Inclusion and Equity

In May 2018, a delegation of senior administrators led by Lawrence Schovanec, president of Texas Tech University (TTU), arrived in Costa Rica with scissors in hand. They were there for the ribbon cutting ceremony at TTU’s first international degree-granting campus, Texas Tech University at Costa Rica (TTU-CR). The new campus, a public-private partnership between TTU and Costa Rican financial group Promerica Group, is one of the most visible examples of the ways in which TTU has expanded its portfolio beyond its main campus in Lubbock, Texas.

In the last 2 decades, TTU has transformed from a regional institution in west Texas to a top research institution with a global reach spanning from Costa Rica to Spain. TTU’s robust research portfolio and its international partnerships have helped propel the university’s recent Carnegie designation as one of 115 top tier research institutions—of which 81 are public institutions—in the United States. TTU’s research strengths include areas such as climate change; the interconnections of water, land, food, and fiber; computational and theoretical sciences; and energy. 

In addition to its physical presence around the world, the university currently serves 37,000 students—more than 3,000 of whom come from abroad—on its main campus. Internationalization has gone hand in hand with TTU’s quest to become, in the words of its first president Paul Whitfield Horn, an institution that thinks in “worldwide terms.”

“We’ve created a culture at Tech that covers the full gamut of international activities and initiatives,” Schovanec says. “It’s not just a matter of raising international student enrollment; it’s creating a community here on campus that’s supportive and appreciative of comprehensive internationalization of our education enterprise. It relates to research funding opportunities that have an international focus and opportunities for students to be involved in study abroad.”

Advancing TTU’s Global Vision With Strategy

The Office of International Affairs (OIA) is at the helm of TTU’s internationalization efforts. Under the leadership of Vice Provost for International Affairs Sukant Misra, OIA’s mission is to advance “the global vision of Texas Tech University by promoting international leadership, awareness, education, scholarship, and outreach for the university and the broader community.”

The unit oversees international recruitment, international undergraduate admissions, international student and scholar services, and study abroad. OIA is also responsible for international partnerships, research collaborations, and grants administration. The K–12 Global Education Outreach (K–12 GEO) initiative, which is part of OIA, won a NAFSA Senator Paul Simon Spotlight Award for its outreach efforts in 2016. K–12 GEO works with local schools and classrooms to foster global awareness in the wider Lubbock community. OIA continues to find new ways to move the university’s internationalization strategy forward on and off campus.  After 25 years at TTU, in various positions, Misra became vice provost and senior international officer in January 2018. Prior to this role, he served for 4 years as associate vice provost of international programs under Tibor Nagy, a former ambassador to Ethiopia and Guinea who retired from TTU at the end of 2017 after a 14-year tenure. 

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As associate vice provost, Misra spearheaded the development of the 2015–2020 OIA Strategic Plan and preparation of annual strategic plan assessments, which fed into the university’s new strategic plan, “A Pathway to 2025.” The strategic planning process led to several university-wide goals, such as integrating global perspectives into the curriculum and furthering intercultural understanding in the community at large.  

TTU also launched a new quality enhancement plan (QEP) as part of its 2015 reaccreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). The QEP, “Communicating in a Global Society,” focuses university-wide efforts on global communication and awareness. Led by the Office of the Provost, the QEP has provided additional funding to enhance undergraduate education in global communications through programing, educational activities, and scholarships.

Building a Globally Engaged Student Community

An area of strategic aim for TTU has been creating a globally engaged student community by recruiting, admitting, retaining, and graduating more international students. One of the first things Misra did as associate vice provost was to help transition international undergraduate admissions from the Graduate School to OIA, which has led to a more streamlined admissions process. 

TTU has always had a large international graduate student population, so many of the university’s recruitment efforts in the last few years have been centered on international undergraduates. The efforts have been fruitful; in the last 5 years, the number of international undergraduate students on the TTU campus has grown by more than 80 percent. According to President Schovanec, the number of international undergraduate students on campus exceeded the number of international graduate students for the first time in fall 2017. 

“We set out on the path to increase our [international] undergraduate enrollment very intentionally,” says Provost Michael Galyean. “We provided the appropriate staffing and defined what kinds of services we needed to offer. We made a commitment to serve those students once they got on campus.”

At the same time, the international graduate population grew by 18 percent. Now, more than one-quarter of all graduate students on campus are international.  

