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ACE Forges New Ground with Bridging the Gap Symposium

More than 120 higher education leaders from Hawaii to New York traveled to Washington last week for what's believed to be the first-of-its-kind conference designed to advance the national discussion on bridging the gap between multicultural education and internationalization on college campuses.

Co-sponsored by the American Council on Education's Center for Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Equity (CAREE) and the Center for International Initiatives (CII), the two-day symposium held June 25–26 brought together chief academic officers, chief diversity officers and chief international officers from 26 institutions.

The goal of the meeting was threefold: to focus national attention on the rationale for bridging the gap between international and multicultural education; to provide a forum for institutional leaders to discuss the issues involved in launching campus dialogues about creating better synergy between the two areas; and to showcase promising practices that institutional teams might include in action plans for cultivating collaboration.

A majority of the symposium attendees participated in a pre-conference workshop focused on learning outcomes that bridge the gap between multicultural education and internationalization. Co-facilitated by Dr. Duncan Carter, Professor and Associate Dean of English and Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Dr. Martha Belshem, Special Assistant to the President for Diversity, both of Portland State University (OR), the session allowed participants to work together to identify, prioritize, and map shared learning outcomes.

Yolanda Moses of the University of California Riverside

In her opening keynote address, Yolanda Moses, professor/special assistant to the chancellor for excellence and diversity and vice provost for conflict resolution at the University of California, Riverside, stressed the importance of creating intentional connections with people and programs on campus that historically have not existed. She added that when linkages between international and multicultural education are successful there is genuine administration and board-level support, demonstrable results for students, and off campus programs and outreach. "The easy stuff has already been done," Moses said. "The issue is how to create institutional will and a plan to do this. Institutional will goes beyond talk. It's transformational change."

Panelists Drs. James Banks, professor of diversity studies and the director of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington (WA), international education consultant JoAnn McCarthy, and James Anderson, chancellor of Fayetteville State University (NC), provided symposium participants with an overview of the two distinct historical contexts from which today's multicultural education and internationalization movements have evolved and offered some conceptual frameworks for cultivating collaboration between the two.

James Anderson, chancellor of Fayetteville State University

During the discussion that followed the panel presentation, Anderson told participants that transformative leadership is the driver for successful collaboration between multicultural education and internationalization. "We must have strong conceptual models and show how our focus facilitates other campus initiatives," Anderson said. He also stressed the importance of making the case for bridging the gap through evaluation and faculty buy in.

Other panels featured institutional good practices offering insights on structural and planning models, faculty and staff development, and curricular models that serve to bridge the gap in their campus communities.

Between plenary addresses, participants gathered in smaller groups by institutional type to discuss how these issues play out in their sectors. Structured "team working time" was also allocated for institutional teams to begin developing campus action plans.

The symposium concluded with an address by Ding-Jo Currie, president of Coastline Community College (CA) who emphasized the importance of carefully framing the issue to garner support for collaborative efforts among students, faculty, and administration. Invoking the analogy of the traditional Chinese Yin-Yang symbol, Dr. Currie illustrated the ways in which multicultural education and internationalization initiatives are complementary and interconnected. She also encouraged participants to evaluate their institution's readiness for collaboration and offer themselves as leaders in the effort.

"Presidents are constantly looking for champions on campus," she told them.

More information is available about the sessions offered at the 2008 ACE Bridging the Gap Symposium as well as downloadable copies of meeting materials and presentations.

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This page last updated on 08/29/2008