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Innovative Campus Strategies

Internationalizing the Disciplines

In February 2008, the Longview Foundation brought together leaders in education, government, and other sectors to examine what is currently being done in schools, colleges, and departments of education to prepare future teachers for the new global reality and to generate momentum to do more.
Teacher Preparation for the Global Age: The Imperative for Change [pdf, 3.56 MB], highlights promising practices identified during this meeting and subsequent discussions and suggests a framework for internationalizing the education of all pre-service teachers and increasing the number of world language teachers, especially in less commonly taught languages. (Text taken from the Longview Foundation website.)

With financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the American Council on Education's Where Faculty Live: Internationalizing the Disciplines project began in September 2004. It seeks to promote the internationalization of teaching and learning at U.S. colleges and universities through collaboration with four disciplinary associations: the Association of American Geographers, the American Historical Association, the American Political Science Association, and the American Psychological Association. Please visit the ACE bookstore for reports resulting from this project.

At Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania's College of Education and Human Services, all teacher education majors must complete at least 40 hours of field experience in a cultural, social, or ethnic environment that differs from their own. Each student must then submit a detailed written summary of the experience, including in-depth reflections on the value of this field experience to the student's academic and personal growth.

At San Jose State University, the political science department uses videoconferencing to foster exchanges between students of SJSU and students in other nations. In 2003, the department offered a videoconference course that engaged SJSU students and counterparts in Russia; students read the same materials and discussed them together via videoconference. The department aims to make intercultural learning a requirement for political science majors.

Indiana University's Kelley School of Business created an international dimension requirement in 1988. It can be satisfied in one of four ways: area studies courses; foreign language study; international business and economics courses; and, the most popular choice among students, study abroad. Programs for business students with sufficient foreign language ability to study abroad also have been recently developed in France, Germany, Mexico, and Spain. The school's two most recent innovations stress an immersion abroad experience for students. In the extended program, taught in English, students spend three years at IU plus two years at the University of Maastricht, simultaneously earning an IU Bachelor of Science degree and a special Master in International Business degree from the Dutch institution. The challenging German-language program is an exchange with the Fachhochschule in Reutlingen, Germany, where students from either institution can earn a Bachelor of Science degree from the Kelley School and a German Diplom-Betriebswirt after spending one year on an internship abroad.

Tufts University's Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine provides students international experience through the International Veterinary Medicine Signature Program (IVM). Activities in the signature program include lectures by faculty and international guests; a seminar program in working across cultures, developing an international project, and re-introduction to home culture; selective courses in IVM; and the Tufts student IVM organization, Veterinarians for Global Solutions. The centerpiece of the signature program is an international research project. Tufts veterinary students who go abroad usually conduct research as part of a long-term research initiative, are supervised by both a Tufts and a field mentor, and are often paired with a host-country student. As part of their research project, Tufts students write a research proposal, find their own funding, conduct their fieldwork, provide stakeholders with a written report, and are encouraged to publish their results in a peer-reviewed journal. Since 1982, more than 200 Tufts veterinary students have completed international projects. Students from other Tufts schools, such as the Department of Biology, the public health program, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, also have completed international projects with internationally focused Cummings faculty.

Kent State University has established a number of centers with an international focus. These include the Gerald Read Center for International and Intercultural Education in the College and Graduate School of Education (CIIE), which serves to integrate an international and intercultural perspective into teacher preparation; the Center for the Study of World Music in the School of Music, a resource for the study of ethnomusicology; the English/ESL Center, which offers undergraduate and graduate programs in Germany, Taiwan, Korea, and Mexico; and the College of Business, which is developing a Global Management Center.

California State University–Stanislaus' winter term in Cuernavaca, Mexico provides a three-week, low-cost immersion experience for approximately 30 students. Students take courses toward majors in nursing, teacher education, psychology, and social work while studying Spanish and living in the homes of Mexican host families. Students can make major progress toward professional goals. For example, teacher education students can complete the nine-unit CLAD (Cross-cultural, Language, and Academic Development) requirement for entrance into the teacher credential program during the winter term in Cuernavaca. Additionally, students have studied the history of Mexico with visits to important historical sites, transcultural nursing with visits to health clinics and traditional healers, and the multicultural classroom with visits to local schools.

Binghamton University, SUNY's Decker School of Nursing has funded faculty attendance at international health care conferences and invited guest lecturers from abroad to contribute to a new curriculum design that values knowledge of culture, race, religion, and geography in order to foster understanding of the diverse populations for which nurses care. Decker also sponsors health care study tours in England, Scotland, Greece, and the Czech Republic.

Two courses in South Dakota State University's College of Agricultural and Biological Sciences have been developed to enhance the global and multicultural perspectives of students: ABS 203, Global Food Systems; and ABS 382, International Multicultural Agriculture/Biological Science Experience. More than 50 students have experienced international travel and study as part of ABS 382, with international destinations including Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, and Western Europe. Other travel studies courses in three additional departments have taken faculty and students to Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

At Barnard College, a senior seminar in English has been developed on the literature of the Middle Passage, which includes a nine- to 10-day trip to slave forts and cities in Ghana. External funding allowed Barnard to experiment with short study trips for junior and senior majors in a particular department.

Tufts University's School of Medicine offers an International Health Elective in Nicaragua that provides fourth-year students with the opportunity to gain experience in direct patient care and public health policy in Nicaragua. Students typically work in an interdisciplinary team that includes medical students, environmental engineers, and Tufts faculty to provide medical treatment and resources, as well as to improve public health conditions and awareness. Students work side by side with and learn from the local practitioners as well as their faculty preceptors. This four-week elective is offered by the Department of Community Health and Family Medicine.

At Western Michigan University, the four-week Engineering Tour in China offers students a unique opportunity to obtain global engineering experience in contemporary China, and to visit some of the country's ancient engineering feats, including the Great Wall and the Giant Buddha. Participants study at Sichuan University for 25 days and visit the surrounding areas of Beijing, Xian, and Chengdu. Students also visit the Qin Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses, Dujianyan irrigation system, and other sites relevant to engineering studies.

The University of New Orleans' two-week Counselor's View of Italy was first held in 2004 and has become an annual program with more than 30 participants each year. The program is open to practicing counselors and counselor educators who desire continuing education credits and current undergraduate, master's, and doctoral students in counseling at the University of New Orleans and at other U.S. universities. Other professionals and students who have an interest in counseling are invited to participate. Topics covered include Italian methods of suicide prevention, family counseling, school counseling, and drug/alcohol counseling.

*Please contact the institution directly if you have questions regarding specific programs.

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This page last updated on: 12/11/2008