Recruitment, Enrollment, and Advising

The mission of Babson College is to educate entrepreneurial leaders who create great economic and social value—everywhere. Recognized as one of the top entrepreneurship schools in the United States, Babson draws more than 1,000 international students from around the world to its campus in Wellesley, Massachusetts, every year. Nearly 27 percent of the undergraduate students and more than 70 percent of the graduate students come from abroad, with a total student body of just over 3,000.

Internationalization has been at the heart of Babson’s mission as a private business college since entrepreneur Roger Babson founded the institution in 1919. “Roger Babson took away the lesson from World War I that the world needed to come together,” says President Kerry Healey. “The way that he thought that could best be done was through business, executed in the interest of humanity. Roger Babson’s original vision is still applicable for us almost 100 years later.”  

Spreading Entrepreneurship Education Around the World

Babson seeks to share its approach to entrepreneurship education beyond the borders of its Wellesley campus. “We want to be the preeminent institution for entrepreneurship education everywhere,” says Amir Reza, vice provost for international and multicultural education and senior international officer (SIO). “The opportunities for internationalization sit within the ‘everywhere’ context. We want to create access to our methodology, which we call entrepreneurial thought and action.” 

Heidi Neck, professor of entrepreneurship, oversees the Global Symposia for Entrepreneurship Educators (SEE) program, which is delivered twice a year on the Babson campus and available on demand internationally. “We train other educators from around the world in how Babson teaches entrepreneurship,” Neck says.

Neck also directs the Babson Collaborative for Entrepreneurship Education, an institutional membership organization under Babson’s leadership made up of 23 institutions around the world. “We’re trying to build a better entrepreneurship education ecosystem by collaborating, helping one another, sharing best practices, but also imagining future possibilities,” Neck says. “Babson is very small, but we want to bring what we do with respect to entrepreneurship education to the world.”

Babson has used technology to increase access to its entrepreneurship expertise. The college has contributed six entrepreneurship courses to edX, the platform created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University that provides online learning and massive online open courses (MOOCs). More than 100,000 people in 220 countries and territories have participated in Babson’s entrepreneurship MOOCs, according to Healey. 

Bringing Together International and Multicultural Education

The Glavin Office of Multicultural & International Education is at the heart of Babson’s internationalization efforts. It is home to international education, multicultural, service-learning, and multifaith programs. In an innovative approach to internationalization, the Glavin Office aims to foster conversations about identity, diversity, inclusion, and equity on campus. 

When Reza became SIO in 2010, he brought together international education—which includes education abroad and international student and scholar services—and multicultural education under the larger umbrella of the Glavin Office. In 2014, the office also assumed responsibility for service-learning and multifaith programs, which provided more intersectionality. 

“We have experimented with intentional strategies to bridge the gap between these areas to benefit our students’ education,” Reza says. “Each area continues to have professionals with expertise in their respective fields, and we have seen both organic and intentional programming that has helped us further the mission and goals of each area through the lens of the other.” 

Much of the Glavin Office’s programming consequently revolves around encouraging students to explore their cultural identities and how that impacts the ways in which they interact with the world. Glavin’s predeparture orientations for education abroad, for example, take an inclusive approach to the subject of identity. Students are asked to list five to 10 aspects of their identities and are guided through a set of reflection questions that ask them to explore the ways that identities like LGBTQ, gender, and race are seen in their host country and to consider how they will interact on those issues.

“What we are doing is talking about the relationship between identity and place for everybody, using several different examples,” explains Reza. “If I’m an African American student and I’m going to a predominantly white environment, what does that mean? Or if I am a Muslim and I want to practice my faith, what does Islamophobia mean for me?”

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Another example of the collaboration between the international and multicultural education teams was the development of a three-part workshop titled “Understanding Race and Racism in the U.S. for International Students.” Designed by arts and humanities professor Elizabeth Swanson, the first workshop gives students an understanding of language and terminology and the idea of race as a social construct. The second segment focuses on slavery and historical race relations in the United States, and the final workshop helps students process current events and issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement and the actions and policies of the Trump administration. 

The goal of the workshop series is to help international students gain a better perspective on current events and historical precedents that shape many of the discussions on today’s college campuses.

Salome Mosehle, a senior from South Africa, says that although her country has its own history of racism, she grew up in a predominantly black society. “I came to the United States and was told that there was a struggle that comes with being black,” she says. “It was a tough thing to grasp.”