International students are primarily served by the International Student Life unit within OIA. This unit organizes orientation, welcome week events, and cultural programs, among other activities. Beth Mora, international student life coordinator, manages TTU’s international student orientation and other events throughout the academic year. “We help connect them to the Lubbock community, help connect them to the university, and help connect them to each other,” she says.

To help ease incoming international students’ transition to campus life, OIA partners with off-campus student apartments to provide incoming international students with a place to stay if they arrive in Lubbock before the campus residence halls open. Students are able to pay $5 per day for a “three-day stay.” “Many of our international students take advantage of both airport pickup and the three-day stay,” says Mora. 

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Dhanraj Apte, a graduate student from India studying industrial engineering, says he did not realize how much effort TTU puts into helping international students transition to life in Lubbock until he started working as a graduate assistant for OIA. “They have recognized the need to offer help and create[d] different resources for international students to make sure that we’re not having difficulties adjusting to U.S. culture,” he says. 

Promoting International Research to Advance Internationalization

Misra has also helped provide a renewed emphasis on international research and partnerships with the establishment of the International Research and Development (IRD) division of OIA in 2014. The unit, with support from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Office of Research Services, assists faculty from across campus to engage in international research and development activities. In addition to sending a monthly email that provides information about internal and external funding opportunities, IRD assists faculty with putting together grant proposals. 

“We have really ramped up our support for international research,” says Provost Galyean. “In the last 4 years, we’ve had a significant increase in not only the amount of funding we received, but also the number of proposals related to international research going out the door.” 

Biology professor Gad Perry, who also serves as senior director for international research and development, says his job is to help make international research collaboration as easy as possible for faculty by helping them identify funding opportunities and potential collaborators abroad. “We provide resources, information, and connections,” he says. “In doing so, hopefully we enhance the chance that they’ll do international research.”

Reagan Ribordy, director of international programs, says the IRD unit oversees a budget of $25,000 for international research seed grants. Approximately 10 faculty receive $2,000 grants per year to cover travel or other start-up costs, with the goal of eventually gaining external funding. Recent projects have included an investigation of young people’s communication via social media in Thailand and a pilot study on the antidiabetic properties of a medicinal plant found in Belize. 

According to Ribordy, TTU faculty have submitted more than $50 million worth of proposals since the IRD unit was established in 2014. Since then, the university has received approximately $4.8 million in external funding for international initiatives. These funds include a grant from the U.S. Department of State, which selected TTU to host 25 young African leaders through the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders in summer 2017. 

TTU is also developing strong relationships with partner institutions in countries such as Ethiopia and Brazil. For instance, Stephen Ekwaro-Osire, former associate dean of research and graduate programs in the Whitacre College of Engineering, is the principal investigator for a $1.1 million grant that supports the design and development of curriculum for four graduate programs in civil engineering and construction technology at Jimma University in southeastern Ethiopia. Additionally, the TTU Department of Human Development and Family Studies has collaborated with Jigjiga University in eastern Ethiopia to develop programs in nutrition and early childhood education. 

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In Brazil, TTU has partnered with the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) since 2014 to fund joint research projects. TTU and FAPESP have successfully cosponsored three rounds of research proposals, with teams winning support for the exchange of faculty and postdoctoral researchers in each cycle. For example, two TTU faculty members, along with a researcher from the Federal University of São Paulo, received funding to examine the effects of toxic stress on children’s brain development using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology. 

Another TTU initiative that promotes international undergraduate research is Research Study Abroad, a new program piloted by professor David Weindorf, a research faculty fellow in the Office of the Vice President for Research. Weindorf used funding from his endowed chair, the BL Allen Endowed Chair of Pedology, in the Department of Plant and Soil Science to fund student travel to countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe. He is hoping to encourage other faculty to replicate the program.

Engaging in Community Outreach to Foster Individual Understanding

TTU views community outreach through its K–12 GEO program as a central pillar to its campus internationalization strategy, with a mission to “build a globally engaged community of learners through outreach opportunities that foster intercultural understanding and exchange while enriching the quality of life for both the universities and local communities across west Texas.”

Founded in 1997, K–12 GEO creates opportunities for more than 20,000 local students, teachers, and community members to learn about the world each year. By visiting local classrooms and inviting local students to the TTU campus, TTU faculty and staff help boost students’ awareness of other countries and cultures within a community where many young people do not have the opportunity to travel. K–12 GEO programs include an Ellis Island experience, workshops on holidays such as Chinese Lunar New Year and Mexico’s Day of the Dead, and activities celebrating the history of Ireland’s music and dance culture.  

