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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A leading research university founded in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1764, Brown University is known for its open curriculum that allows students to become the architects of their own education. Through its strategic planning, myriad study abroad opportunities, and wide spectrum of international student support services, Brown continues to drive its internationalization agenda forward.

Brown University graduate Nothando Adu-Guyamfi was not the typical education abroad student. “I’m from South Africa, so I always joked that I’m already on study abroad,” she says.

Adu-Guyamfi and 10 classmates from Brown traveled to Ghana in January 2019 as part of a social sciences course, “The African Atlantic Diaspora: Race, Memory, Identity, and Belonging,” taught by professor Shontay Delalue. The course looked at the long-lasting ramifications of the transatlantic slave trade and how they impact questions of race and identity in the United States and abroad. The students visited sites such as the slave castles at Elmina and Cape Coast and tied them back to their own lived experiences. All travel expenses were covered through Brown’s Global Experiential Learning and Teaching (GELT) grant program.

Adu-Guyamfi hadn’t planned on studying abroad when she enrolled at Brown, but she couldn’t pass up the chance to take the course with Delalue, who serves as vice president for institutional equity and diversity. “What drew me to that class was my experience in coming to America as a black person and not necessarily initially understanding the social dynamics of that,” Adu-Guyamfi says.

As a member of Brown’s International Student Advisory Board, Adu-Guyamfi has had conversations with many other students about how their identities, “both those that they acknowledge and recognize and those that are put upon them when they come here,” shape their experience in the United States.

“Understanding my positionality was something that was eye-opening for me,” Adu-Guyamfi says. “The discussions we had and the framework that we were looking at definitely helped me grapple with my time here at Brown and understand what it means to be a black international student.” Adu-Guyamfi’s time abroad and participation in Delalue’s class added additional dimensions to those conversations.

Prior to her current position as chief diversity officer, Delalue served as dean and director of international student experience. Her own experience working in international education and diversity services has helped to elevate the discussion of identity and student experience both in her classroom and across the institution. “I am proud that we are really thinking about internationalization and its intersections with domestic diversity,” Delalue says.

Fostering Internationalization Through Strategic Planning

A focus on identity, inclusion, and the student experience has become a cornerstone of Brown’s global engagement. Internationalization at Brown took on new momentum in 2016 with the launch of Global Brown, a plan that guides the university’s international partnerships, research and curriculum, education abroad programming, and support for international students and scholars.

After becoming provost in 2015, Richard Locke tasked Deputy Provost for Global Engagement and Strategic Initiatives Shankar Prasad with developing an operational blueprint to help integrate a global perspective into the university’s 10-year strategic plan, Building on Distinction. The idea was that internationalization, much like diversity and inclusion, should be integrated into the institution’s strategic priorities.

To accomplish this task, Prasad first wanted to take stock of how the university might better support “Brown in the World” and “The World at Brown,” looking at outbound mobility and engagement abroad as well as the international community that exists on campus in Providence, respectively.

Prasad began by talking to stakeholders across campus to identify areas where there were gaps of support. Those conversations led to both organizational and structural changes. To streamline Brown’s global engagement, various international initiatives were centralized under the Office of Global Engagement (OGE), which reports directly to the provost. The OGE helps to coordinate activities between units such as the Office of International Programs, which oversees education abroad, and the Office of International Student & Scholar Services, which offers immigration support.

The OGE also created a new position focused on international travel safety and security that serves the entire institution. In this role, director Christine Sprovieri has developed a number of policies and procedures to help mitigate risk for student, staff, and faculty travel, and she created an emergency response plan.

In addition to providing resources and hiring more staff to support international students, Brown opened up a dedicated center for the international population. “Students don’t care who reports to whom in this university; they just want to know where to go,” Prasad explains. “So we created a one-stop shop.”

“Most of us still continue to report to different parts of the university, but we make up Global Brown,” he continues. “The idea is that the 40 people who support internationalization, whether that’s going abroad or coming here, are united by this common mission.”

