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Comprehensive Institutions
Arcadia University
http://www.arcadia.edu/
Contents
General Institutional Overview
Overview of Internationalization
Efforts
- Vision and Goals for Internationalization
- Progress
- Successful Strategies
- Future Plans
General Institutional Overview
Located in Glenside, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, Arcadia
University is an independent, comprehensive (Carnegie master’s 1)
institution. Fall 2000 enrollments numbered 1,971 FTE students,
including 1,396 undergraduates and 575 graduate students. These
enrollments compare to approximately 1,325 FTE students—890
undergraduates and 435 graduate students—in fall 1990. As
enrollments have increased by 50 percent during the past decade,
entrance requirements have been strengthened; successful capital
campaigns and building projects have resulted in the construction of
seven new structures on the campus; and the number of faculty, programs,
and degrees offered—and the size of the endowment—have all
increased sharply.
In academic year 2000–01, the Arcadia University faculty was
composed of 159 FTE members (85 full time and 186 part time). Three were
non-U.S. citizens. Of full-time faculty members, 49 were tenured, 23
were tenure-track, and 13 were contractual employees. Fifty-seven
percent of the full-time undergraduate students were residential. There
were no residential graduate students. One hundred and one undergraduate
students studied abroad.
Both the Arcadia undergraduate student population and the faculty
members who teach them reflect the diversity of American society,
especially as represented in contemporary metropolitan areas. In fall
2000, 15.3 percent of the total students enrolled were classified as
persons of color. An additional 45 students (1.8 percent of total
enrollment) were nonresident aliens.
At the same time, the undergraduate student population was
overwhelmingly female (75 percent). This is a reflection of the history
of the university, which began as a female seminary in 1853 and
essentially remained a single-sex college until 1973. The faculty is 57
percent female.
Arcadia University comprises three major divisions: the Beaver College
of undergraduate studies; the College of Graduate and Professional
Studies; and the Center for Education Abroad. The College of
Undergraduate Studies offers the degrees of Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor
of Science, and Bachelor of Fine Arts. Students can choose from among 30
majors and a corresponding number of concentrations within them. The
College of Graduate and Professional Studies offers 12 discrete
master’s degrees and a doctorate in physical therapy. The Center
for Education Abroad is not a degree-granting entity; it facilitates
study at foreign universities, internships, clinical placements, and
student teaching experiences overseas. It also organizes the annual
London Preview Experience for Arcadia University first-year
students.
Undergraduate tuition for the 2000–01 academic year was
$17,830. As a private institution, Arcadia does not differentiate
between resident and nonresident students in terms of tuition. The cost
of room and board for the year was $7,740.
Arcadia University offers a full-range of financial aid, including
merit awards, need-based aid, and loans. During the 2000–01
academic year, student aid consumed 36.4 percent of full-time
undergraduate revenue. Ninety-six percent of the full-time undergraduate
students received financial aid of some kind. Of those students, 81
percent received student loans (federal and private) and 94 percent
received some type of institutional grant or scholarship aid, totaling
$8,696,822. The average aid package (including work study and loans) for
full-time, domestic undergraduates was $17,427, of which $7,253 was
institutional grant or scholarship money.
Arcadia University’s most obvious change during the past decade is
the recent (July 16, 2001) renaming of the institution which, throughout
the 20th century, had been known as "Beaver College." The most important
change during the 1990s, however, has been the institution’s
development of, and emphasis upon, its international character. Arcadia
University begins the 21st century committed to making
internationalization its chief distinguishing characteristic.
I. Vision and Goals for
Internationalization
Adopted in 1993, a central goal of Arcadia University’s mission
statement is to "prepare students for life in a rapidly changing global
society." Aligned with this goal, the mission statement further
identifies an "understanding of integral relationships among people of
the world" as a fundamental characteristic of its educational
program.
