Collegial Conversations, October 2007
Through these conversations NAFSA hopes to target the best practices and experiences of some of international education's preeminent leaders.
Susan Buck Sutton
Susan Buck Sutton
Sutton is also Chancellor's Professor of Anthropology and a member of the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association. As an anthropologist, her research has focused on issues of migration, tourism, and community in contemporary Greece.
During the month of October, Susan answered questions and offered gems of wisdom. View the archived discussion now!
In the Delphi Study, respondents were asked to state skill and knowledge areas most needed by a Senior International Officer. Five of the most mentioned (although not in rank order) were Diplomacy/Tact, Prioritizing, Organization, Ethics, and Cross-Cultural Skills. Which of these have been the most challenging for you as a senior international educator on your campus?
The skill that has been personally most challenging for me is prioritizing. This has been challenging for several reasons, the first of which is that once you embrace the concept of comprehensive internationalization (as developed by the American Council on Education, among others), it is difficult not to want to move all aspects of campus internationalization forward at the same time. To put this the other way around, it is easy to initiate major projects in international student recruitment, study abroad, curriculum internationalization, and institutional partnerships all at the same time - only to realize that you lack the resources to do them all simultaneously. There is so much to be done, and most of us feel such urgency in wanting to do it, that we can easily bite off more than we can chew. The result can sometimes be that none of the projects gets done particularly well and your staff (and you) burn out in the attempt.Another problem I have faced in prioritizing concerns the criteria used to determine what is most important (hence what should be done first, or even what should be done exclusively). It is critical to understand that the chief international education administrator does not - and should not - set these criteria in isolation. These criteria must be determined collaboratively, and this requires all of the other skills listed in this question. It is as much a political process as a conceptual one. Ultimately the criteria used to prioritize international activities will represent a compromise of what the international office thinks is important, what faculty and staff are interested in doing, what fits the institutional mission set by the administration and trustees, what your international partners value, what the university and funding agencies will financially support, and - especially if you are at a public university - what resonates with the surrounding community. These interests and perspectives are sometimes consonant with each other and sometimes not - but it is your job to find the common ground, guide the process of choosing where no common ground is possible, and lead an ever-iterative public discussion of possibilities.
Another factor that plays havoc with prioritizing stems from the ever-shifting landscape on which we try to build our programs. The last 10 years have witnessed tremendous changes in the importance accorded to internationalization and the geographical locations that are of interest to many of our constituencies, not to mention the geo-politics that frames everything we do. What was of primary importance five years ago may be secondary today - at least from certain viewpoints. The fluid landscape on which we work also involves the sudden appearance of unexpected opportunities that lie completely outside the detailed master plan we have just finished - yet are too good to pass up.
In short, prioritizing is an ongoing, evolving process of defining and redefining your own philosophy of internationalization; putting one's ear to the ground concerning what is happening locally, nationally, and internationally; and communicating and collaborating broadly and frequently across multiple constituencies. Priorities will change over time, and you should not be embarrassed by this. (In fact, you should probably be embarrassed if you do not revisit them periodically.) In this light, I have found the following principles helpful. Plans should be developed to guide decisionmaking, but they should be broad and flexible in scope, allowing for multiple modes of implementation. And they should be revisited every so many years. Projects that have the potential to intersect with other projects or to form platforms for future work should generally be favored over those that are overly specific. Keep the big picture in mind, especially when the details threaten to overwhelm you. And, above all, the more people involved in setting the priorities and developing the plans, the better. We need to create an atmosphere in which our colleagues know the complexity of international work, understand what is at stake in with various activities, can respond quickly to changed circumstances and new opportunities, and are part of the process of finding common ground.
Please allow me to end with a few words about the cross-cultural skills important for international education leaders. As a cultural anthropologist, I came to international education pre-trained in this arena, so I could not have honestly answered this question by saying I had to learn them on the job. As a cultural anthropologist, however, I also cannot resist saying a few words about them anyway - but I will keep it brief.
I strongly believe that there are two essential dimensions to these skills, but that all too often only one of these dimensions is included under the heading of "cross-cultural" or "intercultural competency." The first dimension is the one that is often presented to the exclusion of the other: skills relating to interpersonal interaction and communication. This dimension includes the recognition of cultural difference and ways to interact effectively across such difference. This is very important, but it is not enough. The other dimension is needed, too. This second dimension is a sophisticated understanding of the principles of cultural dynamics, nationalism, ethnicity, international relations, and similar forces. Such forces shape our interpersonal interactions, whether or not we explicitly recognize this. They also create, rework, and sometimes dissolve the very units that define our field: cultures and nations. If we do not explicitly connect these two dimensions, we risk affirming stereotypes rather than dispelling them - as we treat all cultures and nations as fixed, uniform, and entirely isolated from others. To put this another way, "culture" is one of the most powerful concepts of the last two centuries, but it is also one of the most mis-used.
Strategic Planning and Leadership were two more skills that were frequently mentioned. What training or experiences did you use to gain these skills?