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Tying Partnerships to Strategic Priorities

During the development of the internationalization blueprint, Provost Locke wanted to make sure that Brown’s approach to global partnerships supported the university’s strategic plan. “Brown’s approach to global engagement had been similar to many universities’, and focused on entering a number of MOUs with organizations all over the world,” he says. “We decided to rethink this, undertake a careful review, and continue with the ones that align with Brown’s academic strengths and priorities and have substantive activity taking place.”

Shaira Kochubaeva, associate director for global engagement, oversees all aspects of Brown’s international partnerships to advance its international efforts in the areas of research, teaching, and service. The OGE team has adopted a “less is more” approach by focusing on approximately 75 robust partnerships, the majority of which are concentrated in Brazil, China, France, India, Japan, South Korea, and Spain. Brown also aims to establish more institutional partnerships that encourage a multidisciplinary approach and involve different departments around campus.

One example is Brown’s long-standing relationship with Charles University in the Czech Republic. Starting with a faculty collaboration in Slavic linguistics, the partnership now extends to American studies, applied mathematics, classics, East Asian studies, Egyptology and Assyriology, history, Italian studies, and Slavic studies.

Brown is in the process of planning a new pan-university center for global health that will support research, education, and service in four focus areas: global health and migration/displacement, global health and gender/gender equity, current and emerging epidemics, and global aging. The key values will be to promote health and well-being for all people of all ages around the world; advance social justice, emphasizing equity, diversity, inclusion, and sustainability; and ensure transparency and accountability in all partnerships, local to global, according to Susan Cu-Uvin, director of the current Global Health Initiative. The working committee is led by Susan Short, director of the Population Studies and Training Center.

Leveraging Networks to Expand Study Abroad

One of the outcomes of Brown’s emphasis on productive partnerships is that more than 500 Brown students study outside of the United States each year, facilitated by the Office of International Programs (OIP). Brown-sponsored programs currently operate in 13 countries. The majority of participants spend at least a semester abroad, though Brown also offers short-term programs to Ireland, Italy, Russia, and Spain.

Since 2014, Brown has led the Consortium for Advanced Studies Abroad (CASA). The group is made up of 12 comprehensive research institutions, including the University of Melbourne in Australia and Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. Prior to the creation of CASA, a number of the consortium members were running separate programs in the same cities. By working together, they can better attain a “critical mass of students,” says Kendall Brostuen, OIP director.

Another benefit is being able to leverage the partnerships that CASA members have with local universities. At many of CASA’s locations, the strength of the consortium opens doors to learning opportunities beyond the classroom, including internships, community engagement, and undergraduate research.

“We’re able to take advantage of the vast network that our universities have in those locations,” Brostuen explains. “If we are able to pool our resources, it can be much more beneficial for our students, and we can think strategically when it comes to investing in these programs.”

Recent graduate Nicole Comella, who studied public health, took part in the CASA program in Havana, Cuba. “The program is run out of Casa de las Américas, which is essentially one of the most renowned cultural institutions in the city,” she says. “We have classes within the consortium with Cuban professors, and they’re pretty well-known Cuban academics. And then you also have the choice to take classes with the University of Havana.”

Every 5 years, CASA identifies a theme that transcends national boundaries to promote undergraduate research and faculty engagement. “We want to use these institutional relationships on the ground with key partner universities as a catalyst for faculty engagement,” Brostuen says. “To this end, we have opportunities, for example, for faculty and researchers from the partner university to actually carry out research that is funded by the consortium.”

Cultivating Research and Experiential Learning Abroad

During her time abroad, Comella also completed a photojournalism project on the Cuban health care system through Brown’s Global Independent Study Project (GLISP). Students work with a Brown professor to pursue an independent research project, and they receive funding for any local travel that might be required. More than 225 students have undertaken research abroad through GLISP over the last 10 years.