In addition to the programming provided to local K–12 students, OIA hosts eight to 10 events featuring internationally recognized speakers and culturally diverse educational programs that are open to the larger Lubbock community. Particularly noteworthy is the annual Texas Tech Ambassadors Forum, which features a panel discussion by diplomatic and foreign policy experts. Other events include an annual German Christmas celebration called Weihnachten and Culture Fest 2017. In 2017, OIA worked with 17 international student groups to put on an outdoor festival that showcased cultural performers from the Texas Commission on the Arts.

“Today’s complex world requires international cooperation on multiple levels. TTU is committed to graduating a diverse and globally competent group of students who are prepared to face these challenges. Community outreach continues to play an integral part of this mission,” says Kelley Coleman, director of international enrollment development and outreach.

Growing Study Abroad and Extending Opportunities to Underrepresented Students

As part of the university’s internationalization strategy, TTU has recently focused on expanding the number of students who study abroad. In 2016–17, approximately 1,300 TTU students participated in credit-bearing programs abroad. The College of Architecture highly encourages, and the College of Engineering requires, an international experience for graduation, with other departments considering adding this requirement as well. The College of Arts and Sciences has a foursemester foreign language requirement, which many students fulfill abroad. The TTU Spanish program is especially popular. 

 With more than 27 percent of enrolled students identifying as Hispanic, TTU was recently awarded the designation of a Hispanic-serving institution by the U.S. Department of Education. In response, study abroad staff are currently reviewing their programs and approaches to determine how to ensure that the demographics of the study abroad population reflect the larger student body. OIA often works with other offices on campus that serve underrepresented students, first-generation students, and students with disabilities to promote study abroad opportunities. One of OIA’s most frequent collaborators is the First Generation Transition & Mentoring Programs office. 

“Specifically in collaboration with the first-generation office, we copresent with the financial aid office at the beginning of each academic year,” says Whitney Longnecker, director of study abroad. “The presentation [to students] discusses the basics of study abroad but also covers the specifics of how to apply financial aid and scholarships to a study abroad experience.”

The presentation helps make sure first-generation and other underrepresented students are aware of the funding opportunities available for education abroad. Funded by a $4 education abroad fee that every enrolled student pays each semester, OIA administers a scholarship program that offers more than $350,000 each year to support study abroad. 

OIA makes an effort to reach out to underrepresented students throughout the year. “We also hold remote advising hours in the first generation programs office, which is a good way to meet with first-generation students in a space in which they are already comfortable,” Longnecker says. OIA continues to offer students similar levels of outreach and support once they go abroad.

Cesar Rocha, a senior studying mechanical engineering, spent fall 2017 at TTU’s study abroad center in Seville, Spain. He was able to take engineering courses as well as an upper-level Spanish class. As a first-generation student, he says he had never considered studying abroad before enrolling at TTU. “I was just trying to get to college and finish,” he says. 

Rocha adds that the program in Seville not only allowed him to keep up with his engineering curriculum, it also offered him a lot of first-time experiences. Although he is fluent in Spanish, it was the first time he had ever taken a formal Spanish class. Traveling to Spain was also the first time he had flown on an airplane. “It totally pushed me out of my comfort zone,” Rocha says. 

Rocha is one of many TTU students who have spent time at TTU’s study abroad center in Spain. Since 2000, the center has served more than 4,600 TTU students from all academic disciplines in both summer and semester-long programs—representing more than 40 percent of all TTU students who study abroad. The center also provides an opportunity for many TTU faculty and graduate teaching assistants to spend a semester abroad. 

Additionally, each semester, the TTU center in Seville hosts six to eight interns from the University of Seville who assist center staff with administrative tasks as well as interact with TTU students to improve their Spanish language skills. This relationship has served as an indirect recruitment pipeline to TTU’s graduate programs. 

Myriam Rubio, who earned her bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Seville, began working at the center as a linguistic assistant. She learned about TTU’s master’s program in Spanish through her interactions with the TTU faculty and graduate teaching assistants who came to Seville to teach. Rubio is thriving in her graduate program at TTU. “I’m loving every minute of my stay on the campus in Lubbock. My experience as a master’s student is not only improving my performance as a [Spanish] instructor, but it is also allowing me to grow both professionally and personally,” she says.

