With state support shrinking, the University of Minnesota did something that President Robert Bruininks concedes was counterintuitive: it slashed tuition for international students and other nonresidents. Instead of paying $6,000 more than Minnesotans pay each semester, they now pay just $2,000 more. The public university was able to do so without asking for the legislature’s permission because “we’re one of the few academic institutions in the country that has constitutional autonomy from the state,” said Robert Jones, senior vice president for academic administration. But university leaders are convinced the move will pay off for an institution that aspires to become one of the top three public research universities in the world in a decade.
Minnesota already holds a position that most universities would envy: 28th in the world rankings by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and 9th among U.S. public institutions. With 51,000 students on the Twin Cities campus alone, including 3,700 from other countries, it is also one of the largest, and only three research universities send more students to study abroad. The Office of International Programs (OIP) has extended its reach and seen its budget burgeon since 2002 from $13 million to almost $23 million.
Another reason for the cut in out-of-state tuition is that Minnesota is girding for a projected drop in the number of students’ graduating from its high schools. “The University of Minnesota is a unique strength and comparative advantage for our state in a global economy. It’s a talent magnet,” said Bruininks. Pursuing “the international agenda of the university is not only the right thing to do to advance research and education… (but also) to advance the Minnesota economy as well.”
The University of Minnesota already had a broad global footprint when the Board of Regents in 2005 endorsed a strategic blueprint that made further internationalization a top priority. Since launching this “Transforming the U” initiative, it has consolidated colleges, expanded the faculty, and made rapid progress on improving graduation and retention rates. It also has moved quickly and adroitly to attract more international undergraduates. International students now comprise 3 percent of undergraduate enrollment, up from 1 percent, and the goal of 5 percent is in sight, thanks in part to intense recruitment efforts, tuition changes, and a push by International Student & Scholar Services (ISSS) to streamline admissions paperwork and make the university more inviting.
Former Associate Vice President for International Programs Gene Allen laid the groundwork for expanding Minnesota’s activities in China and elsewhere, including its signature “Minnesota Model” for integrating education abroad into the curriculum. The international profile has grown even further under his successor, Meredith McQuaid, who was given a seat at the table with other deans when decisions are made about the university’s research and spending priorities. McQuaid, an attorney who formerly led international programs in the law school, is a Minnesota alumna who studied Mandarin in China as an undergraduate, taught English in Japan and once took a motorcycle trip around the world. She recently found spacious, new quarters for the Office of International Programs on the East Bank campus, closer to the Mall and main administration buildings. The University International Center also is home to a new Confucius Institute, the 30-year-old China Center, and the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, Title VI national resource center. More strategically, McQuaid’s creation of an International Programs Council has led to renewed investment in internationalization efforts across the university system.
“Transforming the U” initiative, the university awarded faculty $1 million in grants in 2007 and 2008 . . .”
The OIP was established in 1963 in an era when the university had an Office of International Agricultural Programs as well, coordinating dozens of faculty projects across the world, many under contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID). Some 130 Moroccans—including students of Jones and Allen—earned doctorates and returned home to make the Institute Agronomique et Veterinaire Hassan II in Rabat one of Africa’s top agricultural universities. Exchanges were forged with universities in India, Nigeria, Uruguay, Norway, Hungary, Malaysia, Tanzania, and Tunisia.
As part of the “Transforming the U” initiative, the university awarded faculty $1 million in grants in 2007 and 2008 “to promote a global network of scholarship and engagement and encourage interdisciplinary and transnational partnerships.” While the faculty grants were modest—in the $15,000 to $20,000 range—civil engineering Professor Efi Foufoula-Georgiou said they went a long way. “It’s unbelievable how much mileage I got for this grant,” said Foufoula-Georgiou, who directs the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory. The grant allowed graduate students to travel to conferences in Italy, and that in turn led to collaborations at the University of Genoa and University of Padua. Art Professor Tom Rose received a small grant for exchanges with the Beijing Film Academy, which led to the creation of a course on contemporary Chinese art. Now a department that “never really had much of an international presence is now becoming much more interested and engaged,” Rose said.
