Through these conversations NAFSA hopes to target the best practices and experiences of some of international education's preeminent leaders. Every month the Chief International Education Leaders Network will ask one of its subscribers to answer the following three questions. Over the coming year we hope to see many unique and thought-provoking answers.
JoAnn McCarthy
JoAnn McCarthy
JoAnn McCarthy was appointed Assistant Provost for International Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania in March of 2005. She is responsible for articulating and providing focus for the university's international agenda and leading the development and implementation of the university's global strategy. A past president of the Association of International Education Administrators, she currently serves as chair of the International Education Leadership Knowledge Community for NAFSA. Dr. McCarthy has served on various international boards and advisory groups including ACE, CIEE, the Department of Education and the Department of Defense. She is a frequent consultant, author, and speaker on the internationalization of higher education.
During February, JoAnn answered questions and offered gems of wisdom.
View the Archived Discussion!
What is at the top of your strategic planning list?
At Penn, we have a long tradition of community engagement and translating knowledge into action. The success the university has had in transforming its surrounding urban neighborhood in West Philadelphia through research and faculty/student engagement is now being expanded to a global scale. In an administratively de-centralized institution, we face significant challenges in creating consensus, coordinating our approaches, and communicating our successes to both internal and external audiences. Our strategic planning is centered on re-focusing our efforts toward the developing world to make Penn accessible and welcoming to the world's best and brightest faculty and students; the integration of knowledge across disciplines to allow us to focus on "real world" problems that are very complex and interdisciplinary in nature; and the conscious linking of the local and global dimensions of our teaching, research, and service.
What are the most difficult challenges you face today to carry out your international mandate?
In a university like Penn, the challenge is to
find and catalog all the pockets of international engagement across all twelve schools; define cross-cutting themes and areas of distinctive advantage; and marshal the university's considerable resources in a meaningful way. Most of our schools (including the nation's first School of Medicine, the Wharton School, the Annenberg School for Communication, the School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Nursing, Penn Law, the School of Veterinary Medicine, and the Graduate School of Education) have already established national and international reputations for the global engagement of faculty and students. In addition, Penn serves one of the largest and most competitive international student and scholar populations in the country, and sends nearly 1750 students abroad every year. While international perspectives permeate every corner of the campus, they remain nevertheless disjointed, unfocused, and largely unknown to important constituencies both on and off campus. Furthermore, these efforts need to be re-shaped and networked in ways that are relevant to the emerging role of the
global higher education sector in the 21st century.
Reflecting on your past experience, what advice, resources, favorite Web site, etc., would you most like to share with your colleagues, or those aspiring to become an chief international education officer?
I think leaders in international education need to keep one eye on developing trends in the broader context of world affairs; consider how those emerging global trends will impact on higher education in general; and firmly establish that context as the environment in which their institutions must define their niche areas of distinction and leadership. I call it "the view from 30,000 feet" brought down to the desks and daily agendas of faculty and staff. I found
Mapping the Global Future from the National Intelligence Council to be very thought-provoking; the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals very helpful in defining the key interdisciplinary issues of our time; IIE's Atlas of Student Mobility predictive of serious shifts in cross-national demand for higher education that sets the stage for fundamental changes in higher education in the decades ahead; and the ACE series of guides to campus internationalization very helpful in plotting institutional strategy.