This is another arena in which I had a lot to learn when I took on this position. I had been chair of my academic department, but stepping up to the campus level was like walking through a portal to an alternate universe, of which I had been only vaguely aware while a faculty member. This new world required shifting from the personal to the institutional, understanding the need for dialogue and compromise, and working with a much wider range of issues and constituencies. As I reflect on those bumpy first years, three activities emerge as most influential in developing whatever skills of strategic planning and leadership I now have.
The first was consulting with the experts available right in my own backyard. For example, IUPUI is blessed with an exceptional office of institutional research and assessment, headed by Vice Chancellor Trudy Banta. Over the last 15 years, Trudy has built a culture of assessment and planning that is now endemic at IUPUI. Talks with Trudy enabled me to identify the key elements of strategic planning: visioning, goal setting, prioritizing activities, assessing these, and then revising accordingly. These understandings clarified the databases we needed to build as well as the constituencies that needed to be involved. As another example, I also sought the wisdom of faculty experts in organizational management in our schools of business, public administration, and engineering. All were tremendously helpful in presenting methods for defining group goals, articulating a vision, and creating organization out of chaos. To put this another way, most institutions have experts on planning and leadership, and they are often happy to share this expertise for the price of a cup of coffee (or a small consulting fee). Seek them out.
The second activity that moved my thinking forward was to talk with colleagues elsewhere. The first year I was in this position, I attended every conference I could find that had anything to do with international education. It was both eye-opening and reassuring. I learned an immense amount about the specific planning and leadership qualities needed for overseeing international programs, at the same time I was comforted by knowing I was neither alone nor significantly more off-base than others had been when they started. I strongly recommend attending NAFSA, AIEA, ACE, EAIE, NASULGC, and all the other alphabetical gatherings of people trying to influence international education. I also recommend reading (and contributing to) the growing literature on academic internationalization. We are at a particular moment in time when the position of chief internationalization administrator is being articulated and professionalized, and this is happening through a collective conversation among all of us who are working in this area. Also along these lines, I recommend visiting international offices at other institutions, learning about their operations, shadowing their lead administrators. You will learn as much about yourself as you will about the institution you are visiting.
The third activity that helped me develop whatever skills as I have in campus-level planning and leadership was more indirect (but nevertheless very powerful). It came from my participation in a wide range of committees across the campus, some of which were already in existence (such as the Enrollment Management Committee), some of which I established to pursue various international initiatives (such as the Mexico Interest Group). Committee work is often portrayed as the bane of academic life, but for me it proved a fertile ground for learning how to lead collaboratively. The world of many faculty revolves around personal research agendas, followed by proclamations of personal brilliance through publications. Several shouting matches and some humbling self-reflection into my term as chief international education administrator, however, led me to understand that this was not an effective mode of leadership. Very few people want to follow a prima donna, and you do not reach very good conclusions this way anyway. Campus-wide planning and campus-wide initiatives require campus-wide engagement. You cannot – and should not - do it alone. The results will be better, and your leadership skills will sharpen if you build a broad base of discussion, listen to opinions that differ markedly from your own, and genuinely distribute some of the decisionmaking authority. The goal is not to show off but rather to build better international programs than any of you could have done alone. You bring international expertise, but unless you merge that with the expertise of other disciplines and professions, few international programs will result. In short, committee work is not necessarily your enemy.
What is currently on your bookshelf (real or virtual) that you have recently read or intend to read soon?
Putting aside the occasional novel or biography, I try to spread my reading across three categories: the professional literature on the method and theory of campus internationalization; analyses of the changing face of higher education in the 21st century; and works on globalization, international relations, and the specific countries in which we are building strategic partnerships. I firmly believe that one of the roles of the chief international education administrator is to bring such perspectives to the tasks of campus visioning and goal setting. We must be current, we must be thoughtful, and we must be knowledgeable across multiple categories. Ours is very much a conceptual role.Along these lines, let me mention examples of reading I have recently done or plan to do.
In terms of the first category of reading, my constant companion and reference is the ACE publication, Building a Strategic Framework for Comprehensive Internationalization (2005) by Christa L. Olson, Madeleine F. Green, and Barbara A. Hill, which I distribute as widely as I can across campus. This book helps me spread the gospel far and wide, and also serves as both entrée and refresher course for nearly every issue that comes my way.
In terms of the second category, I recently read The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (2005) by sociologist Jerome Karabel. This is an absolutely fascinating account of how admissions policies evolved into their present state at some of the most elite institutions, an account that provokes all kinds of ruminations on the nature, structures, and sometimes unspoken goals of higher education in the U.S.
As for the third category, a trip I made to China two weeks ago provided me with the opportunity to read Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2004), which caught my attention at this year's NAFSA meeting and put much that I was seeing in China into perspective. When I travel to Indonesia later this fall, I will take with me Shinji Yamashita's Bali and Beyond: Explorations in the Anthropology of Tourism (2004), which is said to weave together discussions of colonialism, globalization, and mass tourism. I am hoping it will help me understand the complexity of what I encounter.
