2018 ACE/AIEA Internationalization Collaborative Navigates the Growing Complexity of Leading in a Global World
February 26, 2018

Higher education leaders gathered last week in Washington to examine the challenges in advancing the internationalization process at the ACE/AIEA Internationalization Collaborative, an annual meeting held in conjunction with the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA) Annual Conference.

Attendees discussed major findings from ACE’s Center for Internationalization and Global Engagement’s (CIGE) 2017 Mapping Internationalization on US Campuses study, touching upon how institutions can leverage research, peer benchmarking, and internal data to inform internationalization strategy, decision-making, and planning.

Robin Matross Helms, director of CIGE, and Susan Carvalho, associate provost and dean of the Graduate School at the University of Alabama, demonstrated how institutions can use data to "tell the story" of internationalization. 

The morning plenary focused on “Strategy and Complexity” and the causes of increasing complexity in managing internationalization from the perspective of the provost. Speakers Johannes Britz, provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs and professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Patrick Farrell, provost and vice president of academic affairs at Lehigh University (PA), offered insight on developing and coordinating international goals and strategies. 

As Farrell noted, “In the field of engineering there is an emphasis on figuring out ways to simplify complexity, however in the case of internationalization of higher education, it is better to embrace and accept complexity rather than try to simplify or have it paralyze efforts.”

Participants also workshopped hypothetical scenarios that simulated the complexities of managing comprehensive internationalization on U.S. university campuses, devising solutions before reconvening as a larger group.

IES Abroad sponsored the 2018 Collaborative and hosted a closing reception.

Information about the 2019 Collaborative will be available later this year. For more information, email  CIGE@acenet.edu.