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Internationalization Collaborative
Community Colleges
Coastline Community College
Coastline
Community College is one of 108 public institutions in the
California Community College system, which—with more than 2.9
million students—is the largest higher education system in the
world. Fully accredited by the Western Association of Schools and
Colleges, Coastline is one of three colleges in the Coast Community
College District, in Orange County just south of Los Angeles.
Coastline’s current enrollment is 11,714 students, with a
distinctly nontraditional demographic:
- Age—82 percent of Coastline students are
adults aged 25 or older.
- Prior education—21 percent of Coastline students
already hold an associate degree or higher.
- Employment—Most Coastline students have jobs; only 6
percent attend college full-time.
- Marital status—53 percent of Coastline students are
married by the time they graduate.
- Language—English is the second language for 37 percent
of the student body.
- Residence—About 49 percent of Coastline students live
outside the district. (Many receive instruction through
Coastline’s highly successful distance education programs.)
- Ethnicity—Of the Coastline students who choose to
declare their ethnicity, more than 45 percent are minorities.
To better serve minority, part-time, and adult students, Coastline
offers instruction in a variety of formats to accommodate working adults
within the community and beyond. In addition to traditional
semester-long 16-week courses, Coastline also offers eight-week courses,
Weekend College courses that meet Friday evenings and Saturdays for four
weeks, a night-school program, and a nationally recognized distance
learning program. Coastline’s telecourse production division,
Coast Learning Systems, produces Emmy Award-winning telecourses that
millions of viewers watch on PBS television stations. Additionally,
Coastline’s online courses enable students to complete much of
their associate’s degrees from their homes or places of
employment. Coastline’s nearly 5,000 military contract education
students complete online courses at military bases and aboard ships and
submarines worldwide.
Overview of
Internationalization Efforts
I. Vision and Goals for
Internationalization
Coastline is committed to the philosophy that students will need
significantly more exposure to global concepts and cross-cultural
awareness to succeed in the workplace or in four-year transfer
institutions. Creating this exposure and awareness entails enhancement
programs embracing faculty development, curriculum design, and
instructional technology.
Coastline expresses this vision at several levels:
Institutional Mission—“Coastline Community
College is committed to student success through accessible and flexible
education within and beyond the traditional classroom. Coastline
Community College fulfills its mission through high-quality and
effective instructional programs and services that meet the needs of
students in diverse local and global populations” (emphasis
added).
Executive Leadership—Upon undertaking the presidency
of Coastline in 2002, Dr. Ding-Jo Currie expressed her vision of how a
two-year institution can and should educate for a wider world: “I
am passionate about community colleges. I have this enthusiasm because
we are about open access. We are an open door for all citizens—not
just locally, but the citizens of the world. We are a global society,
and Coastline Community College has the capability to [have] an impact
on the world of students. Technology is advancing quickly, giving us the
opportunity to use it to create new learning systems and distribute them
to the students of the world.”
Strategic Plan—Programs that foster global learning
are key to Coastline’s strategic plan for 2002 to 2007. The
strategic plan enumerates the following three goals:
- Develop and implement at least two new strategies to increase the
number of international students attending Coastline and another Coast
District campus.
- Expand the college’s efforts to promote international trade,
particularly with Mexico.
- Develop partnerships with higher education institutions in other
nations for the purpose of conducting joint academic projects to further
globalize the thinking of our students and staff.
Near-Term Objectives—To fulfill its vision for
internationalization, Coastline is currently pursuing the following
objectives:
- Develop the curriculum to create international, cross-cultural
awareness of students in the widest possible range of academic and
career programs.
- Expand Coastline’s ongoing program for technology-oriented
partnerships with colleges and universities in other countries.
- Prepare the Coastline faculty to interact with students from
increasingly diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
- Develop partnerships with local employers to stimulate foreign trade
and create internship opportunities for international students.
- Develop an international exchange program for Coastline
faculty.
II. Progress
Coastline is already well on the way toward achieving goals for
broadening the scope of international programs. Accomplishments
include:
Partnerships with Institutions Abroad—The ICE-T
project (International Cross-Cultural Education
through Technology) is a collaboration involving Coastline
Community College, North Island College (Vancouver, Canada), and the
University of Yucatan (Merida, Yucatan, Mexico). The project uses
videoteleconferencing and other Internet capabilities to strengthen the
curriculum in internationally oriented courses and cross-cultural
studies, creating joint projects for teams of students from all three
institutions. Funded by a grant from the California State
Chancellor’s Office, this project is of special benefit to
students who cannot participate in traditional study-abroad
programs.