In preparing for reaccredidation in 1999, Arcadia University
identified internationalization as a key focus. A campuswide task force
assembled to address this focus identified the five following
internationalization goals:
- Increase the numbers of students of all categories who study abroad,
by providing clearer curricular guidelines, pre- and post-trip
counseling, expanded financial aid, and a greater number of options for
such study.
- Inculcate internationalism throughout the curriculum by providing
faculty development, building international competence into hiring,
promotion, and program approval decisions.
- Create an international outlook among faculty and staff by enhancing
exchange programs, establishing special forums, and appointing an
administrator to oversee such efforts.
- Create an international milieu on campus by increasing the
recruitment of international students, providing these students with
desirable housing and enhanced advising, strengthening the
school’s liaison with the American Language Academy, and
continuing projects already begun to deploy international symbols around
the campus.
- Clarify and solidify the role of the Center for Education Abroad in
the university’s efforts at internationalization.
II. Progress
The most celebrated of Arcadia University’s international
markers is the London Preview Program. This program attracts attention
to the institution as an internationalized site and sends a convincing
message to all members of the community about Arcadia’s
international sincerity.
London Preview, held during spring break, is a one-week opportunity
for Arcadia University first-year students. Students in good academic
and disciplinary standing have the opportunity to visit this major world
capital for only $245. The price includes air and ground transportation,
hostel accommodation, and many scheduled activities. Participation has
grown from 140 students in 1994 to 231 in 2001 (from about 50 percent to
about 75 percent of the eligible students in these years). Thirty
faculty and staff leaders accompany the group each year.
Students who take part in London Preview are exposed to an
international experience; it lets them discover that procuring a
passport is easy, crossing the Atlantic is not to be feared, and
maneuvering—quite independently—in a new city, culture, and
country is feasible. Students return from London understanding that
study abroad (in any country) can be an incredible opportunity in which
they can partake. Participation in this program also creates bonds
between faculty and students. The large group of students is divided
into smaller cohorts of about 18, each led by two group leaders. These
groups meet two or three times before departure and often develop a
camaraderie that lasts not only during the overseas program, but also
throughout their four-year stay at Arcadia. Faculty and staff have
commented on the collegiality that builds during Preview and continues
long after it ends.
How does a small university make this happen for 300 members of its
community each year? The program enjoys the president’s support
and is broadly and enthusiastically endorsed by the faculty. London
Preview is a marketing tool for the university and motivates students to
study abroad. The Center for Education Abroad’s London staff
arranges the logistics for the trip, including orientation,
accommodations, local transportation, ticket purchases, out-of-London
excursions, and guest speakers. The director of international services
in Glenside coordinates the registration of student participants,
faculty and staff selection, domestic ground and international air
transportation, written orientation materials, leader training,
preprogram orientation meetings, and a post-program debriefing.
In addition to London Preview, Arcadia University’s first-year
students are introduced to internationalism through participation in a
required course: Justice and Multicultural Interpretations. This
interdisciplinary course gives students strategies for identifying and
exploring complex issues surrounding justice—a concept crucial to
one’s relationship to other individuals and the customs and values
of other cultures. Students discover that ideas about justice are
situated in historical and cultural contexts. They see, too, that
arriving at reasoned belief about an issue, especially justice, must
include consideration of moral and ethical questions. Texts include
readings from literature, philosophy, psychology, and political science.
The course also places an emphasis on developing students’ ability
to read insightfully, discuss logically, and write critically.
Beyond the freshman year, Arcadia University students are encouraged
to become involved in international programs in many ways. There is a
foreign-language requirement. The undergraduate catalog lists courses
with an international focus and study-abroad opportunities as a
component of each academic departmental description. Faculty in all
departments are encouraged to view themselves and their disciplines as
international in nature. Advisers remind students, each semester, that
they can study abroad at a cost no greater than that of being a
full-time student on the Glenside campus.
In addition, Arcadia University faculty members have developed a
series of special courses that include short-term overseas components.
