Leadership

In May 2018, a delegation of senior administrators led by Lawrence Schovanec, president of Texas Tech University (TTU), arrived in Costa Rica with scissors in hand. They were there for the ribbon cutting ceremony at TTU’s first international degree-granting campus, Texas Tech University at Costa Rica (TTU-CR). The new campus, a public-private partnership between TTU and Costa Rican financial group Promerica Group, is one of the most visible examples of the ways in which TTU has expanded its portfolio beyond its main campus in Lubbock, Texas.

In the last 2 decades, TTU has transformed from a regional institution in west Texas to a top research institution with a global reach spanning from Costa Rica to Spain. TTU’s robust research portfolio and its international partnerships have helped propel the university’s recent Carnegie designation as one of 115 top tier research institutions—of which 81 are public institutions—in the United States. TTU’s research strengths include areas such as climate change; the interconnections of water, land, food, and fiber; computational and theoretical sciences; and energy. 

In addition to its physical presence around the world, the university currently serves 37,000 students—more than 3,000 of whom come from abroad—on its main campus. Internationalization has gone hand in hand with TTU’s quest to become, in the words of its first president Paul Whitfield Horn, an institution that thinks in “worldwide terms.”

“We’ve created a culture at Tech that covers the full gamut of international activities and initiatives,” Schovanec says. “It’s not just a matter of raising international student enrollment; it’s creating a community here on campus that’s supportive and appreciative of comprehensive internationalization of our education enterprise. It relates to research funding opportunities that have an international focus and opportunities for students to be involved in study abroad.”

Advancing TTU’s Global Vision With Strategy

The Office of International Affairs (OIA) is at the helm of TTU’s internationalization efforts. Under the leadership of Vice Provost for International Affairs Sukant Misra, OIA’s mission is to advance “the global vision of Texas Tech University by promoting international leadership, awareness, education, scholarship, and outreach for the university and the broader community.”

The unit oversees international recruitment, international undergraduate admissions, international student and scholar services, and study abroad. OIA is also responsible for international partnerships, research collaborations, and grants administration. The K–12 Global Education Outreach (K–12 GEO) initiative, which is part of OIA, won a NAFSA Senator Paul Simon Spotlight Award for its outreach efforts in 2016. K–12 GEO works with local schools and classrooms to foster global awareness in the wider Lubbock community. OIA continues to find new ways to move the university’s internationalization strategy forward on and off campus.  After 25 years at TTU, in various positions, Misra became vice provost and senior international officer in January 2018. Prior to this role, he served for 4 years as associate vice provost of international programs under Tibor Nagy, a former ambassador to Ethiopia and Guinea who retired from TTU at the end of 2017 after a 14-year tenure. 

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As associate vice provost, Misra spearheaded the development of the 2015–2020 OIA Strategic Plan and preparation of annual strategic plan assessments, which fed into the university’s new strategic plan, “A Pathway to 2025.” The strategic planning process led to several university-wide goals, such as integrating global perspectives into the curriculum and furthering intercultural understanding in the community at large.  

TTU also launched a new quality enhancement plan (QEP) as part of its 2015 reaccreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). The QEP, “Communicating in a Global Society,” focuses university-wide efforts on global communication and awareness. Led by the Office of the Provost, the QEP has provided additional funding to enhance undergraduate education in global communications through programing, educational activities, and scholarships.

Building a Globally Engaged Student Community

An area of strategic aim for TTU has been creating a globally engaged student community by recruiting, admitting, retaining, and graduating more international students. One of the first things Misra did as associate vice provost was to help transition international undergraduate admissions from the Graduate School to OIA, which has led to a more streamlined admissions process. 

TTU has always had a large international graduate student population, so many of the university’s recruitment efforts in the last few years have been centered on international undergraduates. The efforts have been fruitful; in the last 5 years, the number of international undergraduate students on the TTU campus has grown by more than 80 percent. According to President Schovanec, the number of international undergraduate students on campus exceeded the number of international graduate students for the first time in fall 2017. 

“We set out on the path to increase our [international] undergraduate enrollment very intentionally,” says Provost Michael Galyean. “We provided the appropriate staffing and defined what kinds of services we needed to offer. We made a commitment to serve those students once they got on campus.”

At the same time, the international graduate population grew by 18 percent. Now, more than one-quarter of all graduate students on campus are international.  

International students are primarily served by the International Student Life unit within OIA. This unit organizes orientation, welcome week events, and cultural programs, among other activities. Beth Mora, international student life coordinator, manages TTU’s international student orientation and other events throughout the academic year. “We help connect them to the Lubbock community, help connect them to the university, and help connect them to each other,” she says.

To help ease incoming international students’ transition to campus life, OIA partners with off-campus student apartments to provide incoming international students with a place to stay if they arrive in Lubbock before the campus residence halls open. Students are able to pay $5 per day for a “three-day stay.” “Many of our international students take advantage of both airport pickup and the three-day stay,” says Mora. 

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Dhanraj Apte, a graduate student from India studying industrial engineering, says he did not realize how much effort TTU puts into helping international students transition to life in Lubbock until he started working as a graduate assistant for OIA. “They have recognized the need to offer help and create[d] different resources for international students to make sure that we’re not having difficulties adjusting to U.S. culture,” he says. 

Promoting International Research to Advance Internationalization

Misra has also helped provide a renewed emphasis on international research and partnerships with the establishment of the International Research and Development (IRD) division of OIA in 2014. The unit, with support from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Office of Research Services, assists faculty from across campus to engage in international research and development activities. In addition to sending a monthly email that provides information about internal and external funding opportunities, IRD assists faculty with putting together grant proposals. 

“We have really ramped up our support for international research,” says Provost Galyean. “In the last 4 years, we’ve had a significant increase in not only the amount of funding we received, but also the number of proposals related to international research going out the door.” 

Biology professor Gad Perry, who also serves as senior director for international research and development, says his job is to help make international research collaboration as easy as possible for faculty by helping them identify funding opportunities and potential collaborators abroad. “We provide resources, information, and connections,” he says. “In doing so, hopefully we enhance the chance that they’ll do international research.”

Reagan Ribordy, director of international programs, says the IRD unit oversees a budget of $25,000 for international research seed grants. Approximately 10 faculty receive $2,000 grants per year to cover travel or other start-up costs, with the goal of eventually gaining external funding. Recent projects have included an investigation of young people’s communication via social media in Thailand and a pilot study on the antidiabetic properties of a medicinal plant found in Belize. 

According to Ribordy, TTU faculty have submitted more than $50 million worth of proposals since the IRD unit was established in 2014. Since then, the university has received approximately $4.8 million in external funding for international initiatives. These funds include a grant from the U.S. Department of State, which selected TTU to host 25 young African leaders through the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders in summer 2017. 

TTU is also developing strong relationships with partner institutions in countries such as Ethiopia and Brazil. For instance, Stephen Ekwaro-Osire, former associate dean of research and graduate programs in the Whitacre College of Engineering, is the principal investigator for a $1.1 million grant that supports the design and development of curriculum for four graduate programs in civil engineering and construction technology at Jimma University in southeastern Ethiopia. Additionally, the TTU Department of Human Development and Family Studies has collaborated with Jigjiga University in eastern Ethiopia to develop programs in nutrition and early childhood education. 

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In Brazil, TTU has partnered with the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) since 2014 to fund joint research projects. TTU and FAPESP have successfully cosponsored three rounds of research proposals, with teams winning support for the exchange of faculty and postdoctoral researchers in each cycle. For example, two TTU faculty members, along with a researcher from the Federal University of São Paulo, received funding to examine the effects of toxic stress on children’s brain development using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology. 

Another TTU initiative that promotes international undergraduate research is Research Study Abroad, a new program piloted by professor David Weindorf, a research faculty fellow in the Office of the Vice President for Research. Weindorf used funding from his endowed chair, the BL Allen Endowed Chair of Pedology, in the Department of Plant and Soil Science to fund student travel to countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe. He is hoping to encourage other faculty to replicate the program.

Engaging in Community Outreach to Foster Individual Understanding

TTU views community outreach through its K–12 GEO program as a central pillar to its campus internationalization strategy, with a mission to “build a globally engaged community of learners through outreach opportunities that foster intercultural understanding and exchange while enriching the quality of life for both the universities and local communities across west Texas.”

Founded in 1997, K–12 GEO creates opportunities for more than 20,000 local students, teachers, and community members to learn about the world each year. By visiting local classrooms and inviting local students to the TTU campus, TTU faculty and staff help boost students’ awareness of other countries and cultures within a community where many young people do not have the opportunity to travel. K–12 GEO programs include an Ellis Island experience, workshops on holidays such as Chinese Lunar New Year and Mexico’s Day of the Dead, and activities celebrating the history of Ireland’s music and dance culture.  

