Impact-Driven Internationalization

June 2023, Rome.
I was attending a presentation on the results of an Erasmus+ survey, when I had one of those moments when everything clicks into place. But first, let me set the context…
I studied mechanical engineering and worked in that field for three years. Then, unexpectedly, I had an amazing opportunity to switch careers. I wasn’t sure exactly what my role would be when I joined University Mohammed VI Polytechnic (UM6P) in June 2018, about 18 months after its official inauguration, but I was drawn to the promise the university was making. It represented something unique in the Moroccan and African higher education landscape.
UM6P was founded on two core beliefs: first, that Africa and Morocco are home to exceptional talent and resources; and second, that there is an African and Moroccan higher education model yet to be discovered and developed, one better suited to the needs of our continent. I had not worked in academia before, and I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I had a gut feeling that this was the place for me. I was so confident in my decision that I signed a mortgage for an apartment within my first month!
A Growth Mindset
UM6P operated as a start-up. I quickly understood that there was a lot to do and that there was no job description because we were expected to be part of the initial effort to shape the organization. Long story short, my intrapreneurial skills ran free and were nurtured and enhanced in ways I didn’t know were possible. I operated as a project manager, moving from one topic to another across many areas that are now fully developed as core functions. By September 2021, the university officially launched the department that I’m leading today, the UM6P Career Center, capitalizing on previous projects that I had managed.
The Career Center is a central part of UM6P’s Academic Services Division (ASD) and is tasked with the mission to support the university’s colleges and schools to enhance students’ employability. At first, it focused on career advising and employer engagement, which is expected. My colleagues and I had an amazing time building the team, developing programs, working with students, and assessing student achievements after graduation. There is an immense sense of fulfilment when graduates call us, asking how to tackle a specific challenge they are facing at work. We take a lot of pride in knowing that we have gained their trust and that our guidance is highly valued.
However, UM6P is still new, and the university’s “to-do” list is always growing. One item that quickly became a priority was international education, particularly study abroad and student exchange programs. We noticed that these programs weren’t being adopted across all colleges and schools. Beyond the typical mobility expected in PhD programs and two individual success stories—a faculty member developed a semester abroad program and a school made international internships mandatory—our undergraduate and graduate programs were lagging in this area.
There is an immense sense of fulfilment when graduates call us, asking how to tackle a specific challenge they are facing at work.
In the ASD, we envisioned laying the cornerstone for an International Education Department, which would be part of the ASD, like the Career Center. As part of that plan, and true to UM6P’s growth mindset and entrepreneurial culture, we envisioned that the Career Center would “incubate” the International Education Department until it developed the necessary maturity to become a stand-alone department. We set things in motion, starting with conducting some benchmarks to learn more about this new landscape.
Back to Rome
As part of this new effort, I attended the 19th Erasmus+ Conference. Erasmus+ is an exchange program designed to build a European workforce. You can be Spanish, but you shouldn’t have any problems working in Lithuania, for example, because Erasmus+ equips students with the skills they need to thrive in diverse, multicultural environments.
Unlike the aim of Erasmus+, in the Moroccan and African context, we aren’t necessarily building exchange programs with the idea that students will work abroad and instead encourage them to consider working in their home countries. However, we do want our students to acquire the skills promoted by programs like Erasmus+. Africa is a growing market: From information technology companies to agricultural firms to public policy consultancies, multinational companies are flocking to the continent. At UM6P, we are training the next generation of leaders to be sensitive to the specificities of the African context and capable of navigating a multicultural workforce. We want them to be open minded and impact driven so that, wherever they choose to work, they can see beyond the scope of the everyday to the bigger picture.
At the conference, one panel shared results from an annual survey of European universities and their global partners. The presenter revealed that only a small percentage of international relations officers regularly collaborate with employability services. Although this triggered the “a-ha” moment for me, he only briefly commented that this shouldn’t be the case before moving on.
We want [students] to be open minded and impact driven so that, wherever they choose to work, they can see beyond the scope of the everyday to the bigger picture.
From that moment at the Erasmus+ Conference panel, I started asking myself the following question every time we considered a new exchange opportunity for our students: “So what?” This is a constant reminder of the real driver behind starting initiatives like UM6P’s International Education Department. It led to two major shifts in our initial plan:
- As an impact-driven institution, employability is a lens that heavily influences UM6P’s educational programs. Growth mindset; the capacity to work in a diverse and multicultural environment; and the ability to navigate a complex, globalized, and constantly evolving world are highly regarded skills in the job market. Living abroad is an effective tool to push our students to develop these capabilities. Thus, these experiences can be—and perhaps should be—part of what the Career Center offers.
- If we are open to changing the traditional division between career services and international education and merging these departments to suit the Moroccan and African context of UM6P, what else should we reconsider? Clearly, it’s the “one-size-fits-all” approach. We were so focused on encouraging students to study abroad that we overlooked the fact that 20 percent of them were already gaining international experience through internships. Instead of asking our faculty how we can send students to study abroad, we started asking, “What international experiences best suit your curriculum?”
Because of the safe working environment at UM6P, I felt comfortable proposing a radical change to our initial plan for developing study abroad programs. The university leadership and my manager were supportive, recognizing the added value of a broader approach to international experiences due to its alignment with our core mission. However, explaining this to peers from other universities was another challenge. I was anxious about being seen as someone who viewed all problems through the narrow lens of employability (like the proverbial hammer that considers all problems nails). Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Our partners were curious and inquisitive, initially responding, “It’s a new university, so everyone must be doing a little bit of everything.” But when I explained the intentionality and logic behind our approach, I received surprising and encouraging responses: “That makes total sense!”
A Learning Loop
Looking ahead, I am confident that this approach will lead us to build sustainable and innovative projects. It will also push us to diversify our offerings to respond to the expectations of students and faculty. I’m aware that we didn’t choose the easiest path, but it is the surest way to gain buy-in from our internal stakeholders.
A few months ago, we started the most decisive phase of our strategic planning: meetings with stakeholders. We are still in the process of gathering information, but one thing is already clear: We must review and reconsider our approach. Our target demographic is undergraduate and graduate students, but catering to this audience is pushing us to consider pursuing a larger scope of partnerships and engaging with a whole new list of stakeholders: PhD learning expeditions, faculty mobility, and postdoctoral placement, among them.
It may seem that we are working on two fronts at the same time: quick wins for undergraduate mobility and long-term, sustainable projects for the rest. Maybe it’s because of my experience at the Career Center, where we teach our students that nothing is linear in the real world, but I have come to see these two fronts as a learning loop, where one effort is undeniably and continuously feeding the other, with no strictly defined time or scope boundaries.
There is still a lot to do, and we are only at the beginning of the process. But we have what matters most: a well-defined, shared purpose of training the next generation of African leaders and a clear mission—and UM6P’s official motto—of “Empowering Minds.” •
Mariam El Aichaoui is the Career Center lead in the Academic Affairs Direction at University Mohammed VI Polytechnic in Benguerir, Morroco.
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