“GLISP encourages students who are going abroad to actually carry out research on a particular theme that they could never explore here in the United States,” Brostuen says. “The purpose of this is really to tie the international experience back to Brown.”

Makedah Hughes participated in a Brown-sponsored program to Paris where she studied comparative literature and French studies at the Sorbonne. Her GLISP project was a comparative analysis of how black identity is expressed in French literature and music. “Personally, I have always been really interested in black identity or Afro-descendants in French spaces,” Hughes says. “It was so hard to do that kind of work here at Brown because there’s just not a large population of francophone black folks here. It was great to be in that community and to make connections like that.” Hughes’s connections from the program also helped her to successfully apply for an English Teaching Assistant Fulbright to France in fall 2019.

In addition to GLISP, Brown has supported faculty and graduate student research abroad through the Global Mobility Grant since 2015. The program provides funding to faculty who seek to conduct short-term research abroad and graduate students who wish to devote a summer or semester conducting pre-dissertation research at an international institution.

A fifth-year PhD student in comparative literature, Edvidge Crucifix used the grant to travel to North Africa and her native France to do archival research. “The grant really was the turning point in my research. It completely changed what I was doing,” she says.

Global studies and reflective cultural awareness are also elements woven into Brown’s executive master’s programs (EMBA) for mid-career adult students. EMBA students study in South Africa and explore the challenge of entrepreneurship in Cape Town’s townships, while students in other programs study comparative international health care systems and learn about corporate science and technology practices in South Korea, according to Karen Sibley, dean of the School of Professional Studies.

Brown also sends students abroad through the GELT program, which embeds a travel component into a longer course. Faculty can apply for a course development grant with the possibility of securing an additional $35,000 to cover travel costs for up to 12 students. GELT course topics have included Delalue’s course on the African Atlantic diaspora and another on the geology of volcanoes in Greece. Since 2014, between three and five faculty have received funding each year.

“When faculty apply to teach GELT courses, we’re looking at how explicit they’re making the learning goals for the course and how the travel component of the course can actually help students achieve those learning goals,” explains Sarah Mullen, chief of staff and assistant director of curricular programs in the College. Brown is distinctively known as a University-College, with undergraduate education based in the College.

In addition to the many ways in which Brown undergraduates are inspired to study abroad, Brown’s pre-college program offers multiple study abroad opportunities each summer, demonstrating the value placed on global experience to prospective Brown undergraduates.

Supporting International Students Through the Global Brown Center

Global Brown also focuses heavily on the international community on campus. Seventeen percent of the university’s 7,000 undergraduates are international. At the graduate level, 42 percent of master’s students and more than half of doctoral students come from abroad. The top sending countries are China, India, Canada, South Korea, and Turkey.

Supporting international students and scholars at Brown is part of President Christina Paxson’s vision for comprehensive internationalization. “One of Brown’s greatest strengths is our diverse, global community. We value the more than 2,000 international students and scholars who are essential to our university. And the ideas, experiences, and perspectives they bring are critical to our capacity to engage in teaching, research, and service with excellence and distinction,” Paxson says. “We are committed to attracting the most talented and promising students and scholars from all countries of origin, cultures, races, religions, identities, and experiences, and to cultivating an environment that ensures the free exchange of ideas and advancement of knowledge.”

That commitment begins with open, ongoing dialogue with international students about their goals and needs. In her former position as dean of international student experience, Delalue spent much of her time talking to international students about what they really needed from the university. “A big part of my responsibility was to assess the landscape and really help the senior-level administration understand what would be needed to best support international students,” Delalue says.

She created the International Student Advisory Board as a forum for international students to share their experiences and concerns. One of their recommendations was to reserve a dedicated space on campus for the international population. Students also expressed a clear need for more academic and extracurricular support.