In addition to the programming provided to local K–12 students, OIA hosts eight to 10 events featuring internationally recognized speakers and culturally diverse educational programs that are open to the larger Lubbock community. Particularly noteworthy is the annual Texas Tech Ambassadors Forum, which features a panel discussion by diplomatic and foreign policy experts. Other events include an annual German Christmas celebration called Weihnachten and Culture Fest 2017. In 2017, OIA worked with 17 international student groups to put on an outdoor festival that showcased cultural performers from the Texas Commission on the Arts.

“Today’s complex world requires international cooperation on multiple levels. TTU is committed to graduating a diverse and globally competent group of students who are prepared to face these challenges. Community outreach continues to play an integral part of this mission,” says Kelley Coleman, director of international enrollment development and outreach.

Growing Study Abroad and Extending Opportunities to Underrepresented Students

As part of the university’s internationalization strategy, TTU has recently focused on expanding the number of students who study abroad. In 2016–17, approximately 1,300 TTU students participated in credit-bearing programs abroad. The College of Architecture highly encourages, and the College of Engineering requires, an international experience for graduation, with other departments considering adding this requirement as well. The College of Arts and Sciences has a foursemester foreign language requirement, which many students fulfill abroad. The TTU Spanish program is especially popular. 

 With more than 27 percent of enrolled students identifying as Hispanic, TTU was recently awarded the designation of a Hispanic-serving institution by the U.S. Department of Education. In response, study abroad staff are currently reviewing their programs and approaches to determine how to ensure that the demographics of the study abroad population reflect the larger student body. OIA often works with other offices on campus that serve underrepresented students, first-generation students, and students with disabilities to promote study abroad opportunities. One of OIA’s most frequent collaborators is the First Generation Transition & Mentoring Programs office. 

“Specifically in collaboration with the first-generation office, we copresent with the financial aid office at the beginning of each academic year,” says Whitney Longnecker, director of study abroad. “The presentation [to students] discusses the basics of study abroad but also covers the specifics of how to apply financial aid and scholarships to a study abroad experience.”

The presentation helps make sure first-generation and other underrepresented students are aware of the funding opportunities available for education abroad. Funded by a $4 education abroad fee that every enrolled student pays each semester, OIA administers a scholarship program that offers more than $350,000 each year to support study abroad. 

OIA makes an effort to reach out to underrepresented students throughout the year. “We also hold remote advising hours in the first generation programs office, which is a good way to meet with first-generation students in a space in which they are already comfortable,” Longnecker says. OIA continues to offer students similar levels of outreach and support once they go abroad.

Cesar Rocha, a senior studying mechanical engineering, spent fall 2017 at TTU’s study abroad center in Seville, Spain. He was able to take engineering courses as well as an upper-level Spanish class. As a first-generation student, he says he had never considered studying abroad before enrolling at TTU. “I was just trying to get to college and finish,” he says. 

Rocha adds that the program in Seville not only allowed him to keep up with his engineering curriculum, it also offered him a lot of first-time experiences. Although he is fluent in Spanish, it was the first time he had ever taken a formal Spanish class. Traveling to Spain was also the first time he had flown on an airplane. “It totally pushed me out of my comfort zone,” Rocha says. 

Rocha is one of many TTU students who have spent time at TTU’s study abroad center in Spain. Since 2000, the center has served more than 4,600 TTU students from all academic disciplines in both summer and semester-long programs—representing more than 40 percent of all TTU students who study abroad. The center also provides an opportunity for many TTU faculty and graduate teaching assistants to spend a semester abroad. 

Additionally, each semester, the TTU center in Seville hosts six to eight interns from the University of Seville who assist center staff with administrative tasks as well as interact with TTU students to improve their Spanish language skills. This relationship has served as an indirect recruitment pipeline to TTU’s graduate programs. 

Myriam Rubio, who earned her bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Seville, began working at the center as a linguistic assistant. She learned about TTU’s master’s program in Spanish through her interactions with the TTU faculty and graduate teaching assistants who came to Seville to teach. Rubio is thriving in her graduate program at TTU. “I’m loving every minute of my stay on the campus in Lubbock. My experience as a master’s student is not only improving my performance as a [Spanish] instructor, but it is also allowing me to grow both professionally and personally,” she says.

Offering a U.S. Education in Costa Rica

Building on its experience managing a physical presence overseas in Spain, TTU’s most recent international venture is the new campus in San José, Costa Rica. Promerica Group approached TTU in 2014 with the idea of offering a U.S. education in Costa Rica. According to Jack Bimrose, former director of EDULINK, a subsidiary of Promerica Group, U.S. higher education is cost prohibitive for large segments of the Central American population. The concept is to make academic programs related to strategic areas of development in the region more accessible to local students. 

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The first group of students began their studies at TTU-CR in August 2018 in five academic programs: electrical engineering, industrial engineering, computer science, mathematics, and restaurant and hotel management.

The campus, which has been accredited by SACS, will offer the same curriculum in English as the main campus in Lubbock. TTU faculty will teach on the Costa Rica campus, which has been built to the specifications of the departments at TTU. The hope is that TTU-CR will eventually host U.S. students who are studying abroad. 

“This is a unique model of engagement with industrial partners who want to provide the quality of a U.S. college education to Costa Rican students,” President Schovanec says. “We want the Costa Rica campus to become a nexus for postsecondary education in Central America.” 

As one of the nation’s premier public research institutions, West Virginia University (WVU) serves as an economic driver and knowledge base in a region of the United States where industry and population are declining. WVU has leveraged its strengths in areas such as public health, natural gas, and petroleum engineering to develop partnerships that aim to solve both local and global problems.

When the state of West Virginia was hit by a major flash flood in June 2016, WVU students, staff, and faculty came together to offer support to the devastated communities. “Within a few hours of knowing the flooding was occurring, our entire campus joined together and we turned one of our big empty spaces into a warehouse where we could [put] supplies,” says former provost Joyce McConnell. 

The largest group in the warehouse lending support were Engineers Without Borders students from India, she says. The students quickly jumped in to help organize supplies and coordinate relief efforts, drawing on their own experience with flooding in their native country. “It was this incredible moment to see what it means to have international students bring their expertise to a crisis in a place like West Virginia,” McConnell explains. 

Each year, WVU welcomes around 2,200 international students who contribute to the student body of nearly 30,000 across the three campuses. Most international students study at WVU’s main campus in Morgantown, a city of rolling hills situated along the banks of the Monongahela River. 

In a state with a dwindling college-aged population, WVU has looked to international and domestic nonresident students to bolster its student body. According to Stephen Lee, associate vice president for enrollment management, more than half of the freshman class come from abroad or out of state. “Everything we do relies on this unique enrollment profile in terms of who we recruit and how we recruit,” he says. “International is a key component of that.”

The presence of international and out-of-state students helps bring diverse backgrounds and perspectives to a state that is largely homogeneous demographically. According to President E. Gordon Gee, West Virginians who enroll at WVU can essentially “study abroad by staying here” because of the cross-cultural exchanges they can have with international students arriving from 150 different countries. “Because many of our students come from very small towns in Appalachia, the notion of going to the university, let alone overseas, is a big step,” he says. “The international component of this institution is about what we do on campus, as well as what we do internationally.”

Centralizing International Engagement Efforts

WVU has a long history of international engagement— particularly in the Middle East due to the institution’s expertise in the petroleum industry—but many of its activities were decentralized until relatively recently. That was a trend that McConnell wanted to reverse when she became provost in 2014. “When I first came here in 1995, there was just this loose organization of people doing their own thing,” she says. “You could go to any college on campus and you would find all of these very interesting international collaborations going on, but the only thing that was centralized at all was the processing of visas.”

Support from Gordon Gee and McConnell fueled the push to consolidate WVU’s international activities under the Office of Global Affairs (OGA) in 2016. William Brustein, who had previously worked with Gordon Gee at The Ohio State University, was brought on as vice president for global strategies and international affairs to lead the newly minted OGA. The office now oversees education abroad, international student and scholar services, intensive English programs, sponsored student services, and the Health Sciences Center Global Engagement Office. 

Under the direction of the OGA, WVU has prioritized two key approaches to internationalization: leveraging the institution’s strengths and building strong international partnerships. “We need to constantly remind ourselves of who we are and why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Gordon Gee says.

Brustein adds that drawing on WVU’s expertise in areas such as energy and medicine abroad is crucial to its land-grant mission. “Our faculty are developing research collaborations all around the world. We believe the international aspects of this research, whether it’s in health, energy, or forensics, can not only help people overseas, but will also help the people of the state of West Virginia and the future prosperity of the state,” Brustein says.