She says the racism workshop helped her understand the new cultural context in which she found herself. “The [workshop] really helped open my eyes about what it means to be black in America,” Mosehle says. 

Recruiting International Students Through the Global Scholars Program

When Kerry Healey took office as Babson’s president in July 2013, one of the first things she did was to establish the Global Scholars program, a need-based scholarship for talented international students. She created the program because she wanted to diversify the international student population, both economically and geographically. “I thought that we were missing a great opportunity to bring some of the most talented students from around the world who aspire to be entrepreneurs to Babson,” Healey says. 

In 2014, when she offered the first 10 need-based scholarships for international students, more than 900 students applied. Since then, the college has committed more than $1 million a year to fund 10 scholarships, which cover tuition, room and board, airfare, and books, depending on the individual student’s level of need. There are currently 45 Global Scholars on the Babson campus.

A faculty mentor works with each cohort of Global Scholars, and the international student advising team designs a special orientation and plans retreats and cultural events throughout the year. 

“Having this group of scholars on campus has been transformative. We have the sense that each and every one of them are going to go back to their countries and become profound change makers,” Healey says. 

Lizaveta (Lisa) Litvinava, who earned a dual concentration in global business management and diversity and identity, is an international student from Belarus. Litvinava is among the first cohort of Global Scholars who graduated in May 2018. Her fellow Global Scholars came from Afghanistan, Brazil, Rwanda, and South Africa. 

Litvinava says that her experience as a Global Scholar has “meant everything.” “If it weren’t for [this program], I would have never been able to speak about the world in the way that I speak about it right now. I would never have been able to become the person I am right now without the experience and education that Babson gave me,” she says.

Creating a Welcoming Environment for International Students

With a third of its student body coming from abroad, Babson goes out of its way to make sure that international students such as Litvinava feel at home. Babson intentionally avoids separating international students from domestic students throughout their college experience. Many universities offer separate welcome programs for international students, but Babson holds a single orientation for all incoming students. While international students might attend specific sessions on topics such as immigration and work authorization, they are integrated with domestic students for the majority of the orientation. 

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The college has also taken specific steps to make sure that international students feel welcome in light of recent political developments. “We take our lead from students. When something happens in the world, such as the [travel] ban and attacks against DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], we reach out to students to find out what they need and what’s meaningful to them,” says Jamie Kendrioski, director of international services and multicultural education. “I don’t make any decision about how to react to a crisis or issue without talking to students first and seeing what matters to them,” adds Kendrioski. 

International students concur that Babson goes the extra mile to make sure that they feel comfortable. “From emails coming out from the president directly [to students] to teachers speaking about things in class, I think it gave us a sense of comfort and assurance that we are accepted here,” says Ashutosh Pandit, an MBA student from India.

Fostering Global Awareness Through Glavin Global Fellows

In order to bring together all of the various international opportunities available on campus, Babson launched the Glavin Global Fellows program, a cohort-based program for undergraduate students. The program includes a first-year living learning community, a certificate program, and internationally themed events throughout the year. The Glavin Office also sponsors students to take part in international and language case competitions, and it awards more than $12,000 in grants for students to conduct independent research abroad. 

According to Lorien Romito, director of education abroad and the Global Fellows program adviser, each year, approximately 250 students are Glavin Global Fellows and around 25 students graduate with the certificate. Romito also serves as the campus Fulbright adviser because students who demonstrate an early interest in international issues are prime candidates to apply for the Fulbright program.

To earn a Glavin Global Fellows certificate, students need to take two or more courses in a foreign language and three advanced classes with international content. Additionally, students need to participate in an international experience abroad or a multicultural experience in the United States. 

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Aidan Dennis, who is doing a dual concentration in global business management and social and cultural studies, first became interested in the Glavin Global Fellows program as a first-year student. He says that half of the 20 students living on his floor in the residence hall that first year were international. He describes the Glavin Global Fellows program as “a community of students who are very interested in global issues.” 

Dennis, who will graduate in 2019, has had three international experiences on three different continents. He studied abroad in Argentina and Chile, and he did a short-term elective abroad in Thailand and Laos. He also applied for and received a grant to spend a week in Amsterdam conducting interviews as part of a Glavin Global Fellows project on consumer behavior in the Netherlands. 