Offering a U.S. Education in Costa Rica

Building on its experience managing a physical presence overseas in Spain, TTU’s most recent international venture is the new campus in San José, Costa Rica. Promerica Group approached TTU in 2014 with the idea of offering a U.S. education in Costa Rica. According to Jack Bimrose, former director of EDULINK, a subsidiary of Promerica Group, U.S. higher education is cost prohibitive for large segments of the Central American population. The concept is to make academic programs related to strategic areas of development in the region more accessible to local students. 

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The first group of students began their studies at TTU-CR in August 2018 in five academic programs: electrical engineering, industrial engineering, computer science, mathematics, and restaurant and hotel management.

The campus, which has been accredited by SACS, will offer the same curriculum in English as the main campus in Lubbock. TTU faculty will teach on the Costa Rica campus, which has been built to the specifications of the departments at TTU. The hope is that TTU-CR will eventually host U.S. students who are studying abroad. 

“This is a unique model of engagement with industrial partners who want to provide the quality of a U.S. college education to Costa Rican students,” President Schovanec says. “We want the Costa Rica campus to become a nexus for postsecondary education in Central America.” 

At first glance, St. Lawrence University might give the impression that it is an institution far removed from the rest of the world. Founded in 1856 in Canton—a town of 10,000 in upstate New York— St. Lawrence is a private liberal arts institution with a student body of 2,500. Ottawa, Ontario, is the closest major city, located 80 miles away across the Canadian border. But it is the university’s remote location that fuels a need to give its students an international perspective.

“St. Lawrence is indeed very isolated. Because of that, there has been very strong faculty leadership to implement more global engagement,” says Marina Llorente, a professor of modern languages and literature who became associate dean of international and intercultural studies and senior international officer in 2016.  

St. Lawrence’s commitment to global engagement dates back to the 1920s, when students established the first International Relations Club on campus. Beginning in the 1930s, the institution hosted a series of cross-border conferences on U.S.-Canadian relations in collaboration with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. In 1949, St. Lawrence hosted the world’s first Model United Nations. The institution was also one of the first U.S. universities to actively engage in East Africa in the early 1970s. 

“The drive to explore and understand the world beyond our rural upstate New York campus has been part of St. Lawrence University’s institutional DNA for over 90 years,” said President William L. Fox. “St. Lawrence has continuously focused on building international components into curricular and cocurricular programming. You can say that internationalization is central to what we do and who we are.”

Nine percent of St. Lawrence’s total student population comes from abroad, but the institution also serves highly qualified, often high-need students from the surrounding region in upstate New York. More than 20 percent of the domestic undergraduates are eligible for Pell grants. 

“For those students, the sort of international perspective we have is amplified even more,” says Karl Schonberg, vice president of the university and dean of academic affairs. “There is a really interesting relationship between the local and the global here because of that mix of students in our population.” 

Prior to Llorente, Schonberg served as the associate dean of international and intercultural studies, leading the Patti McGill Peterson Center for International and Intercultural Studies (CIIS). CIIS oversees all international programming on campus, manages off-campus study programs, and coordinates a number of area studies programs. The associate dean position is filled by a tenured senior faculty member who serves for 4 years, with a possible two-year extension. 

Opportunities for Internationalization Through Off-Campus Programs

Since 1987, CIIS has coordinated the international and domestic off-campus programs, which previously operated through individual departments. CIIS currently manages 30 off-campus study programs in more than 25 countries. These programs provide significant professional development opportunities for faculty members. Forty-six percent of full-time faculty have led off-campus study programs of various lengths.

English professor Natalia Singer says that she never would have imagined that joining the faculty at St. Lawrence would take her as far afield as France and India. “There are so many projects and endeavors that have helped internationalize our curriculum that I’ve been able to take part in. I’ve been able to not only broaden my own curricular specialities, but also to direct and teach abroad,” she says. 

Students similarly benefit from a myriad of options available for experiential learning. Almost 70 percent of students participate in an off-campus study experience prior to graduating. The Institute of International Education’s (IIE) Open Doors report ranked St. Lawrence 15th among the top 40 baccalaureate institutions for the number of undergraduates participating in study abroad programs in 2015–16.  

