” In The Handbook of International Higher Education, 2nd ed., edited by Darla K. Deardorff, Hans de Wit, Betty Leask, and Harvey Charles. Routledge.
Paloma Rodriguez is the director of the Office of Global Learning at the University of Florida (UF) International Center, where she leads faculty professional development programs to support curriculum internationalization, including UF’s Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) and virtual exchange initiative and the Global Learning Institute. Her publications and presentations explore COIL and virtual exchange, staff internationalization, curriculum internationalization, e-portfolio pedagogy in international programming, career integration, and the role of global certificate programs for the advancement of comprehensive internationalization. Rodriguez has also served on the advisory board of the American Association of Colleges and Universities Global Learning Conference and as chair of the NAFSA Community College Member Interest Group.