Strengthening Ties with Bahrain

One of WVU’s most successful international partnerships is with the Royal University for Women (RUW) in Bahrain. Founded in 2005 by four brothers who graduated from West Virginia University, RUW is the kingdom’s first private university for women. WVU has collaborated with RUW since 2009 to create student exchanges and faculty research opportunities. Faculty members from both universities have engaged in research collaborations in the fields of energy, water resources, health care, and women and gender studies. 

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In 2019, business and economics professor Susan Jennings Lantz took a group of 10 female students for a one-credit study abroad and cultural exchange trip to RUW over spring break. “Our students are able to get behind the scenes because they are staying in the residence hall,” Jennings Lantz says. “It’s a heavily gendered experience, but it’s unlike anything that our students have experienced.”

While she was in Bahrain, pre-med major Garima Agarwal says she realized just how different the economic and social landscape is between the Gulf Coast and Appalachia. “Here in West Virginia, we’re not used to that kind of glamor,” she says. “It was also my first time attending a mosque and learning about Islam.” Agarwal had the chance to participate in a debate about feminism with RUW students as well. “They have a very different approach to feminism than we do in the Western world,” she says. 

Agarwal, who graduated in May 2019, says that the experience will help inform her practice as a future doctor. “I understand their culture more closely now,” she explains. “As I see patients from that side of the world, I can take a more holistic approach to their care.”

The WVU-RUW partnership features other areas of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) domain. RUW hosts a WVU civil and environmental engineering program, which launched in 2017. The program is WVU’s first full degree program offered abroad and has served as a model for the development of dual-degree programs in other countries such as China. RUW students take the same courses that are offered in Morgantown and have the option to study abroad in West Virginia for a semester or more, allowing for additional global learning and connections. The creation of such dual-degree programs involves continued support and input from stakeholders throughout the institutions.

The partnership extends to the highest levels of university leadership. President Gordon Gee serves on the Royal University for Women’s Board of Trustees, and other WVU administrators have offered their insights and support as RUW continues to grow. In 2018, David Stewart took a leave of absence from his position as associate vice president for global strategy and international affairs at WVU to serve as president of the Royal University for Women.

“I’m ‘on loan’ here for 2 years,” Stewart explains. “We did that to really cement the relationship between the two universities and to speed up the development of WVU offering other kinds of programs in the Middle East.”

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Investing in a Presence Abroad Through Global Portals

WVU’s partnership with the Royal University for Women has been the foundation of its engagement in the Middle East and has been a prototype for the development of its global portals strategy in other parts of the world. Brustein describes the global portals as “academic embassies” where WVU maintains a physical presence in the region. The portals facilitate student exchange and education abroad, faculty exchange and research collaboration, alumni engagement, and industry and state partnerships. Additionally, the portals allow WVU to offer development and training opportunities in areas such as energy and medicine. 

In November 2016, Bahrain became the site of WVU's first global portal. The WVU Health Sciences Center uses the portal to provide on-site training and certification for medical health professionals from the Middle East. Because it can be very expensive to send faculty and students to the United States and increasingly difficult to obtain visas, WVU has made training and services more accessible by offering them at RUW. An example is an advanced certificate in occupational medicine that is certified by the American Medical Association. The second global portal was launched in Shanghai, China, in July 2018 and is directed by a WVU alumnus from China. WVU is currently working with partners in South America to develop another portal representing Latin America and also plans to eventually establish a presence in Southeast Asia. 

Addressing the Barriers to Study Abroad

Approximately 750 domestic students study abroad every year through credit-bearing programs. Because nearly one-quarter of all WVU students are Pell-eligible, the institution has focused on making its education abroad programs as affordable as possible. Several years ago, the WVU Board of Governors approved a tuition waiver for faculty-led programs. “Instead of charging the standard university and college tuition fees, we only charge $50 per credit hour,” says Vanessa Yerkovich, director of education abroad.

She adds that for out-of-state students, participating in a faculty-led program can often be more affordable than taking a summer course on campus. The ASPIRE Office, which helps WVU students apply for fellowships and graduate school, also works with Pell-eligible students to apply for Gilman Scholarships. Since 2004 when the Gilman program launched, 63 WVU students have been awarded Gilman Scholarships. 

Another way in which WVU has strived to make education abroad a reality for students is by providing its own scholarships. The John Chambers College of Business and Economics offers dedicated scholarships from a donor to support students who study in Brazil, China, India, or the United Arab Emirates. According to professor Li Wang, those scholarships are specifically targeted at non-European destinations. “We want to make sure students really expand their vision and get to know these emerging markets,” she says. 

Wang designed a faculty-led program to China that includes visits to both Chinese businesses and U.S. companies operating in China. Kristin Moro, who graduated in 2018 with a degree in business administration and information systems management, caught the study abroad bug after traveling with Wang to China. Her second study abroad program to India helped solidify her desire to work in the technology industry. “The first city we went to was Bangalore, …also known as the Silicon Valley of India,” Moro says. “India is a technology hub, and it was so interesting to me as someone interested in tech to see how other parts of the world conduct the same types of business.”

Beyond the financial factor, WVU’s study abroad team and faculty members work to help dispel some of the assumptions and cultural barriers discouraging students from going abroad. Professor Lisa Di Bartolomeo says that for many Appalachian students, it can be a huge leap just to attend WVU. “People throughout the state of West Virginia see Morgantown as the big city,” she says. “If you come from a place where your high school graduated 200 people, just coming here is a huge, scary step.”

To help mitigate students’ apprehension over the unknown, WVU’s orientation places focus on the transition of place and emphasizes the importance of diverse environments. Additionally, the Global Living-Learning Community (LLC) provides the setting for domestic and international students to interact and connect over lived experiences. Open to all students who are interested in learning about other cultures, the Global LLC can often spark a desire to go abroad. 

Elevating Intercultural Knowledge with Global Mountaineers

WVU also recently established Global Mountaineers, a curricular certificate that encourages students to take advantage of global opportunities on campus and abroad. Di Bartolomeo, who coordinates the certificate, began by garnering the support of deans and other stakeholders across campus. Students complete an introductory and capstone global competence course, take approved core courses, meet a language requirement, and study abroad or do an international internship.

The goal of the certificate program is to add value without increasing time to degree. “I was really careful to include courses that either count for the general education or that will count toward majors where students are likely to find an interest,” Di Bartolomeo says. The certificate was launched in fall 2018, and graduate Courtney Watson was the first WVU student to earn it. “It feels very rewarding to be the first person to graduate with a Global Mountaineer Certificate because WVU is such a big school with a rich history and a lot of students, and because in today’s world, global awareness is a critical skill to have,” she says. 

Di Bartolomeo approached Watson about earning the certificate because she had already met most of the requirements as a Russian minor and three-time study abroad student. “We both agreed that it would strengthen [my] global education because it would combine my education abroad experiences, my Russian language skills, and my research skills into a nice certification, which helped when I was applying to jobs,” Watson says. 

Providing a Productive Environment for International Students

Along with expanding and promoting its internationalization portfolio, WVU has recharged its international student recruitment strategy over the last decade to offset declining enrollment from in-state students, diversify its student body, and promote cross-cultural understanding. In particular, the institution has been able to leverage its expertise in areas such as petroleum and natural gas engineering to attract students from around the world. West Virginia University offers one of only four ABET-accredited programs encompassing both petroleum and natural gas engineering in the country. 

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WVU’s international student recruitment efforts have seen an increase in enrollment from around 1,200 students in 2007–08 to approximately 2,300 in 2017–18. The top sending countries are Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, China, India, and Oman. 

Located within the Office of Global Affairs, International Students & Scholars Services (ISSS) offers support to all international students on campus. In January 2017, WVU created its Office of Sponsored Students to provide extra support to its population of sponsored students, who make up more than 70 percent of all international undergraduates and almost half of all graduate students. “We started it because we realized that sponsors and their students have unique needs that other international students don’t have,” says Cindy Teets, director of sponsored student services. 

Farhan Ahmed, an Indian student who graduated in 2019 with a degree in sport and exercise psychology, appreciates the level of service he received from ISSS and OGA during his time at WVU. “My friends at bigger universities talk about how many international students there are, but there’s not really events going on,” he says. “But here, the environment is so inclusive and so open.”

Extending and Internationalizing Health Sciences

Another draw for international students applying to WVU has been its extensive health sciences programming and specialized training. The university Health Sciences Center runs the state’s largest health system, providing increased access to health care in a largely rural region of the country. The Health Sciences Center runs five schools: dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and public health. 