These courses usually involve five or six weeks of seminars on campus, a
two- or three-week overseas experience led by an instructor, and another
four or five weeks of seminar meetings after the international
experience. In recent years, the courses have taken groups ranging in
size from six to 22 students to Austria, England, France, Greece,
Mexico, and Russia.
One measure of progress toward internationalization is undergraduate
participation in for-credit study-abroad experiences,which has increased
from six students in 199192 to 152 students in 200001. At
commencement in 2001, more than 21 percent of the university’s
graduating seniors counted credit earned abroad toward the completion of
their degree requirements. It is unlikely that this number was as high
as 3 percent a decade earlier.
The number of international students enrolled at Arcadia has
increased dramatically during the past decade—their presence as a
percentage of the undergraduate student body has increased by about 50
percent. In addition, the American Language Academy program on campus
brings an additional 75 to 100 students from around the world to campus
throughout the year for intensive English study. Although not the focus
of this report, it should be noted that, in keeping with the activities
already mentioned, graduate programs with significant overseas
components have also been developed and implemented during this same
time frame.
Many of the university’s faculty members participate in
scholarship with an international focus. Forty-one percent of those who
replied to a survey in spring 2001 reported having significant
international contacts or experiences. Fifty-six percent of those same
respondents indicated that they are comfortable using another language
in addition to English.
III. Successful Strategies
Internationalization efforts at Arcadia University are built on solid
foundations. They take advantage of existing strengths and resources
(such as the Center for Education Abroad) and use them as a basis for
doing more (such as London Preview). Among Arcadia’s
interdisciplinary courses, the Bioko Biodiversity Preservation Project
(a faculty exchange project) and collaborative teaching in China are
examples of home-grown initiatives that have developed from the
university’s linking of external international expertise and
faculty insights and ingenuity. There is an understanding throughout the
university that identifying and building on existing links and contacts
to further internationalization will be supported.
Many of the integrated aspects of Arcadia University’s
internationalization efforts deserve individual recognition. Among them
are:
Opportunities for Enhancing International
Understanding
These begin with the reading assignments given to incoming students
before their first semester on campus, proceed through the first two
years (including such features as London Preview and participation in
the core curriculum), and continue—for juniors and
seniors—with encouragement to study overseas and become involved
in internationally focused research and collaborative learning projects.
The college curriculum encourages thinking about and discovering the
core elements that make people from differing countries and other
cultures distinct from each other and, at the same time, alike as fellow
human beings.
During the past five years, Arcadia’s efforts to implement this
approach have resulted in the reinstatement of an undergraduate major in
foreign languages and the development of an undergraduate program in
international business. Consistent with its expectation that all
Arcadians will contribute to internationalization, the university now
asks applicants for faculty and administrative staff vacancies to
identify their international experience and expertise.
Student and faculty exchange agreements also have been negotiated
with two Korean universities. As a result, students travel each way for
a semester or a year and faculty members conduct collaborative research
(health administration) and seminars (fine arts) on each other’s
campuses. Additional collaborative teaching involves Arcadia University
professors of mathematics and education and their counterparts at a
partner institution in China. Classes covering similar syllabi will be
offered to small groups of students on both campuses during the
200102 academic year. These classes will employ use of common,
web-accessible materials. In May 2002, two Arcadia faculty and about a
dozen student participants traveled to Shanghai to spend two weeks
completing projects with class members there. Plans are in place to
bring the Chinese students to Arcadia when this exercise is repeated in
2003. The Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program (www.bioko.org) is a
final example of faculty exchange. It involves Arcadia faculty and the
Universidad Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial in a long-range program to
protect wildlife, promote Bioko as a site for biodiversity research and
education, and promote ecologically sound enterprises for the local
people.