He says that spending time abroad helped him understand the challenges that international students at Babson face: “From the Glavin Global Fellows program, I really learned about myself through interacting with all these other people from different countries, and then going abroad myself and coming back is like stepping into their shoes.” 

Education Abroad for Global Entrepreneurs

Dennis is among the 547 Babson students who went abroad in 2016–17. In 2018, 52 percent of Babson’s graduating undergraduate class participated in a credit-bearing education abroad experience. This is an average increase of 10 percent year-over-year since 2005. 

Babson is intentional about its education abroad advising, with a particular focus on early outreach during students’ required first-year seminars. In addition to providing specialized workshops on finances for study abroad, the college awarded more than $368,000 in internal need-based education abroad grants to undergraduate students during the 2016–17 academic year. 

Babson offers a variety of programs of different lengths, ranging from short-term electives abroad to semester and academic year programs. Each year, approximately 150 undergraduate and 155 graduate students participate in faculty-led electives abroad that run during academic breaks. These courses combine classroom instruction on campus in Massachusetts with in-country lectures, company visits, and cultural excursions. Examples include a humanities course on postmodernism in the United Arab Emirates, a theater course in England, and an economics course in Argentina and Uruguay. 

Through Babson’s International Consulting Experience program, student teams work on project assignments with international corporate sponsors. The program includes predeparture sessions in the fall that are focused on consulting methodologies and intercultural competencies, with travel to the company site taking place during winter break. The 33 projects that were carried out over the past 5 years included 126 Babson students, 15 Babson faculty, and engaged partner schools and businesses in 12 countries. Participating companies during this period include Bosch in Germany, the Mariinsky Theatre in Russia, and Care&Share in India.

The college’s flagship education abroad program is a multidestination faculty-led program known as Babson - Russia, India, China: The Cornerstone of the New Global Economy (BRIC). Every fall semester, a cohort of 24 students spend a month each in St. Petersburg, Russia; Shanghai, China; and New Delhi, India. Babson faculty lead each segment of the program, offering a full courseload combined with business visits, cultural excursions, and service-learning opportunities. 

Bill Coyle, professor of accounting and law, has been taking students to Russia since the early 1990s. His relationships with partners there, along with commitment from other faculty and the Glavin Office, laid the foundation for the BRIC program, which launched in 2009. The program was created with a desire to give students a comparative framework within which to understand developing economies. 

Before departing for Russia, students attend an intensive predeparture orientation on the Babson campus that provides guidance on thinking comparatively across cultures. Students also take a two-credit intercultural communications course that spans the entire semester that allows them to reflect on their experiences in different cultural contexts. According to history professor Katherine Platt, the orientation and the communications course help students reflect on their identities as individuals and as a group. 

Notably, participation in BRIC has resulted in significant intercultural development demonstrated by pre- and post-Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) results. On average, participants’ IDI scores increase more than 20 percent. 

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Students benefit from simultaneously taking business and liberal arts classes. “The whole semester is a balance of business and liberal arts courses—entrepreneurship, management, history, and philosophy,” says Platt, who teaches in the India portion of the program. 

Coyle says the liberal arts courses provide a foundation for students to understand the three countries’ business environments. “As a business professor, I have a real appreciation for the fact that you can’t be serious about doing international business if you do not understand the liberal arts aspects of the country you are considering doing business in,” he says. “The way [Russians] do business is based on their history and politics and economics and the literature they have grown up with.”

Alumni Outreach Around the World

With 40,000 alumni in 125 countries, Babson has recently focused on finding innovative ways to build up its alumni network. In 2015, President Healey launched Babson Connect: Worldwide, a three-day alumni conference and networking platform that is held in a different region each year. The inaugural conference was held in Cartagena, Colombia, followed by Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Bangkok, Thailand; and Madrid, Spain. Approximately 400 alumni attended each conference. 

Babson has been able to get significant press coverage prior to the events, which in turn has boosted the number of student applications from that region. “We saw immediately that bringing the conference to the region [gave us a return in investment] in alumni support [that was] many times [more valuable than] the cost of the event,” Healey says. “There are benefits to enrollment, fundraising, and just general reputational benefits. We have the opportunity to rally all of our local alumni in the planning stage to make sure that we have local engagement.” 

The 2019 Babson Connect: Worldwide will return to Boston, Massachusetts, to celebrate Babson’s 100th birthday, giving its international alumni a chance to reconnect at their alma mater. “I’m proud to say we are coming home for our centennial,” Healey says. 

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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