Operating within the Health Sciences Center, the Global Engagement Office (GEO) coordinates all international engagement related to health sciences. “We live in one very small world today in respect to health issues,” says professor Chris Martin, who directs the GEO. “Our students these days have a far more contextual understanding of global health than their predecessors did.”

WVU’s health sciences programs provide training to medical and dental students from abroad. Building on the institution’s broader engagement in the Middle East, the Health Sciences Center hosts up to eight Kuwaiti students per year who complete their undergraduate degrees at WVU and then apply to WVU’s medical or dental schools. “They can be here for up to a decade. It’s a nice model because it gives them a lot of time to adjust to different educational systems. By the time they hit medical or dental school, they’re prepared,” Martin says. 

Zeinab Atiah is a third-year student at the School of Dentistry who started at WVU as an undergraduate after receiving a scholarship from the Kuwaiti Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE). “West Virginia University was one of the accredited universities that the MOHE accepts…[and] the best clinical experience that I would possibly get was in the USA,” she says. “Faculty members are always available for us and taught us how to be professional with our patients and build up the skills necessary to become a dentist.”

WVU also trains 19 Saudi Arabian residents and fellows in various graduate medical programs. The residents graduate from medical school in Saudi Arabia and then do specialized training in fields such as internal medicine, pathology, psychiatry, and robotic cardiovascular surgery. According to Martin, WVU’s Health Sciences Center has designed its programs for international professionals to fill unused training capacity. “We’re not displacing our usual pool of applicants. For example, psychiatry has accreditation to take seven residents per year. But we only have funding for six, so that the seventh slot is available to those sponsored students,” Martin says. 

As is the case for the larger institution, taking part in international networks and leveraging partnerships has been central to the Health Science Center’s internationalization strategy. “We’re a small university in terms of financial resources. We don’t have endowments, we don’t have Fogarty [global health] grants that a lot of other large universities do. So we’ve tried to work with national networks to get that coordination,” Martin says.

The institution participates in the Association of American Medical Colleges Visiting Student Learning Opportunities program at global and domestic sites, which allows medical students to take electives while trying to get into residency programs. In addition to sending students abroad through the program, WVU is the second most active site in the United States for hosting international students. 

Through that network, WVU sent a group of neurologists to Guatemala to provide training to health care workers including nurses, social workers, and case managers in the early diagnosis of disorders such as depression, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. Those frontline health care workers can then find additional support from WVU physicians through telemedicine, which uses technology to diagnose and treat patients remotely.

Allie Karshenas, associate vice president of clinical operations and institutional advancement, says that the engagement of health sciences abroad is beneficial not only to the partners abroad, but also the home state. “By working with these small countries that are impoverished and under-resourced, we are able to internalize those values for our learning,” he says. “Most of what we learn can come back in the form of improving our own processes, access to health care, and access to technology in our own state.”
 

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As one of the oldest public universities in the United States, Miami University welcomed its first students in 1824. Today, the institution brings a global outlook to its three campuses in southwestern Ohio through its curricular requirements, robust faculty-led programs, study abroad center in Luxembourg, and comprehensive support for international students and scholars.

In October 2018, more than 900 alumni, faculty, staff, and friends of Miami University gathered in the Château de Differdange, a fifteenth-century castle located in a village just 20 minutes from Luxembourg City. The event commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Miami University John E. Dolibois European Center (MUDEC), which has served as a study abroad site for Miami students since 1968. 

The center was founded by alumnus John E. Dolibois, who was born in Luxembourg, immigrated to the United States, and enrolled as a student at Miami University in 1938. Shortly after graduation, Dolibois was drafted to serve in the U.S. Army during World War II. He interrogated Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg trials and later served as a U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. In 1947, he became Miami University’s first full-time alumni secretary. Dolibois took on several more roles at Miami before he was named vice president for university relations in 1981. Throughout his life, Dolibois continued to work to strengthen ties between Miami University and countries such as Luxembourg.

At the 50th Jubilee Celebration, Miami University President Gregory P. Crawford bestowed an honorary degree upon the Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg Prince Guillaume, whose father and grandfather had also received the same honor. 
“We have had tremendous support from Differdange and Luxembourg,” says Phyllis Callahan, who retired in July 2019 after serving almost 5 years as provost. “We also have a broad base of extraordinarily devoted alumni who spent time there over the years. It gives us a foothold in a part of the world where there are opportunities for our students to learn.”

The establishment of MUDEC, along with more than 140 faculty-led programs to countries all over the world, has helped Miami University make its mark in the field of international education. Miami’s undergraduate study abroad programs rank among the top five in the nation among public doctoral universities. 

It is a distinction that the institution has held for several years, according to the Institute of International Education’s 2018 Open Doors report. The university also hosts more than 3,000 international students every year, and it offers a myriad of curricular and cocurricular opportunities for faculty, students, and staff to engage with the world. 

“The international efforts here are not a single domain of one college or one unit or one department,” says Crawford. “It’s all throughout our culture here at Miami, which is very exciting.”

Nurturing a Culture of Internationalization

At the helm of Miami’s study abroad and international education programs is the Global Initiatives division, directed by Cheryl Young, who serves as assistant provost and senior international officer. While Miami University has a long tradition of international engagement, Global Initiatives is relatively new. The division, housed at Miami’s main campus in Oxford, Ohio, was created in 2013 as part of a strategic reorganization of globally focused academic support units. Then-provost Conrado “Bobby” Gempesaw wanted to centralize the university’s international activities, bringing them together under the Global Initiatives umbrella. The division now oversees study abroad, international student and scholar services, continuing education, the Confucius Institute, and the Center for American and World Cultures (CAWC). 

“Provost Gempesaw asked me to develop a plan for comprehensive internationalization at Miami University,” Young says. “We brought all of these units together with the plan to make sure that we infuse intercultural and global dimensions throughout the university.”

An essential component of Miami’s internationalization efforts is the Global Miami Plan (GMP) for Liberal Education, which outlines a six-credit global perspectives requirement and a three-credit intercultural perspectives requirement that serve as part of the university’s general education courses. Students can take one of more than 80 approved globally focused courses on campus or participate in education abroad. 

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Many students also use study abroad to fulfill their capstone or thematic sequence requirements in the GMP. 

“It is designed to help students understand and creatively transform human culture and society by giving the students the tools to ask questions, examine assumptions, exchange views with others, and become better global citizens,” according to the university website. 

Building on the GMP, Miami recently launched a Global Readiness Certificate that has both academic and cocurricular requirements. Coordinated by the CAWC, the first cohort will be piloted in fall 2019 in the College of Education, Health and Society. Approximately 12 to 15 students will go through the orientation, attend globally focused or multicultural on-campus activities, participate in a community engagement or servicelearning project, complete six credits of off-campus study, and take specific approved courses.

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“A big piece of it is that we don’t want students to just check the boxes. They actually have to reflect on what they’re doing and engage with global opportunities in multiple ways,” says program coordinator Alicia Castillo Shrestha. 

Advancing a Global Vision Through Study Abroad

More than half of all Miami students spend time off campus through study abroad or study away in the United States by the time they graduate. In both the 2016–17 and 2017–18 academic years, over 2,000 students went abroad. The institution aims to have at least 60 percent of its students study off campus by 2020. The vast majority of students who study abroad participate in one of Miami’s short-term faculty-led programs, which have grown exponentially since the introduction of a winter term in 2014. Most of the university’s faculty-led programs count toward the Global Miami Plan’s global perspectives requirements. 

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Interactive media studies major Brian Velasquez completed a faculty-led program at the University of Calabria in Italy. In addition to a class taught by a Miami faculty member, he took a coding class focused on knowledge representation that was taught by a faculty member from the local university. “I thought that was pretty cool to get a professor with a different teaching style,” Velasquez says. “The coursework was a lot different. Rather than having class two or three times per week, we had class every day,” he adds. “It was an eye-opener to see a different way that people live.”

Velasquez studied abroad immediately after his freshman year, which he says had a huge impact on his personal growth and understanding of different backgrounds. “I definitely look back and appreciate the people that I met because of how far I’ve come socially and professionally in the classroom,” Velasquez says. 

Bolstering Miami University’s Profile in Europe

Approximately 10 percent of all Miami study abroad students travel to MUDEC, which can host up to 120 students per semester and another 40 in the summer. Students stay with host families in the local community and participate in a study tour that takes them to other parts of Europe. 

The majority of courses taught at MUDEC meet the Global Miami Plan’s general education requirements and have a European focus. Each year, two Miami faculty members travel to MUDEC for one semester, and four others teach an eight-week “sprint course,” which entails an accelerated class format and a brief study tour. All other courses are taught by local European adjunct faculty.