St. Lawrence offers five signature semester- or yearlong study abroad programs in France, Kenya, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and its First-Year program in London, England. In addition, it runs signature domestic off-campus programs in the Adirondack Mountains and New York City. The university has seen significant growth in its off-campus summer programs over the last several years. In summer 2018, for example, St. Lawrence offered 12 courses in Denmark, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Nicaragua, Rwanda, and the United Kingdom, and two in the United States.

Madeleine Wong, associate professor and chair of global studies, recently spent a semester teaching in St. Lawrence’s First-Year program in London. As an alternative to the institution’s on-campus First-Year program in Canton, students live together in central London and take liberal arts courses that focus on developing their writing, speaking, and research skills. “I wanted to make sure that our program did not reinforce or perpetuate some of the tourist expectations that students have about study abroad,” Wong says. 

A particular area of focus has been the creation of education abroad programs for students majoring in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). A growing number of students in these disciplines have been able to engage in off-campus programs due to concerted faculty efforts; in 2016–17, approximately 29 percent of students in off-campus programs were STEM majors.

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Ten years ago, Ed Harcourt, professor of computer science and mathematics, worked with CIIS to develop the first education abroad program for engineers. The result was a semester-long program hosted by the University of Otago in New Zealand. “Over the years, I’ve been hunting around for places for our science, math, and engineering students to study abroad. The biggest constraint is being able to take these classes, science and math classes, in English,” Harcourt says. 

St. Lawrence STEM majors also have study abroad options at James Cook University in Australia, the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago, and Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China. 

Funding Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Abroad

In addition to its credit-bearing off-campus programs, CIIS offers a variety of opportunities for students to conduct research or pursue personal projects abroad. CIIS receives support from various donors, many of whom are alumni of off-campus programs, to fund travel enrichment grants that allow students to pursue an academic or personal interest while studying abroad. Travel research grants are also available to students who want to pursue more extensive study or research through independent travel or during an extension of an off-campus study program. 

Music major Emma Greenough received a CIIS travel research grant to attend the Russell Memorial Weekend festival in Doolin, a small coastal village in Ireland, during her semester abroad in Cork City. “My goal of this brief, yet informative and meaningful trip was to show how Irish music and its culture, including its natural beauty, are intermingled throughout the country,” she says. “My study abroad experiences, especially my time in Doolin, nurtured my love of Irish music and provided me reason to return [to Ireland] in the future.”

The CIIS Fellows program is another funding opportunity that supports faculty-student collaboration throughout the world and has funded 33 projects since 2001. The Fellows program is noncredit bearing but may lay the foundation for future academic work such as a senior capstone project. 

Wong took four students abroad to conduct independent research through the CIIS Fellows program. In July 2018, she accompanied global studies major Shanice Arlow to Namibia to examine how notions of race impact different populations in post-apartheid Namibia. Wong and Arlow received $7,500 from CIIS to conduct interviews with people across multiple generations and do archival research at the National Library of Namibia. 

Wong says the students’ projects are often tangential to her own research interests: “My role is to foster a sense of intellectual curiosity and experiential learning of the world in my students. Each of the students have their own interests, and my job is to help them develop critical thinking skills and [learn] how to do research in a foreign place to enhance their understandings of diverse global issues. I’m there to supervise them and teach them to ask interesting questions.” 

Encouraging Self-Awareness Through Global Studies

St. Lawrence’s off-campus study programs provide a way for students enrolled in interdisciplinary area studies programs to gain international experiences and still complete their degree requirements. The university offers degree programs in African, Asian, Canadian, Caribbean/Latin American, and European studies, as well as programs in Native American and African American studies. Drawing on the strengths of its area studies programs, the institution received a $1 million external grant from the Endeavor Foundation to support five faculty positions and establish the Global Studies Department in 2000.

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Professor of global studies Eve Stoddard was the first chair of the new department. She says that the global studies major was born from the fact that many themes in international studies cut across countries and disciplines. In addition to learning a second language, global studies majors take five core courses that introduce them to key concepts and debates related to global processes, political economies, and cultural studies. Students also design a concentration, which might be an intense area study or a cross-cutting theme such as gender studies.

The global studies curriculum is designed to encourage students to examine their own identities and place in the world through a global studies lens. “A lot of our students have developed that critical self-awareness of who they are, …their roles in society, [and] their responsibilities to the world, to their local communities, and to the world,” Wong says. 

Britni Stupin knew she wanted to major in global studies when she was accepted to St. Lawrence. As she started to take her global studies courses, she began to gravitate toward topics related to Africa and public health. 