Cross-Cultural Projects at Coastline—The college is
already undertaking, or has already completed, several projects to
increase cross-cultural opportunities for students, faculty, and
staff.
- CCCInternational.info web site—Created by a
multilingual team of Coastline student interns, this annotated index of
links to internationally oriented web sites is used weekly by hundreds
of high school and college students and faculty members.
- GENesis (Global Education Network)—Extending across the
Coastline curriculum, GENesis creates instructional resources to help
students and faculty increase their knowledge of the global workplace
and provides staff training in the Spanish and Vietnamese languages and
cultures. The major goals of GENesis are to provide an international
perspective in at least 70 percent of the liberal arts curriculum and a
global awareness in five occupational programs.
- California-Mexico Trade Assistance Center
(CMTAC)—Funded by a California state grant and operated partly
by student interns, CMTAC provides trade counseling and business
consulting services to promote trade between the United States and
Mexico.
III. Successful Strategies
Strategy No. 1—An ad hoc committee of
instructional deans and the director of Planning and Development creates
strategies and evaluates plans for bringing global perspectives to
existing Coastline programs and for introducing new programs that the
college might consider undertaking. For example, with this guidance and
with the commitment of Coastline faculty and administration, the college
offers a wide array of courses with an international emphasis. These
offerings, though not required of all students, exemplify the
institution’s philosophy that students need significantly more
exposure to global concepts and cross-cultural awareness in order to
succeed in the workplace or in four-year transfer institutions.
Strategy No. 2—In collaboration with institutions in
other countries, this strategy aims to build partnerships that leverage
Coastline’s technical and instructional expertise to provide a
cross-cultural and global awareness perspective for students. This
strategy includes the following elements:
- Understand Coastline’s strengths in instructional design,
videoteleconferencing, and other Internet-based technologies.
- Identify institutions in other countries that can use
Coastline’s resources and, in return, provide Coastline with
cross-cultural exposure.
- Encourage Coastline faculty to participate in projects that have an
international dimension.
- Secure grant funding to help support participation in international
programs.
Strategy No. 3—Coastline articulates its goals for
international learning at three levels: institutional mission, executive
leadership, and ongoing strategic planning.
- Institutional mission—Coastline’s commitment to
accessible and flexible education beyond the traditional classroom is
clear from the college’s mission statement.
- Executive leadership—In the words of Coastline’s
president, Dr. Ding-Jo Currie: “Think, plan, and act globally. It
is our responsibility to create world citizens of our
students.”
- Strategic planning—Programs that foster global learning
are a key element in Coastline’s strategic plan for 2002 to
2007.
IV. Future Plans
At Coastline Community College, some aspects of the curriculum and
other international learning opportunities reflect the consistent
pursuit of long-range goals. Other aspects are adaptations to changes in
the college environment or to opportunities such as grant funding. All
address the need for global learning. The comprehensive plan to achieve
these goals consists of the following objectives:
- Develop five new institutional partnerships per year with higher
education institutions in North America, Asia, Europe, South America,
the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa.
- Provide opportunities for 15 percent of Coastline’s students
to enhance their global work skills through a massive expansion of the
ICE-T project.
- Establish working relationships with at least one foreign university
to send its students to Coastline as a U.S. location for its
study-abroad program.
- Create an internationally recognized institute for training faculty
and administration in establishing a multimode distance education
program that will attract 50 participants each summer.
- Maintain and enhance the web
site as a major tool and resource for the college’s
international initiatives, programs, and projects, and for high school
students and faculty throughout Southern California.
- Seek $20,000 in funding for faculty and/or student travel and study
abroad.
- Recruit, track, and support foreign students at Coastline Community
College and at colleges in the Coast Community College District.
- Plan a comprehensive distance learning program that could include
the resources of Coastline’s international partners (to be
marketed internationally) and enroll 500 foreign students in this
Coastline program.
- Finish developing a fully articulated international studies program
with CSU Long Beach and three other public and private universities.
- Identify and promote the capacity of Coastline Community College to
conduct education projects in other nations, earning two contracts from
one of the following agencies: USAID; the International Monetary Fund;
the World Bank; the agencies of the United Nations; the U.S. Departments
of Education, Labor, or Commerce; or private or public entities in
foreign nations.
- Conduct additional GENesis-type curriculum workshops that attract at
least 50 faculty members by September 30, 2005, to be funded by the
Title III project.
*Please contact the institution directly if you have
questions about their institutional programs.
Please direct questions about this page to:
beth_burris@ace.nche.edu |
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This page last updated on:
6/16/2006
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