While most Miami students studying in Luxembourg take general education courses, some schools and departments have used the opportunity to develop specialized programs for their majors. Miami’s Farmer School of Business, for instance, offers the FSB LUX Plus, a summer business program based at the Luxembourg center that also takes students to the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Italy. Additionally, cohorts of Miami architecture students get the chance to travel to MUDEC where they can take the general education classes offered to all students and then major-specific architecture classes. 

Deepening Community Relations

Miami University’s long-standing engagement in Luxembourg has allowed the institution to develop deep ties with Differdange that go beyond MUDEC. In 2017, Oxford and Differdange signed a sister cities agreement, which has contributed to internationalization on campus and in the surrounding communities. For example, local grocery stores in Oxford stock Bofferding, the leading beer in Luxembourg. The brewery’s chief executive officer Georges Lentz is a Miami University alumnus. 

Over in Luxembourg, École Internationale de Differdange et Esch-Sur-Alzette (EIDE), a local public school that offers curriculum in English, has served as a student teaching site for Miami University teacher candidates for the last 4 years. The majority of students enrolled at EIDE are English language learners (ELLs). “This creates a perfect site for placement of Miami’s teacher education candidates who can improve their ELL teaching skills while also getting an authentic international study abroad experience,” says education professor James Shiveley, who also oversees the MUDEC Curriculum Committee. 

Under Shiveley’s supervision, nine teacher education and special education undergraduates from Miami University planned and ran two weeklong day camps for ELL elementary and middle school students on site in Luxembourg in July 2019. The Miami students, who enrolled in a three-credit course, received free housing from MUDEC. Financial aid for the Miami students was provided by the College of Education Partnership fund and MUDEC, with additional financial support coming from the Luxembourg Ministry of Education and the city of Differdange. 

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Private donations from alumni who studied at MUDEC have also provided scholarships for students from Luxembourg to study in Oxford. Claudia Zaunz, a journalism and English literature double major from Luxembourg, is one of the current recipients. She says she didn’t realize how important Luxembourg’s close connection with Miami University would be until she was on campus. “When I arrived at Miami during orientation, the campus was nearly empty,” she says. “I walked into the Armstrong Student Center and saw the sign: Lux Café. I couldn’t believe my eyes! The windows feature the text of ‘Ons Hémecht,’ the national anthem, and there are pictures on the wall of Luxembourg City…. It made it so much easier to make Miami [my] home away from home! Lux Café is my favorite spot to study for exams.”

Welcoming Students From Around the World

Zaunz is one of approximately 3,000 international students who are currently pursuing their undergraduate education at Miami University. For the last several years, the institution’s investment of time and resources in international undergraduate student recruitment has paid off, growing enrollment numbers from fewer than 500 students in 2009 to over 3,000 in 2018, an increase of more than 500 percent. 

Undergraduate international recruitment is housed in the Office of Admissions, which has four dedicated international recruiters. There were fewer than 100 international undergraduates on campus when Aaron Bixler, senior associate director for international enrollment, started at Miami in 2003. Today, 85 percent of Miami’s 3,000 international students are Chinese. A significant number of students also come from India, Vietnam, South Korea, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. 

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Bixler says that part of Miami’s early success with recruitment in China was because the school quickly expanded to secondary markets outside of Beijing and Shanghai and hired a full-time recruiter based in China. “Having someone there on the ground freed us up a bit to try to explore new markets,” Bixler says. 

Combining Academic and Linguistic Support

To further expand the recruitment pipeline, Miami University established a bridge program in 2011 for international students who are academically qualified but need some extra language support. The American Culture & English (ACE) program, housed at Miami’s main campus in Oxford, offers students with a Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) score between 65 and 79 conditional admission. Students in the bridge program take courses in speaking and listening, reading and writing, and social science, as well as an elective that counts toward one of their general education requirements. 

According to director Carol Olausen, the program is built around an intensive advising model that helps students to develop skills for academic success. Xiaoyi Huang, an early childhood education major, shares her experience: “I love the ACE program because it’s not only a smooth transition from China, but it [also] kind of blew my mind because of how English textbooks and daily life conversations are so different.”

Students are also required to participate in a minimum of eight extracurricular events during the semester. “It helps them become comfortable with campus resources,” Olausen explains. Zhuoran Bao, a Chinese student who started in the ACE program, notes, “I had more time to get involved on campus, like volunteering or joining organizations like dance club.” She adds that she met U.S. students through the program, which was important to her as a media and culture major. 

Students who first complete the ACE program have been found to achieve better outcomes than their international peers who did not start in the program. They have a retention rate of 73 percent compared with 68 percent for international students as a whole, according to Olausen. 

The success of the ACE model led to the development of tailored programming for all international students, many of whom struggle with speaking English and listening despite potentially having high TOEFL scores. “Because TOEFL scores often show you more of passive skills rather than productive skills, we identify students through a speaking test administered to all incoming international students,” Olausen says. Students who struggle with speaking and comprehension are automatically placed in a transition course to further develop those skills.

In addition to the ACE program, Miami University has an English Language Center at its Middletown campus, located about 20 miles from Oxford. The center serves approximately 300 students per year, including during the summer. Many students who complete the intensive English program later enroll at Miami as degree-seeking students. The English Language Center also offers a summer program for around 75 English language learners enrolled at local high schools. 

Rewriting the Rules of Language Learning

In 2018, Miami launched the English Language Learner Writing Center, which is coordinated by Larysa Bobrova. She hired 10 consultants who collaborate with multilingual writers and are trained in second language acquisition theories. The idea is not to offer proofreading or editing services, but to help non-native English speakers become more aware of their own writing process. “We discuss strategies that our consultants can use to help students to correct their own errors,” Bobrova says. 

Bobrova also offers training for faculty members in how to design and give feedback on assignments for English language learners. Moreover, education students taking courses in ELL instruction have been able to observe writing consultations at the center to gain skills and insights they can apply to their future careers as educators. 

Like Miami’s overall approach to internationalization, the mission of the multilingual writing center is to be inclusive and welcoming to all students. “Writing persuasively in a language does not imply being a native speaker,” Bobrova says. “This is something that both our students and our faculty need to know in order to make their pedagogy inclusive and to celebrate the diversity of language and cultures.”

While Harrison Bontrager had certain goals in mind as he traveled to Sydney, Australia, as part of a study abroad program at Kirkwood Community College, he had no idea it would lead to an international career in architecture and design. The study abroad program, led by Kirkwood professor Jillissa Moorman, took students on a two-week tour of architecture and design firms across Australia. 

During the program development stage, Bontrager contacted Moorman and asked if she could include a visit to Alexander & CO., Bontrager’s favorite architecture firm, on the itinerary. This outing had significant outcomes for Bontrager. “After touring their space and getting to chat with their principal, I was offered an internship, which has turned into a position as a designer,” he explains.

Bontrager returned to Iowa to finish one more semester at Kirkwood and then completed his associate’s degree by working with Moorman remotely. “I’m not going to say he can’t continue because he’s around the world,” says Moorman, who coordinates Kirkwood’s interior design program. 

It is the passion and support of faculty members like Moorman that have helped Kirkwood earn its reputation for study abroad programming for community college students. Each year, Kirkwood offers approximately 20 faculty-led programs across multiple disciplines. The Institute of International Education ranks the college fifth nationally in the number of community college students it sends abroad.

Offering a Central Hub for Global Experiences

Kirkwood’s study abroad programs are run through its International Programs (IP) Department, located on the college’s main campus in Cedar Rapids. The department also manages international enrollment management, international student services, English language acquisition, international partnerships, international grants and projects, and faculty and staff development. IP offers a centralized office for global engagement and is intentionally situated within academic affairs to facilitate interaction with all areas of the college. The department’s mission is to have “every faculty, staff, and student at Kirkwood engage in an intercultural experience."

Dawn Wood, dean of international programs, says that this mission is particularly important for Kirkwood as a community college because the vast majority of students stay in eastern Iowa after graduation. Thus, the college takes a broad, long-term outlook on its internationalization efforts. “These are people who are going to live in our community and give us the advantage we need to be globally competitive,” she says. 

When President Lori Sundberg joined Kirkwood in 2018, one of the first things she noticed was how internationalized the college was compared with her previous institutions. “It really is pervasive across the campus, from individual courses to opportunities for students and faculty outside of the classroom,” she says. 

John Henik, associate vice president for academic affairs, says that the college has been engaged internationally since he started at Kirkwood more than 30 years ago. Kirkwood was the fiscal agent and host for Community Colleges for International Development— an association made up of community, technical, and vocational institutions dedicated to creating globally engaged learning environments—from the late 1980s until 2013 and remains a member of the organization’s board. 

