The dialogue at ACE’s Executive Forum for Leading Internationalization—held by the Council’s Center for Internationalization and Global Engagement
(CIGE) last week in Washington, DC—spanned small towns, cities,
countries and continents. It began aboard the 7 train that runs from
Manhattan to LaGuardia Community College’s main campus in Queens, NY, where keynote speaker and LaGuardia President Gail O. Mellow serves a highly global institution.
The meeting brought together presidents, chief academic officers,
senior international officers and chief student affairs officers to
address “Engaging International Students: Beyond Recruiting,” with the
overarching focus on formulating a comprehensive strategy for
integrating international students. Beginning with Mellow’s keynote
address, a series of panels and discussions highlighted research on the
experience of international students and emerging practices for making
the classroom and campus more globally inclusive. ACE staff also gave
attendees a preview of early results from the 2016 Mapping Internationalization survey.
Community as a Resource for Internationalization
At LaGuardia,
45 percent of students come from outside the United States and speak
111 languages. While institutions in smaller towns and rural areas may
not enroll a student body so globally diverse as LaGuardia, Mellow
predicts it is the way of the future. The challenge now before LaGuardia
and others is to create campus environments where students can express
their full identities, grapple with difference and learn about the world
from one another.
LaGuardia’s position as a highly international community college in a
diverse urban area ensures that “international isn't something special,
it's a given and it's everywhere,” Mellow said. LaGuardia embraced and
adapted to its community, a vital element of integrating international
students echoed by other leaders during the meeting.
Kathy Johnson, executive vice chancellor of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), a member of the 10th cohort of ACE’s Internationalization Laboratory,
sees her campus’s globalization strategy as an asset to the growing
city of Indianapolis. Bill Holmes, executive director in the Office of
International Affairs at Central Michigan University,
a member of the 14th Lab cohort, agreed. He urged assembled leaders to
engage with “why my location,” rather than “why not my location,” and
said that by incorporating the community into internationalization
strategies, campus leaders can help international students write
“narratives” that fit into the broader fabric of campus locality.
“Get People to the Table”
Developing a broad strategy for integrating international students
may involve many actors on campus—not just the international student
services office. Byron McCrae, vice president of student affairs and
dean of students at Hampshire College
(MA), suggested that leaders first “get people to the table” to solve
problems together. Holmes echoed this idea, noting that his office
partners directly with student services and other units to better help
international students in direct and practical ways.
In her previous post at the University of Tulsa, where international student enrollment rose to 25 percent, Lehigh University
Vice President and Vice Provost for International Affairs Cheryl
Matherly employed the technique of “appreciate inquiry” to identify when
and where students experienced inclusion across campus, then based
positive recommendations on feedback from a variety of constituents.
Difference as an Asset
Repeated throughout the day was the need to embrace students’ complex
and fluid identities when developing strategies for
internationalization. According to Chris R. Glass, assistant professor
at Old Dominion University
and a lead researcher on the Global Perspective Inventory, “Who you
attract to your campus affects the strategy you use to structure,
assess, support, track and sustain international student engagement.”
Mellow emphasized that a student’s identity is more than language and
culture, and noted that educators tend to regard multilingualism and
cultural difference as “less than.”
Rather than focusing only on what institutions can do “for” or “to”
international students, which can reinforce the concept of “other,” Dana
Mortenson, co-founder and executive director of World Savvy,
suggested that campus leaders consider what international students have
to offer. An inclusive learning environment, she said, means drawing on
their contributions to facilitate learning between students.
Faculty Are the Lynchpin
Increasing international student enrollment can significantly affect
classroom dynamics, and faculty often struggle to find pedagogies that
accommodate differences in learning styles, cultural backgrounds and
language abilities. Mark W. Harris, president emeritus of ELS Educational Services, Inc.—which
sponsored the 2016 Executive Forum for Leading
Internationalization—presented findings from a 2015 survey of more than
2,000 international students who identified challenges they face in U.S.
classrooms and offered recommendations for instructors.
ACE’s Mapping Internationalization
report, due to be released this spring, will reveal whether
institutions’ support for faculty has become more or less common in the
five years since the survey was last administered.
For more information about the Executive Forum for Leading Internationalization, please email cige@acenet.edu. Applications for the 2017-2019 cohort of ACE's Internationalization Laboratory will open in January 2017.