Stupin was able to further pursue these interests through the Semester in Kenya program, which is run through St. Lawrence’s campus in Nairobi. While she was there, she focused on a community approach to health care. Stupin had the opportunity to work as a health programs intern at a nongovernmental organization in Kigali, Rwanda. “In essence, global studies has allowed me to find and pursue my academic interests and passions and has given me the tools necessary to think critically about the world around me,” she says.  

Establishing a Long-standing Footprint in Kenya

Stupin is one of more than 2,000 students who have studied in Kenya since St. Lawrence launched its first semester-long program there in 1974. In 2014, the institution celebrated 40 years of engagement in East Africa, based out of its five-acre Nairobi campus, which currently employs 17 Kenyans. “The program is very much about not encountering East Africa, but engaging and embedding yourself in the local community,” says Matthew Carotenuto, a professor of history who also coordinates the African Studies program, which launched in the 1980s. 

During the first week of the Semester in Kenya program, students live in accommodations on the Nairobi campus and participate in a weeklong orientation that prepares them to live independently in Kenya, with an emphasis on safety and security. Students spend 8 weeks on the campus where they take a series of courses, including Swahili and “Culture, Environment and Development in East Africa.” The group participates in rural and urban homestays as well as three extended field experiences in northern Tanzania and in various locations in Kenya. After the first 3 months in Kenya, students do a monthlong independent study, often with a placement at a host organization that works with an issue that interests them. 

In addition to Kenya, students are placed all over East Africa, including Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. For instance, students have interned with a member of the Kenyan parliament who is a St. Lawrence alumnus, and other students who are interested in public health have been placed at a hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.  

St. Lawrence strives for a mutually beneficial relationship in its overall approach to engagement in Kenya. Since 1984, the university has offered annual scholarship opportunities to Kenyan students to study in Canton, New York. Many Kenyan alumni who have studied at St. Lawrence have gone on to distinguished careers across Kenya, including four who were elected to the Kenyan parliament.

Emmanuel Ngenoh, a computer science and economics major who graduated in 2015, says his scholarship to St. Lawrence changed his life. While he initially struggled to adjust to life in Canton, he received support from the close-knit campus community and his host family. “I went from wanting to go back home the first few months at St. Lawrence, to not wanting to leave at all my senior year,” Ngenoh says.

He has subsequently returned to East Africa, where he has worked as a software developer and cloud solutions specialist. Ngenoh is currently planning on enrolling in a master’s program in information systems management at Carnegie Mellon University, which includes 1 year of study in Australia and 1 year of study in Pennsylvania. “There is no question as to how my experience at St. Lawrence University has influenced my adaptability in the world and expanded my abilities,” Ngenoh says. 

In 1992, the university created a standing two-year position for a visiting Swahili scholar who can either conduct research toward a PhD from a Kenyan university or earn a master’s degree from St. Lawrence. The current visiting scholar, Khalid Omar Kitito, previously worked as an education officer at the National Museums of Kenya and interacted with St. Lawrence students who visited the museums in Mombasa as part of the Semester in Kenya program.  

As the visiting scholar, Kitito taught Swahili and two semesters of “Swahili Culture and Identity,” which were intended to help students understand cultures other than their own. Moreover, Kitito taught a course titled “Hakuna Matata” for Canton area high school students to share Kenyan cultures and cultural practices. While at St. Lawrence, Kitito earned a master’s degree in human development and school counseling. He says his stipend has also helped fund his PhD program in Kenya.

Creating an International Community on Campus

In addition to welcoming international scholars on campus, St. Lawrence has made international student recruitment a strategic priority. The university has doubled its overall international undergraduate student population from 4 percent in 1995 to 8.5 percent in 2016. The campus hosted a total of 217 international undergraduate students from more than 60 different countries in 2016.

A large number of St. Lawrence University’s international students come from United World Colleges (UWC), a network of 17 high schools around the world, with support from the Shelby Davis Foundation, which offers up to $20,000 in financial aid per student. “They’re among the very best students on this campus and they’re involved in everything you can mention,” says President Fox. 

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With the growing international student population, St. Lawrence has increased the number of staff supporting the students’ academic and social adjustment. In addition to organizing intercultural activities, CIIS staff have focused on integrating domestic and international students. One way they have done this is through the creation of a living learning community called InterCultural House (I-House). I-House was established in 1984 as a coed facility accommodating around 80 domestic and international students. The internationally themed community offers diverse events, trips and community building activities, and a weekly tea time that encourages domestic and international students to come together and interact. 