OIP’s new Global Spotlight Initiative is focusing on Africa and global water issues. Carol Klee, chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, was named assistant vice president for international scholarship. Senior Vice President Jones and McQuaid visited Africa twice in 2008 to explore partnerships with sub-Saharan universities. Biologist Craig Packer, who has spent three decades studying lions in Tanzania, now is working with Minnesota colleagues on a broader “Whole Village Project” to address overpopulation and poverty, starting with an examination of how international aid impacts rural villages.
Following up on an academic task force’s blueprint for forging an international university, McQuaid appointed an International Working Group in 2007 to produce a five-year action plan. Its “Where in the World Are We Going?” report pinpointed gaps in the university’s efforts, including opportunities missed because faculty and schools had traditionally operated on their own in the international arena “The university lacks oversight of international efforts and knowledge of where in the world we are and what we are doing there,” the report said. The “plethora of MOUs [memoranda of understanding] signed with institutions around the globe is redundant, inefficient, and ineffective; the complete lack of oversight—legal and otherwise—is surely exposing the university to heightened risk.” Even within OIP, the staff of the Learning Abroad Center and that of ISSS worked apart. “That struck me as absurd,” said McQuaid. Changes to the structure and interaction of OIP units are being made under her leadership.
More than 2,000 students study abroad each year, and the University’s goal is to double that number, which would mean 50 percent would have an education abroad experience by the time they graduate. OIP combined separate education abroad offices and opened the Learning Abroad Center under the same roof with ISSS. The name “Learning Abroad” was chosen, Director Martha Johnson said, because “learning is a verb.” The 38-person staff arranges education abroad for 400 non-University of Minnesota students each year along with their own 2,000.
The so-called Minnesota Model of Curriculum Integration has won acclaim and foundation grants to knit education abroad into the curriculum. More than 800 faculty, administrators, and staff have attended OIP workshops on curricular education, and 90 recently returned for a refresher course led by director Gayle Woodruff.
The university sits in what Brian Atwood, dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, calls “an international city”—home to 19 Fortune 500 companies with global operations—in a state with a reputation for hospitality toward immigrants and refugees. The world headquarters of the American Refugee Committee and the Center for Victims of Torture are in Minneapolis.
When Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf— the first democratically elected female head of state in Africa—came in April 2009 to receive an honorary degree, nearly 2,000 of the 4,800 people who filled Northrop Auditorium were her compatriots, part of the diaspora from Liberia’s brutal civil war. Large populations of Hmong from Cambodia, Somalis, and others who fled strife have started new lives in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
“Some of our population,” quipped Atwood, former U.S. AID administrator, “is a result of failed U.S. foreign policy.” The university recently appointed its first postdoctoral and graduate fellows in Hmong Studies. Minnesota has had “an open, accommodating, accepting culture for a long, long time,” observed Bruininks, who has spent four decades at the U as education professor, dean, provost, and president.
Minnesota is also home to the federally funded Study Abroad for Global Engagement (SAGE) project, which examines how education abroad affected the attitudes of nearly 6,400 participants from 22 institutions dating back to 1960. One significant finding: the duration of education abroad had negligible impact on how involved they were in civic activities, volunteering, and other forms of “global engagement” in later life.
Minnesota’s Office of Institutional Research has conducted important research of its own on education abroad. It found that among freshmen who entered in 2000 and did not study abroad, the graduation rates were 30 percent within four years, 51 percent within five years, and 56 percent within six years. But the rates were sharply higher among those who did study abroad: 51 percent within four years, 84 percent within five years, and 91 percent within six years. The gap is even greater among the freshmen who entered in 2004: 40 percent within four years for those who did not study abroad versus 65 percent for those who did. This casts doubt on what the Learning Abroad Center’s Johnson calls “the misperception” that education abroad makes it harder for students to graduate on time.