To support Kirkwood’s global efforts, the International Programs Department has always had its own budget allocated out of the college’s general fund. Dedicated funding for international activities is essential because new programs at community colleges are often seen as taking away scarce resources, according to Henik. While some specific projects are grant funded, the majority of the department’s budget comes from general funds. 

“There is a commitment to international programs, just like another department like allied health or business,” he says. “That is a really important move for the sustainability of the department.”

Enhancing Professional Development with the Global Service Award

Another aspect of Kirkwood’s internationalization strategy has been to engage stakeholders throughout the institution. Kirkwood has created professional development opportunities for staff, faculty, and administrators through the Global Service Award (GSA), which provides funding for staff to join students on international service-learning trips. The GSA was created in 2012 after former college president Mick Starcevich participated in a service-learning program to Guatemala with dental hygiene professor Lisa Hebl. Starcevich was so moved by the experience that the two sat down at dinner one night and sketched out on a napkin what the GSA might entail. “He didn’t expect [that the experience] was going to impact him as much as it did, and he wanted to make it possible for more people on campus to do it,” Hebl says. 

Full-time faculty and staff who are employed at Kirkwood for at least 3 years are eligible to apply for the award, which is competitive and provides full funding for the trip. While abroad, they participate alongside the students and support the lead faculty. Upon return to campus, the awardees complete an assessment, take part in events where they share their experience with colleagues, and develop projects to integrate what they learned into the classroom or their daily work.

Wood says it is important to give staff a chance to travel because they then become champions for education abroad. “Our students talk more to the people who are sitting at the front—that’s our office assistant, our admissions team, our counselors,” she says.

Five to six faculty and staff receive the GSA each year. Since the program was launched, more than 40 Kirkwood faculty and staff have engaged in service-learning programs in 10 different countries. 

International programs office coordinator Maria Moore traveled to Lima, Peru, as a GSA recipient where she and the students volunteered at an elder care facility and at a school. Moore says the experience gave her a new perspective on her work for the International Programs Department. “I really learned the value of students going abroad, because I think too many people get too entrenched in their own culture and they don’t want to venture out to see what else is out there in the world,” she says.

Making Study Abroad Accessible

Kirkwood’s enrollment is made up of many nontraditional students: older students returning to college, first-generation students, part-time students, low-income students, technical students, rural students, and students from underrepresented backgrounds. Approximately 34 percent of its students were Pell-eligible in the 2017–18 academic year. For many of these populations, education abroad poses particular challenges, but the International Programs Department does everything it can to make education abroad a possibility for anyone who wants to take advantage of it. In 2017–18, Kirkwood sent 151 students overseas out of a total full-time undergraduate population of approximately 15,000.

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By developing its own study abroad programs, the college is able to keep the costs down. All program fees, including the flight, are built into the cost of the program. “When all of us are designing these study abroad programs, it’s about quality, but also looking at cost-effective measures to make sure that students can afford it,” says study abroad adviser Ken Nesbett. “Even when faculty are proposing programs, we have the mindset of, ‘How will this be accessible for students without sacrificing quality?’”

Kirkwood works to break down some of the financial barriers by offering more than 90 percent of its study abroad participants $1,000 to $2,000 each as part of its Global Advantage Scholarships for faculty-led programs, totaling more than $150,000 in funding. Kirkwood is also a top producer of Gilman Awards, which are available to Pell-eligible students, among associate’s colleges. Six Kirkwood students received Gilman Awards in 2017–18.

Kayla Acosta, an early childhood education major, was one of Kirkwood’s recent Gilman awardees and a recipient of the Global Advantage Scholarship. She was able to study abroad in Australia and participate in a service-learning program to Cambodia. “There’s no way financially I’d be able to ever study abroad without a scholarship. It’s just not doable with working and being able to just up and leave everything,” she says.

In Australia, Acosta toured early childhood education centers and learned how they incorporate indoor and outdoor play into the curriculum. “I was able to bring a lot of that back here. I already work at a preschool currently, so I did a lot of training with my staff on how to better incorporate play,” she says.

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Collaborating Through the Global Education Network

For both of her education abroad programs, Acosta joined other students from Australia, Canada, and Singapore who attend institutions that are part of the Global Education Network (GEN), a consortium of four schools that Kirkwood has been a part of since 2001. Acosta and her peers had the chance to interact through established channels prior to departure, allowing for some relationship building among the participants. “We had met prior through Zoom, and when we got off the plane we saw giant groups of us that all looked lost,” she explains. Students from across the GEN consortium have the opportunity to not only learn from their host community, but each other as well.

GEN is a partnership between Kirkwood and the Box Hill Institute in Australia, Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Canada, and Institute of Technical Education (ITE) in Singapore. GEN partners share similarities in their vocational and technical curricula, such as auto technology, welding, graphic design, veterinary technician, and early childhood education. The collaboration of these four institutions has resulted in hundreds of student, faculty, and staff exchanges; virtual exchanges; global learning programs focused on diverse curriculum areas; and joint faculty and staff professional development. 

Henik acts as the representative for the GEN consortium at the World Federation of Colleges and Polytechnics, an international network of colleges delivering workforce education. He says that while each institution brings its own strengths to GEN, they collaborate on the curriculum and plan joint servicelearning programs. “One of the parts of our strategic plan is that we’re sharing best practices and learning from each other,” Wood says. Kirkwood has, for example, developed medical simulation labs modeled after those at ITE.

Together, the four institutions contribute to the network’s operating budget, develop a strategic plan, and determine and assess key performance indicators. Every other year, one partner institution hosts a planning conference that includes the campus presidents. Kirkwood hosted the planning conference in June 2019. 

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Each institution hosts students and faculty from the other partners every year. Kirkwood alumnus Travis Riggan and other students from GEN took a project management course focused on the Jones County Fair, an annual event in Iowa that showcases local agricultural products and livestock. Students worked in multicultural teams and presented their projects to the fair board at the end of the class. 

Riggan says it was a unique experience to be able to take the visiting students to a county fair: “We got to show international students from Canada, Australia, and Singapore our culture. They’ve never been to a fair where people bash demo cars, showcase cows, and [have] fried food galore.” 

Internationalizing Career and Technical Education

Participation in the Global Education Network has helped Kirkwood internationalize its career and technical disciplines through its various student exchanges and other collaborations. At Kirkwood, around 50 percent of students are studying with the intent to transfer to a four-year institution. The remaining half complete a one- or two-year degree before entering the local workforce.

To meet students’ needs, Kirkwood has developed faculty-led programs in fields such as agriculture, construction management, and culinary arts. The architectural technology program takes students to Germany to learn about green building practices, and nursing and allied health students have participated in service programs in Belize, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. Kirkwood’s culinary arts program runs a three-week course at Florence University of the Arts in Italy that allows students to take lab courses or intern at a restaurant. 

Students enrolled in Kirkwood’s agricultural sciences program get the chance to visit Universidade Federal de Lavras (UFLA) in Lavras, Brazil, over spring break. Professor Scott Ermer says that the program balances between academic and cultural activities. “The majority of the students that we have taken have never been outside the country before,” he says. “To immerse them in another, non-English-speaking culture is a game changer for them. You can just see the growth in 12 days.”

The program explores issues related to small-scale agriculture and encourages students to compare and contrast farming practices between Iowa and Brazil. “We spend a day on coffee production, so we drive through miles and miles of coffee. Just like you drive through miles and miles of corn here in Iowa. So, coffee is our corn. Our students learn to look at that as a cash commodity and gain a different perspective when they’re drinking that cup of coffee,” Ermer says. 

Justin Shields, who graduated from Kirkwood in May 2019, says Brazil was the first place he traveled to outside of the United States. The experience was so eyeopening that he plans to study abroad again after he transfers to Iowa State University in fall 2019. 
“Brazil has developed into an agriculture stronghold, and they’re one of our biggest competitors from the global trading standpoint,” Shields says. “It was just incredible to see the mountainous regions and the cattle. You could see them planting crops on such steep slopes that I never imagined was even possible.” 

While the group was in Lavras, students from UFLA served as the tour guides. “When we were getting ready to leave Lavras to head to Rio, there were people who were almost in tears because we were leaving such good friends. And it was just incredible to me that you could build a relationship that strong that quickly,” Shields says.

