Collegial Conversations, January 2007

Through these conversations NAFSA hopes to target the best practices and experiences of some of international education's preeminent leaders. Every month the International Education Leader Development 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.

Gary Althen

Gary Althen served for 30 years as a foreign student adviser at the University of Iowa, many of them as director of the Office of International Students and Scholars. He was NAFSA's president in its 50th-anniversary year, and has received its Marita Houlihan Award for his contributions to the field of international educational exchange. He is the author of American Ways and The Handbook of Foreign Student Advising and is author, editor, or coauthor of more than 50 publications concerning international education and intercultural affairs. He has lived and worked in Peru and Malaysia.

During January, Gary answered questions and offered gems of wisdom.  Read the archived discussion now!

What do you wish you had known 10 years ago that you know now?

I’ll mention three things I wish I had known 10 (or more!) years ago, without claiming that I know them well even now.

1. To start with an obvious one, I wish I’d known more about budgeting and financial management. I’ve come to realize that a mastery of those matters is necessary for anyone in an organization who hopes to truly understand, let alone exercise any control over, what goes on in the organization.
   
   The tie between goals and budgets is particularly salient in these days of accountability and financial stringency. Administrators and would-be administrators who are savvy about budget-building and financial management, and who have a thorough understanding of their institutions’ budget processes, have a great advantage over those for whom "numbers" are anathema.
    
2. Developing "people skills" is an endless process, with the advantage going to those who do better at cooperating, gentle leading, supervising, and network-building. I wish I had had a better understanding of the dynamics of different kinds of personalities; the manner in which people’s personalities (including my own) influence their perceptions, ways of thinking, and ways of presenting themselves and their ideas; and ways to vary my own presentations to accommodate others’ proclivities.
   
   I think that greater acuity in assessing other people, greater insight into one’s own reactions in interpersonal situations, and increased flexibility in one’s own dealings with others, can lead to more constructive interactions. And constructive interactions are at the heart of educational exchange and of purposeful change within organizations.
    
3. In retrospect I can see how my tendency to avoid conflicts often caused unpleasant situations to last longer than they needed to and sometimes to become more pronounced. In retrospect, I can see that I’d have been well advised to confront that tendency systematically.
   
   Generally speaking, I think it helps to understand different people’s habitual ways of dealing with conflict and to be flexible enough to accommodate their preferred approaches. Preferred ways of dealing (or not dealing!) with conflict vary not just from person to person but from culture to culture, another point of which it helps to be mindful.

What are current concerns and trends that you see as critical from your view of the
international education field?

The fallout from G.W. Bush’s wars (on terror and in Iraq).
It’s hard to say what all the outcomes will be, but some are becoming clear. One is the increase in negative feelings about the United States and its intentions in the world, its way of relating to other countries, and its treatment of Muslim people. Governmental policies and procedures that discourage educational interchange, although in some ways diminished in the recent past, continue. Another area of fallout with potentially enormous implications is political and economic instability at least in the Middle East and possibly, via an "oil crisis," throughout the world.

The Bologna process.
The effort to harmonize higher educational systems across Europe is reportedly proceeding briskly. Where will that leave colleges and universities in the United States? Will they be able to retain their traditional "we’re the top dogs" attitude, or will some modesty and accommodation come to seem necessary? If it does, how will the process take place?

Technology (of course).
Others have thought much more knowledgeably and deeply than I have about the implications of distance-learning, teleconferencing, instant-messaging, wireless technology, Internet telephoning, podcasting, digitalization, miniaturization, and so on. Developments in these realms have implications for the future of so-called bricks-and-mortar institutions, libraries, forms of instruction and research, the experience of living abroad, academic integrity, and more.

Growing U.S. demand for technical talent from abroad.
Even as the American demand for people trained to work in technical fields continues to grow, the number of Americans taking up graduate study in those fields continues to decline. To the degree that American society continues to be rather math-phobic, anti-intellectual, and hedonistic (some sweeping words there, but look around you!), dependence of foreign-born technical talent will only expand. How this will affect the demographics and politics of the professional class, including college and university faculty and staff, remains to be seen.

Fundamentalism.
Whether of the Muslim, Christian, or market variety, fundamentalist ideas seem to be spreading, giving rise to what seem like irremediable conflicts between and within countries, organizations, and even families. Will these divisions become more salient within colleges and universities in the United States and elsewhere? If they do, what are the implications? Can colleges and universities help ameliorate these conflicts?

Dishonesty in the academic realm.
Not all that long ago, most concern with "academic honesty" stemmed from cheating on the part of students. More recently it is not just students, but faculty members and even university presidents who have been found to have plagiarized. Conflicts of interest and bogus results mar scholarly research, both in the United States and abroad. The Internet makes such unwholesome behavior easier to engage in—and easier to detect. Will the American or any other academic system look attractive to outsiders if its integrity becomes open to doubt? If doubts grow, it would be not just educational exchange but all aspects of academic life that would be cast into question.

What are resources that you utilize to keep abreast professionally?

More important than having a list of resources for keeping abreast, it seems to me, is having the determination to place one’s own professional development near the top of one’s to-do list, and the will to implement that determination. Many people know what periodicals and books they should read, what short courses they should take, what degree they ought to pursue, etc., but fail to put that knowledge to use.

Professional development is all too often "important but not urgent," to use time-management parlance. Matters that are important but not urgent too often get sacrificed to matters that are urgent, whether or not they are important. Books get added to the to-read pile, which continues to grow until one gets the "spare time" that never seems to come.

Another professional-development basic is knowing how one learns best. Getting the titles of relevant books is of limited use to people who don’t learn very well from reading, preferring to gain their information through more active means such as workshops, conference sessions, or conversations with colleagues.

To complete my evasion of Question #3, I will mention the two most effective professional-development experiences I recall from my career.

One was a series of regular meetings with groups of campus colleagues who discussed an agreed-upon book, week-by-week and chapter-by-chapter. Pretty much like a book club, except that, in recognition of the limitations on people’s time, our unit of discussion was a chapter (or more than one if the chapters were short) rather than a book. Participants took turns being responsible for leading each week’s discussion.

We read books on student-development theory, organizational behavior, time management, other cultures, and other topics I can’t recall just now. In the process we learned not only from the books but from—and about—each other.

The other effective professional-development experience I’ll mention was active involvement in NAFSA, where my first role was that of regional newsletter editor. I believe that any role in NAFSA, if approached conscientiously, can result in significant professional development. Including conversations with colleagues who can recommend good resources for keeping abreast professionally.

Some books I recommended in another context are listed on the Presidential Perspectives Web Site.