Growing recognition as an institution that encourages students to
learn about the world The university’s tagline, "Wisdom to grow
on; worlds to explore," is a reminder of Arcadia’s international
connections to all who read about the institution anywhere. For the past
three years, Arcadia has taken about a dozen high school counselors
(selected via a drawing held during a campus visitation day) to London
for one week the following summer. These individuals return with
increased understanding of the importance of international education in
the undergraduate curriculum and of Arcadia’s special abilities to
impart those lessons to its students.
The local community is also reminded of the uniquely international
profile of Arcadia University through the "World Scholarship Program."
Each year, the program awards high-achieving graduating seniors from
local area high schools with $1,000 certificates toward the expenses of
any program offered by the Center for Education Abroad. In May 2001, 144
of these awards were made to young men and women from the top 5 percent
of the graduating class in each of 72 area high schools. The recipients
may use these awards at any time during the subsequent five years for
any CEA academic year or summer program offering.
Faculty Participation in International Education
Academic departments throughout the institution (psychology, business,
physician’s assistant, physical therapy, international peace and
conflict resolution, fine arts, and education) have joined the effort to
become internationally involved. Department representatives come to the
planning process with good ideas, established international connections,
and exciting research proposals. When individuals or small groups of
faculty come forward with good ideas, Arcadia University has always
tried to accommodate them. In the past five years, the university has
made dozens of small grants at a modest total cost. Examples include
provision for a professor of mathematics and computer science to receive
modest research support while accompanying his wife on a Fulbright
semester to Ghana; support for a ceramicist to participate in an
international conference and exhibit in Hungary; travel costs for a
professor of modem languages to look at potential linkage sites in
Spain; and support for a professor in the health administration program
during a three-month stay in Seoul, Korea, where she conducted research
and developed research contacts in support of a groundbreaking study on
lactation and breastfeeding practices. Frequently, these awards yield
large rewards not only in terms of publishable research, but also in the
currency of positive employee attitudes toward the university and an
appreciation for its support of their creative efforts to contribute to
internationalization. The institution is further enriched by the
participants’ enthusiasm about their teaching and research upon
their return to campus.
IV. Future Plans
The Arcadia University faculty is an increasingly internationalized
community of scholars. It seeks international credentials in the form of
both training and experience among new hires. As a result, the faculty
is becoming a group naturally predisposed to international involvement.
For example, when, in the early spring of 2001, the provost called for
four volunteers to work on developing overseas international
partnerships, 18 of the 85 full-time faculty members came forward.
Arcadia University started the 2001–02 academic year with a new
dean of graduate and professional studies and a newly created position
of associate dean for internationalization. Experienced administrators
who are held in high regard by the university community and who are
dedicated to the continuation of Arcadia University’s
internationalization efforts have been appointed to each of these
positions. The university now has the rare opportunity to broaden
support for international activities at all academic levels behind two
experienced and respected scholars in new leadership positions.
Arcadia University began the academic year with full-time student
enrollment at (or a bit above) capacity. The number of applications for
undergraduate admission was higher than ever in the institution’s
history. The university believes this popularity to be a direct result
of the recent name change. High enrollment presents Arcadia with the
opportunity to grow in size and increase quality at the same time. The
institution intends to seize this opportunity. Institutional growth
should produce additional discretionary income that can contribute
directly to additional internationalization opportunities.
The self-assessment of campus internationalization conducted under
the auspices of the ACE Promising Practices project was extraordinarily
valuable for Arcadia University. It has given the university a
structured opportunity to take a careful look at its progress over the
past decade and has required that the campus community think about
future directions. It also assured that conversations about
internationalization can be held publicly and broadly throughout the
university, and has instilled in everyone at Arcadia a sense of pride in
the distinction of being recognized for the breadth of its international
activities. Today, Arcadia goes forward prepared to confront a series of
new challenges, and determined to build upon the university’s
diverse strengths and transform existing international opportunities
into new realities.
Last updated: April 27, 2005
| collaborative, Arcadia University |
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