Diversifying the Campus Through International Student Recruitment

In addition to its efforts to send students abroad, Kirkwood has focused on welcoming international students to its campuses. From 2005 to 2015, Kirkwood’s international student enrollment increased from 174 to 399. Since then, Kirkwood has experienced a decline in international enrollment, forcing a reexamination of its enrollment strategies. Kirkwood’s recruitment efforts now target partnerships in Brazil, South Africa, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian countries. 

To diversify its international student population, the college has also concentrated on recruiting more sponsored students from programs such as the Community College Initiative Program, the Thomas Jefferson Scholarship Program, the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission, and Science Without Borders. 

Still, one of the benefits of having a relatively small international student population is that Kirkwood has been able to personalize the support it provides each student. “I came from an institution where we had 4,000 international students,” says international student adviser Shannon Ingleby. “I couldn’t tell you a single name of any student, compared to Kirkwood where I know all the students. I get to interact with them all the time and spend a ton of time with them.”

Many international students at Kirkwood are active members of the campus community. Mathlida Mola came to the United States from Kenya in 2016 to pursue her associate’s degree in accounting. She was selected as the commencement speaker for the 2019 graduating class because of her work on the international student leadership team, which helps with orientation and organizes activities for international students. 

“I was extremely happy to represent my international student family as the commencement speaker,” Mola says. “It was an honor to share about my experience at Kirkwood as an international student.”

The English Language Acquisition (ELA) Department has provided an important service to the Cedar Rapids area over the years. More than 600 students are involved in the intensive English course sequence targeted at English language learners. While some students are on F-1 visas, the majority are immigrants and refugees who live in Cedar Rapids and the surrounding communities. “We have a five-level English course sequence. They are all courses that prepare students for college-level coursework or whatever certificate coursework they want to take at Kirkwood,” says instructor Betsy Baertlein. “All of our students have some sort of academic goal when they come to us.”

Kirkwood has also been able to leverage its distance learning technology to teach ELA courses to high school students in Brazil by using the same online platform it uses to offer dual enrollment classes to Iowa high school students. “There’s no difference between us communicating between here and Chicago or here and Brazil,” says Todd Prusha, executive dean of distance learning. “It’s been a great partnership.”

Kirkwood ELA instructors have been offering online English courses to Brazilian high school students for the last 7 years. In the course of the partnership, an ELA instructor did a site visit in Brazil and trained local community members on how to administer an oral proficiency exam. Kirkwood instructors have also been able to travel with agriculture students to Brazil over spring break and meet their online students in person. 

Renewing the Commitment to Comprehensive Internationalization

Kirkwood is currently in the process of constructing a new $60 million student center. “The college really wanted us front and center in our new student center because of its focus on equity, diversity, and inclusion,” Wood says. “We want all groups to feel welcomed and have a space to interact and engage.”

Once the building is completed in 2020, the International Programs Department will occupy a prominent location in the new space, along with other student resource centers. The goal is to better integrate international students and other groups into the larger campus community.

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From street signs pointing the way to its study abroad centers to parking signs in 11 languages, internationalization at Dickinson College is evident from the moment one steps on campus in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. With 60 percent of students studying abroad and 14 percent of its population made up of international students, the private liberal arts college is the first two-time winner of the Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization.

When Sagun Sharma began her studies as an international student at Dickinson College, she had no idea she would end up working as a writing tutor for international fellows from the nearby U.S. Army War College. At first, Sharma was worried she wasn’t up to the task, especially since many of the fellows’ papers focused on international relations. “The topics of their essays are usually very different from what we are familiar with,” she explains. “It’s very interesting to learn through their essays, but they’re also very receptive to our feedback.” Sharma’s efforts were acknowledged at the end of the year when the War College presented her with a certificate of appreciation.

Serving Students Across Languages

Dickinson’s Norman M. Eberly Multilingual Writing Center is the only writing center in the United States that offers tutoring services in English and the 11 modern languages taught at the college. The center has a partnership with the War College to offer writing tutoring to the 80 senior military officers from around the world who participate in a yearlong fellowship in Carlisle.

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In addition to tutoring international fellows, Sharma often works with native English speakers. As an international student from Nepal, English isn’t Sharma’s first language, which caused her some apprehension at the beginning. “When I got offered the position, I was nervous because I wasn’t sure how I could help American students who have been doing this in their language for such a long time,” she says. “But my job is more of helping students to think differently about writing. The approach we take is more of focusing on the writing process.”

According to Noreen Lape, director of the writing program and associate provost of academic affairs, the writing center tries to flout what she calls “native speaker privilege.” “We do have native speakers tutoring in the language, but right now we have about seven Vietnamese students and other international students tutoring English writing,” Lape says. “And then we have U.S. domestic students tutoring in the various foreign languages. Some may be heritage speakers of that language, but others went and studied abroad and increased their proficiency.”

Sharma is one of more than 300 Dickinson undergraduates who come from abroad, making up 14 percent of the degree-seeking 2,300 students on campus. The writing center isn’t the only place on the Dickinson campus where international and domestic students come together. International students serve as orientation leaders, participate in a mentoring program for first-year students, are represented on the President’s Commission on Inclusivity, and run an international student advisory board.

Sharma says she appreciates Dickinson’s efforts to integrate international students into the campus community while at the same time offering specific support. “One of the challenges that comes with being an international student is finding that balance of not standing out too much, but also finding recognition that I have different needs because I am an international student,” she notes.

Increasing Diversity On Campus

Dickinson has a long history of international education, dating back to its creation in 1783. The college’s founder Benjamin Rush, a physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, earned his medical degree abroad at the University of Edinburgh. That deep-rooted appreciation for international exchange is found throughout Dickinson. The college created its first study abroad center in Bologna, Italy, in 1965 and further grew its international profile with support from a series of international education grants in the 1980s.

When Dickinson was named one of the winners of the inaugural Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization in 2003, the institution had already sent a significant number of students abroad and boasted a broad array of courses and majors with an international focus. But at the time, there were only a few dozen international students on campus. Since then, the college has invested significant resources in recruiting international students and diversifying its student population.

From 2009 to 2018, the racial and cultural diversity of the entering freshman classes has changed dramatically. International enrollment has grown from 5 percent of the first-year cohort in 2008 to 14 percent in 2018. The top six countries represented on campus are China, Vietnam, Nepal, South Korea, India, and Pakistan.

According to Provost and Dean of the College Neil Weissman, Dickinson’s current international engagement is based on a continuation of partnerships and programs that have been in place for decades. “We’ve continued to have a really deep commitment to study abroad. We’ve continued to have a high percentage of internationally oriented courses in the curriculum. We continue to hire faculty into positions and programs that are international in their scope,” says Weissman, who has been at Dickinson for 44 years and provost for 22 years. “The most noteworthy change is the increase in international students on campus. We’ve continued to internationalize the student body and try to do so in a way that…is not focused on a single country.”

Committing to Inclusion and Intercultural Competency

Margee M. Ensign, who became the college’s 29th president in July 2017, says the institution’s commitment to global education is part of the reason she was attracted to Dickinson. Prior to coming to Carlisle, Ensign spent 7 years as president of the American University of Nigeria, a legacy and direction that she has brought to Dickinson.

Given her expertise in Africa, Ensign has delivered several guest lectures for a course that took students to Rwanda for 2 weeks in May 2019. She also found private funding to sponsor four young Chibok women from Nigeria who had been kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorist group. This led to the creation of a program wherein young people whose education has been disrupted by war and natural disaster can complete high school and eventually study at Dickinson.

Ensign returned to the United States at a time when an understanding of other countries and cultures is more critical than ever, she says. “A lack of international knowledge is one of our greatest national security threats,” Ensign argues. “We’re deeply committed to deepening our intercultural competency, not just for international students, not just for students who are studying abroad, but throughout campus.”

Under Ensign’s leadership, Dickinson’s internationalization efforts have provided more structure for initiatives that promote inclusivity and intercultural competence across all aspects of the college’s operations. She created a new vice president position focused on institutional effectiveness and inclusivity. Brenda Bretz, the new vice president and chief diversity officer, co-chairs the President’s Commission on Inclusivity with Samantha Brandauer, who serves as associate provost and executive director of the Center for Global Study and Engagement (CGSE). Representatives of the Office of LGBTQ Services, Popel Shaw Center for Race and Ethnicity, and the Women’s & Gender Resource Center, as well as faculty, are also included on the commission.

Bretz says that an element of integrating global learning and inclusion into the college experience is helping students navigate all kinds of difference. “We are thinking about positionality, power, and privilege and how that relates to both our students going abroad and also international students coming here and trying to adjust to the culture of the United States,” she explains. “It’s new territory for both groups and a good opportunity for talking across issues.”