In response, the Global Brown Center for International Students (GBC) was established under campus life in May 2017. Several months later, Brown opened the Global Brown Lounge, known as “the Globe,” which provides a physical space for international students. The GBC has the same status as other affinity centers on campus such as the Brown Center for Students of Color, the LGBTQ Center, and the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender. Any student who identifies as international— including students with immigrant backgrounds and U.S. citizens who grew up abroad—is welcome.

Former GBC program director Christina Bonnell, along with a staff of 12 students, ran a mentoring program and planned orientation and other programming for international students. The GBC currently works with 40 internationally focused student organizations.

Ramisa Fariha, a biomedical engineering master’s student from Bangladesh, works in the GBC as a community fellow responsible for organizing events for international graduate students. She is also a member of the International Student Advisory Board. “Being a part of the advisory board is really cool because you’re actually involved with identifying problems pertaining to international students,” she says.

Fariha has coordinated events such as a healthy meal prep night led by a former international student who now runs her own start-up company. “We’re always cooped up in our labs or doing research, so we need a few social events,” Fariha says.

Designing Programming for International Student Success

In support of the international community, Brown created academic dean positions to serve as advisers to both international undergraduate and graduate students. Part of the rationale for the new positions was that “no student should come here and feel like they have no idea how to navigate the college experience,” Prasad says.

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Some international undergraduates, for example, might need help in understanding Brown’s open curriculum, which means that there are no core curriculum or distribution requirements that students must complete in order to graduate. Students are able to choose the classes that most interest them and, in some cases, design their own major, known as a “concentration” at Brown.

As the associate dean for international undergraduate students, Asabe Poloma has focused on identifying some of the academic barriers and challenges preventing international students from thriving. She has started conversations with faculty and advising deans about culturally relevant pedagogy and inclusive advising practices and worked with the campus career center, CareerLAB, to bring attention to professional development for international students.

“We try to approach all of our programming with the intention of thinking about the international student identity and experience as an asset,” Poloma says.

Divya Mehta, a former international student and Brown graduate, was hired as the first international student career coordinator. Working with Poloma, she co-organized an annual undergraduate career conference and helped connect international students with Brown alumni. “This year, we had alumni from several different fields and industries come in to create a first step to mentorship, but also have the opportunity for students to understand what their career trajectory could look like,” says Mehta, who recently left her position to attend graduate school at London School of Economics.

Creating Spaces for International Graduate Students

The international graduate student population at Brown has grown rapidly over the last decade in tandem with the expansion of its master’s programs. Because Brown as an institution is largely focused on undergraduate teaching, international graduate students advocated for a dedicated support person for their particular needs.

Coming out of the Global Brown strategic planning process, “we knew we needed someone to be the point person for international grad students,” says Shayna Kessel, the associate dean of master’s education and interim associate dean for international graduate students.

The international graduate students “were using these undergraduate resources to try to resolve housing issues, tax issues, social issues, and nobody really knew what to do for them,” she adds.

As the associate dean of master’s education, Kessel was already serving as the primary adviser for many of Brown’s international graduate students. So it made sense to appoint her as the point person for international graduate students. “What we’ve taken away from me being in this position for a year is that there has to be a physical connection between the Graduate School and Global Brown,” she says.

Third-year PhD student Sophie Brunau-Zaragoza has been the chair of international advocacy on the Graduate Student Council for the last 2 years. She says the biggest part of her job has been asking how new policies and programs might impact international graduate students. “There’s usually a very easy solution to include international grad students. It’s just that no one else had thought about it,” she says.

Brunau-Zaragoza worked closely with Bonnell at the Global Brown Center to revamp the international graduate student orientation. “We got rid of as much of possible of the academic structure,” she says.

A concrete example of the changes that Kessel has been able to make is allowing graduate students to have their degrees conferred at multiple points during the year. Students were staying in Providence longer than they needed to because they were unable to get jobs at home without a physical diploma. Brown turned out to be the only Ivy League institution that only conferred degrees once a year.

“Just knowing international graduate student needs and being able to do something about it, and having really receptive administrators, has been really important,” Kessel says.

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