Another major initiative is the Global Gateways program, which is funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The program seeks to foster intercultural exchanges while strengthening the bond between domestic and international students. In summer 2017, the program brought together 19 international students and six domestic students for a twoweek program prior to the start of the fall semester. 

“Global Gateways seemed like the perfect opportunity to learn about the different people that live around the world who go to St. Lawrence,” says undergraduate Connor Glitz. “In 17 short days, the program transformed us from an international group who didn’t know each other into a family of St. Lawrence students.”

Svetlana Kononenko, an international student from Russia, wanted to join the program after struggling to connect with international peers in high school. “Paintballing, swimming, campus kitchens, biking, presentations, classes, and games late at night made Global Gateways into a memorable and valuable experience,” she says. 

The program represents a microcosm of St. Lawrence’s overall strategy for bridging the local and global. “I strongly believed that this...program would help me to develop leadership skills and find my niche in a truly global university community by providing a forum for both international students and domestic students to blur the line of difference, thereby building an inclusive community,” Kononenko says. “And that’s what I found.”

The mission of Babson College is to educate entrepreneurial leaders who create great economic and social value—everywhere. Recognized as one of the top entrepreneurship schools in the United States, Babson draws more than 1,000 international students from around the world to its campus in Wellesley, Massachusetts, every year. Nearly 27 percent of the undergraduate students and more than 70 percent of the graduate students come from abroad, with a total student body of just over 3,000.

Internationalization has been at the heart of Babson’s mission as a private business college since entrepreneur Roger Babson founded the institution in 1919. “Roger Babson took away the lesson from World War I that the world needed to come together,” says President Kerry Healey. “The way that he thought that could best be done was through business, executed in the interest of humanity. Roger Babson’s original vision is still applicable for us almost 100 years later.”  

Spreading Entrepreneurship Education Around the World

Babson seeks to share its approach to entrepreneurship education beyond the borders of its Wellesley campus. “We want to be the preeminent institution for entrepreneurship education everywhere,” says Amir Reza, vice provost for international and multicultural education and senior international officer (SIO). “The opportunities for internationalization sit within the ‘everywhere’ context. We want to create access to our methodology, which we call entrepreneurial thought and action.” 

Heidi Neck, professor of entrepreneurship, oversees the Global Symposia for Entrepreneurship Educators (SEE) program, which is delivered twice a year on the Babson campus and available on demand internationally. “We train other educators from around the world in how Babson teaches entrepreneurship,” Neck says.

Neck also directs the Babson Collaborative for Entrepreneurship Education, an institutional membership organization under Babson’s leadership made up of 23 institutions around the world. “We’re trying to build a better entrepreneurship education ecosystem by collaborating, helping one another, sharing best practices, but also imagining future possibilities,” Neck says. “Babson is very small, but we want to bring what we do with respect to entrepreneurship education to the world.”

Babson has used technology to increase access to its entrepreneurship expertise. The college has contributed six entrepreneurship courses to edX, the platform created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University that provides online learning and massive online open courses (MOOCs). More than 100,000 people in 220 countries and territories have participated in Babson’s entrepreneurship MOOCs, according to Healey. 

Bringing Together International and Multicultural Education

The Glavin Office of Multicultural & International Education is at the heart of Babson’s internationalization efforts. It is home to international education, multicultural, service-learning, and multifaith programs. In an innovative approach to internationalization, the Glavin Office aims to foster conversations about identity, diversity, inclusion, and equity on campus. 

When Reza became SIO in 2010, he brought together international education—which includes education abroad and international student and scholar services—and multicultural education under the larger umbrella of the Glavin Office. In 2014, the office also assumed responsibility for service-learning and multifaith programs, which provided more intersectionality. 

“We have experimented with intentional strategies to bridge the gap between these areas to benefit our students’ education,” Reza says. “Each area continues to have professionals with expertise in their respective fields, and we have seen both organic and intentional programming that has helped us further the mission and goals of each area through the lens of the other.” 