Implementing a Cross-cutting Approach to internalization

Ensign has ushered in a three-pillared approach that cuts across Dickinson’s liberal arts core: global study, sustainability, and civic engagement. In line with that approach, as executive director of the CGSE, Brandauer oversees education abroad, international student and scholar services, and global learning on campus.

Brandauer works closely with the Center for Sustain­ability Education (CSE) and the new Center for Civic Learning & Action (CCLA), which opened in January 2019 with a $900,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The three centers operate in partnership to ensure that the themes of global study, sus­tainability, and civic engagement run throughout the curriculum. As part of their general education requirements, all ­students have to take courses that center on U.S. ­diversity, global diversity, and sustainability.

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One of the ways that Dickinson has promoted cross-fertilization between global study, sustainability, and civic engagement is by having the director of each center sit on the strategic planning committee for the other two, according to CCLA founding director Gary Kirk. “We’ve already started at the margins to be really intentional about integrating civic learning outcomes into the coursework associated with our study abroad programs. I want to make sure that’s happening in every program,” he says.

That begins with support from the faculty, Kirk adds. Professors at Dickinson's study abroad sites have received training through the Valley & Ridge professional development workshops offered through the CSE. “We’ve started focusing on faculty who are going to be directing one of our study abroad programs to help them integrate sustainability into the different kinds of courses that they’re teaching,” says Neil Leary, associate provost and CSE director.

The CSE also promotes place-based education, which pushes students to connect what they are learning with where they are studying. Professor Ed Webb has a joint appointment in political science and international studies and helped establish the college’s Middle East studies program. For his courses on international politics, students keep a diary where they track their consumption of water, food, and fuel over a specific period.

“They have to write a detailed blog post reporting on what they used and how much they used and how that compares to U.S. national averages,” he says. “But then they also compare it to the countries we’re studying and Middle East and North Africa. What I’m trying to do there is connect [what they’re studying] with how we live on this campus. It makes it a little more visceral.”

Promoting Education Abroad Throughout Campus

One of the areas where Dickinson has been most successful is its student and faculty mobility. Nearly 70 percent of students who go abroad participate in a Dickinson program. The CGSE offers 17 programs in 13 countries: Argentina, Australia, Cameroon, China, Ecuador, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, and Spain, plus one in New York City.

Some countries such as England have multiple programs. In Italy, students can choose between the Italian studies and European studies programs, as well as take courses from the University of Bologna. The South American program starts with a month-long intensive language course in Ecuador and includes a semester in Argentina.

A distinguishing factor of Dickinson’s education abroad programs is the number of students who complete a semester- or yearlong program. Dickinson consistently ranks in the top five for long-term study abroad, according to the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors data. Of the students who study off campus, 67 percent spend a semester off campus; among those who go abroad, 14 percent study for an academic year in one or more locations and 2 percent combine a short-term experience with study for a semester or academic year.

Recent graduate Alden Mohacsi spent a semester at the Dickinson center in Bologna, Italy. His experience left a lasting impression even upon return. As a tour guide for the Dickinson campus in Carlisle, Mohacsi always made it a point to show prospective students the international signposts when he was leading them around campus.

Mohacsi says that while he was in Italy, his professor helped facilitate a meeting with asylum seekers from Nigeria so that he could better understand what was happening in Italy. “I don’t think I would’ve had that experience at any other school,” he says.

Dickinson’s education abroad portfolio is further bolstered by the college’s strong modern languages programs, which include Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Modern Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. All students are required to obtain at least an intermediate proficiency in a foreign language. In 2017–18, 40 percent of education abroad participants enrolled in programs that have a language prerequisite.

During the 2017–18 academic year, the CGSE team developed and launched a mandatory three-part intercultural workshop series for all students studying off campus for a semester or academic year. Using Kathryn Sorrells’s Intercultural Praxis Model as the foundation for the curriculum, these interactive workshops establish the campus community and Carlisle as prime settings for students to start practicing and fine-tuning their intercultural skill sets in preparation for living, learning, and growing in an unfamiliar country, and within an unfamiliar culture. This intentional predeparture programming has helped to expand the profile and benefits of education abroad.

Dickinson has made great strides in making sure education abroad is accessible to underrepresented students. Fifty-two percent of first-generation students, 66 percent of students of color, and 58 percent of Pell Grant recipients in the graduating class of 2018 participated in education abroad. Students pay the same comprehensive fee that they are charged on campus and are able to use their institutional aid on semester-long programs coordinated by Dickinson and by its partners. The CGSE works closely with other offices, such as the Popel Shaw Center for Race and Ethnicity, and staff overseas to make sure that underrepresented students are supported before, during, and after study abroad.

Also contributing to Dickinson’s education abroad enrollment numbers are its international students. Harry Qiu is a Russian and international studies major from China who spent a semester in Moscow, Russia. When he came to Dickinson, he wanted to learn a second foreign language and eventually chose Russian. “Because the Russian department here is pretty small, the professors are very welcoming to me because I’m from such a different background,” he says.

Qiu serves as a community adviser in the Russian House, where he lives with other Russian majors and an exchange student from Russia who comes from the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH), which hosts the Dickinson in Russia program. The connections that students build often extend far beyond the campus walls. “When we go abroad to that university, those students who previously studied here also often meet with us and are in charge of some trips and just taking us around,” Qui says.

Engaging Faculty Partnerships

Provost Weissman says that one of the keys to Dickinson’s dynamic education abroad offerings is having long-standing relationships with partners abroad. When it comes to developing programs, “there is no one size fits all except that we always work with at least one local partner university,” Brandauer says. “Many have permanent staff and our own locally hired faculty and, in some cases, we work directly with the international office at the university for student support.”

Brandauer herself is a product of Dickinson’s global education, studying abroad on programs in Cameroon and Germany and a Dickinson program to France. After Brandauer earned her undergraduate degree from Dickinson, she did an Austrian Fulbright teaching fellowship during which time she met her Austrian husband whose eventual faculty position at a college near Carlisle brought her back full circle. “I’m a Dickinson alumna, was gone for 20 years engaged in international education, and I’m now associate provost at the best college to do the work to which I have devoted my career, ” she says.

Having faculty and staff with an international perspective reinforces the college’s commitment to intercultural competency. “The core concept for us in study abroad is this hybrid notion that we want our students to have an immersive experience,” says Provost Weissman. “At the same time, we have our own staff there when we can. And being there for a long time, we can identify faculty and courses that fit our [curriculum] here.”

Roughly 40 percent of faculty have participated in the two-year resident directorship at Dickinson programs in England, Italy, and Spain, or have run a short-term faculty-led program. Faculty members can apply for the two-year positions through a competitive application process. In the next few years, the college plans to move one of the two faculty directorships from England to New Zealand.

Creative writing professor Susan Perabo was the resident director for the Norwich Humanities program at the University of East Anglia in England from 2013 to 2015. In addition to teaching, the resident directors often help students manage logistical issues such as planning cultural excursions and learning how to navigate a university that is much larger than Dickinson. “I loved that piece of it, because it allowed me to get to understand the way that the country works and to think about the kinds of things that were important for the students to do,” Perabo says.

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Perabo feels refreshed after spending 2 years in England: “I was able to bring some of that energy back here, but also just make connections with a lot of British writers that I’ve been able to take advantage of since coming back here.”

Innovating Internationalization

Innovation has been integral to internationalization at Dickinson, both on and off campus. When professor Carolina Castellanos arrived at Dickinson, Portuguese was not being taught on a regular basis. Since then, a Portuguese minor was approved in spring 2012 and the college will soon launch a Dickinson in Brazil program in partnership with study abroad provider CET Academic Programs and the University of São Paulo. “I had complete support from the get-go to build the program,” Castellanos says.

Japanese professor Alex Bates adds that the college is supportive of and even encourages new ideas: “If I come in and say that I want to do this funky summer program, but I’m not sure if it’ll work, they’ll say, ‘Okay, let’s help you make it work.’”

One of Dickinson’s most recent innovations is the launch of graduate courses on peacebuilding, established through a memorandum of understanding with the War College. Dickinson has already developed several electives for the War College’s master’s of strategic studies. According to President Ensign, Dickinson is also designing a full master’s program with Tulane University’s Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. “We’ve just launched our first course, which is [on] how social media is used to support and counter violent extremism. It’s one of the first courses in the country on the topic,” Ensign says.

From its cutting-edge graduate courses to new study abroad partners in Brazil and New Zealand, Dickinson continues to innovate while maintaining its deep commitment to comprehensive campus internationalization. “Heavy faculty involvement, long-term commitment to particular sites abroad, and the ability to innovate and change have been critical. There are also checks and balances along the way to make sure that we’re still in dialogue with our curriculum,” Brandauer says.

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