ISSS Director Kay Thomas, an educational psychologist, stressed the importance of getting data like this “to back up what we’ve been saying” about the importance of international education. Her office has also been doing research on the critical experiences of international undergraduate students about to graduate, as well as studying the impact of administrative staff exchanges. Thomas is a past president of NAFSA, as were the two directors she worked for earlier in her 40 year career at the university, Forrest Moore and Josef Mestenhauser.
Thomas’s office enlisted nine international students in 2008 to blog about life on campus from the classroom to the cafeteria and to field questions from prospective students. Theerachai Chanyaswad of Thailand told of being stumped by his new classmates’ rapid-fire, idiomatic American English. His suggestion: “Calm down and try to fit in. You will succeed.”
“The so-called Minnesota Model of Curriculum Integration has won acclaim and foundation grants to knit education abroad into the curriculum.”
Asa Widiastomo of Indonesia offered practical advice about what clothing to bring to “MinneSNOW-ta.” Asa, who is Muslim and wears a hijab, said in an interview, “it was really hard in the beginning. People just saw me for my appearance.” But the outgoing Widiastomo joined the University Women’s Chorus, became a leader of the Indonesian Student Association, and got involved in multicultural groups.
Following a post-September 11 slump in enrollment in intensive English classes, the College of Liberal Arts shut down in 2004 an ESL program that had existed for decades. One student pointedly asked, “How can we be a world-class university if we don’t invite the world?” With encouragement by OIP, the university reopened the intensive English program (IEP) a year later within the College of Continuing Education. Enrollment is growing and Michael Anderson, director of the Minnesota English Language Program, said, “The closing and rebirth of the IEP has helped internationalize the university and also bring attention to the functions that it serves on campus.”
In harsh economic times, budgets remain tight. Bruininks and Jones both expressed a determination not to stint on the U’s expanded international thrust. “If anything, those areas will be strongly protected,” said the president. Jones was even more emphatic. Cuts “will be the last thing I do because I think we’re on the cusp of creating something here that’s going to position the university for the next 50 years.”
When Sonia Penso enrolled at Providence College, it was the dream of her autoworker parents—Portuguese immigrants whose education stopped in grade school—that she become a doctor or lawyer. Sonia herself envisioned law school as a strong possibility. But majoring in global studies, studying abroad in Nicaragua and Argentina, and working with troubled U.S. and Latino youth led her down a different path. She is now a caseworker with Homeboy Industries, a renowned gang intervention program in Los Angeles. “When everything shifted, I was really surprised that both my parents were incredibly supportive,” said the 23-year-old, who graduated in 2011.
Global studies seems to have the effect of altering career trajectories. Michelle DePlante ‘08, who was among the first to sign up when Providence created the interdisciplinary major in 2005, does immigrant and refugee work in the Rhode Island capital. Victoria Neff ‘09 is at the University of Denver doing graduate work in international studies after two years in the Peace Corps in China. Alexandra BetGeorge ‘11 is a Fulbright Scholar teaching English to high school students in Bulgaria.
These are the career paths that leaders at the Catholic college envisioned when it created the interdisciplinary major and imbued it with extensive community service requirements across all four years. They must become fluent in a second language (two advanced level courses) and, naturally, participate in education abroad. The global studies program now has nearly 100 majors and graduates 25 students each year.
The ethos of service runs strong at Providence, the only U.S. college founded and run by the white-robed Dominican Friars, but a push to internationalize students’ experiences picked up steam with the creation of a Center for International Studies in 2007 to facilitate education abroad. The college’s 2011 strategic plan seeks to boost the education abroad participation rate from 15 to 35 percent. An overhaul of the core curriculum addressed the need to develop more engaged students who undertake “research, scholarship, service, internships, and other immersion experiences locally, regionally, and abroad.”
Since making financial aid fully portable for the first time—a step with an annual cost of $3 million—Providence has seen the number of education abroad students rocket from 163 in 2010–11 to 230 in 2011–12, with even larger numbers projected for the 2012–13 academic year, said Dean of International Studies Adrian Beaulieu, who recently hired a fourth staff person for the Center for International Studies. The percentage studying abroad for a full semester has risen to 25 percent. Beaulieu said the first mandate he was given when hired as dean in 2007 was “to get serious about study abroad.”
Nicholas Longo, now the director of global studies, taught the first introductory course on global studies to 20 students back in 2005 as a part-time lecturer. Longo is a summa cum laude graduate from the class of 1996 who majored in political science, minored in a then-new department, public and community service studies, and became a civic engagement activist and scholar. He returned to his alma mater in 2008.
Global studies has no faculty of its own but draws from other departments. Longo, an associate professor in the Department of Public and Community Service, said, “There’s a core group of six faculty from social work, from philosophy, from the business school, from foreign language, from sociology, and from public service.”
Some courses are co-taught by community advisers such as DePlante, outreach coordinator for International Institute Rhode Island (IIRI), a nonprofit that provides educational, legal, and social services to immigrants and refugees throughout the state and southeast New England. She had done volunteer work for the institute as a college student and joined it full-time upon graduation. Now some of the students she teaches fulfill their service requirement by volunteering at IIRI.
Service learning is built into most of the major’s required courses. Students often work in teams on projects that in Longo’s words “examine globalization and global citizenship through the lens of local community engagement.”
Using local activists as co-teachers “really brings a community voice into the classroom,” said Longo, who once was a national student coordinator for the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Campus Compact and later directed Miami University’s civic leadership institute.
“Students are not just studying globalization in that first course. They are doing service learning and civic engagement projects and seeing what the real world implications of globalization are in Providence,” said Longo.
Like Sonia Penso, DePlante, the daughter of a Cuban immigrant, had to explain her choice of the major “more than once” to her parents and other relatives skeptical of whether it would lead to a job. “But I knew I was learning critical skills that would be the foundation for any direction I wanted to go,” said DePlante, who minored in business and Spanish as well. “The major provides the leadership and thinking skills that employers and grad schools are looking for.” She studied and did a business internship in Seville, Spain, then wrote her thesis on the assimilation of Hispanic immigrants in Providence.
Most of Providence’s 3,900 undergraduates do not have to write theses, but the capstone of global studies is a requirement to produce a “globally engaged” thesis. The seniors participate in a year-long seminar synthesizing what they have learned in the classroom and in their community involvement at home and abroad, then write a paper that is supposed to have real world implications, like the comparative study that Penso did on troubled urban youth in Nicaragua, Argentina, and Rhode Island.
Throughout the four years, the majors must develop an individualized learning plan and keep an “e-portfolio” tracking their progress in learning a second language, choosing an education abroad program, engaging in civic and service activities, and demonstrating awareness of global issues.
Longo said it has taken time to convince some faculty colleagues that global studies was “a rigorous and legitimate academic discipline,” but the projects students have taken on and their success after graduation have made that task easier. Neff, who came to Providence on a soccer scholarship, wrote her thesis on the role of community organizations in combating HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. BetGeorge studied abroad in Tunisia, which positioned her well to write a thesis on the role of Facebook in sparking the first Arab Spring revolution.
While global studies has had a strong influence on its own students, until this fall there was scant room in its courses for non-majors. But with a newly hired adjunct, the college now offers four sections of Introduction to Global Studies instead of two. “Part of the reason we haven’t grown as much as we probably could have is that if you didn’t come in as a global studies major, it was hard to get into the course,” said Longo. Now he hopes to “introduce the themes and the concepts from our course to many more students.”
“People aren’t looking at us any more like we were totally crazy for majoring in global studies,” Penso said with a laugh. “For me, it was the best choice I made. I’m so thankful that so many of the experiences that I had”—she worked with gang kids in Managua and undocumented youth in Buenos Aires—“were so far out of my comfort zone. It made me feel I can accomplish so much and do so many other things. It prepared us for the real world.”