Much of the Glavin Office’s programming consequently revolves around encouraging students to explore their cultural identities and how that impacts the ways in which they interact with the world. Glavin’s predeparture orientations for education abroad, for example, take an inclusive approach to the subject of identity. Students are asked to list five to 10 aspects of their identities and are guided through a set of reflection questions that ask them to explore the ways that identities like LGBTQ, gender, and race are seen in their host country and to consider how they will interact on those issues.

“What we are doing is talking about the relationship between identity and place for everybody, using several different examples,” explains Reza. “If I’m an African American student and I’m going to a predominantly white environment, what does that mean? Or if I am a Muslim and I want to practice my faith, what does Islamophobia mean for me?”

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Another example of the collaboration between the international and multicultural education teams was the development of a three-part workshop titled “Understanding Race and Racism in the U.S. for International Students.” Designed by arts and humanities professor Elizabeth Swanson, the first workshop gives students an understanding of language and terminology and the idea of race as a social construct. The second segment focuses on slavery and historical race relations in the United States, and the final workshop helps students process current events and issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement and the actions and policies of the Trump administration. 

The goal of the workshop series is to help international students gain a better perspective on current events and historical precedents that shape many of the discussions on today’s college campuses.

Salome Mosehle, a senior from South Africa, says that although her country has its own history of racism, she grew up in a predominantly black society. “I came to the United States and was told that there was a struggle that comes with being black,” she says. “It was a tough thing to grasp.”

She says the racism workshop helped her understand the new cultural context in which she found herself. “The [workshop] really helped open my eyes about what it means to be black in America,” Mosehle says. 

Recruiting International Students Through the Global Scholars Program

When Kerry Healey took office as Babson’s president in July 2013, one of the first things she did was to establish the Global Scholars program, a need-based scholarship for talented international students. She created the program because she wanted to diversify the international student population, both economically and geographically. “I thought that we were missing a great opportunity to bring some of the most talented students from around the world who aspire to be entrepreneurs to Babson,” Healey says. 

In 2014, when she offered the first 10 need-based scholarships for international students, more than 900 students applied. Since then, the college has committed more than $1 million a year to fund 10 scholarships, which cover tuition, room and board, airfare, and books, depending on the individual student’s level of need. There are currently 45 Global Scholars on the Babson campus.

A faculty mentor works with each cohort of Global Scholars, and the international student advising team designs a special orientation and plans retreats and cultural events throughout the year. 

“Having this group of scholars on campus has been transformative. We have the sense that each and every one of them are going to go back to their countries and become profound change makers,” Healey says. 

Lizaveta (Lisa) Litvinava, who earned a dual concentration in global business management and diversity and identity, is an international student from Belarus. Litvinava is among the first cohort of Global Scholars who graduated in May 2018. Her fellow Global Scholars came from Afghanistan, Brazil, Rwanda, and South Africa. 

Litvinava says that her experience as a Global Scholar has “meant everything.” “If it weren’t for [this program], I would have never been able to speak about the world in the way that I speak about it right now. I would never have been able to become the person I am right now without the experience and education that Babson gave me,” she says.

Creating a Welcoming Environment for International Students

With a third of its student body coming from abroad, Babson goes out of its way to make sure that international students such as Litvinava feel at home. Babson intentionally avoids separating international students from domestic students throughout their college experience. Many universities offer separate welcome programs for international students, but Babson holds a single orientation for all incoming students. While international students might attend specific sessions on topics such as immigration and work authorization, they are integrated with domestic students for the majority of the orientation. 

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The college has also taken specific steps to make sure that international students feel welcome in light of recent political developments. “We take our lead from students. When something happens in the world, such as the [travel] ban and attacks against DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], we reach out to students to find out what they need and what’s meaningful to them,” says Jamie Kendrioski, director of international services and multicultural education. “I don’t make any decision about how to react to a crisis or issue without talking to students first and seeing what matters to them,” adds Kendrioski. 

International students concur that Babson goes the extra mile to make sure that they feel comfortable. “From emails coming out from the president directly [to students] to teachers speaking about things in class, I think it gave us a sense of comfort and assurance that we are accepted here,” says Ashutosh Pandit, an MBA student from India.

Fostering Global Awareness Through Glavin Global Fellows

In order to bring together all of the various international opportunities available on campus, Babson launched the Glavin Global Fellows program, a cohort-based program for undergraduate students. The program includes a first-year living learning community, a certificate program, and internationally themed events throughout the year. The Glavin Office also sponsors students to take part in international and language case competitions, and it awards more than $12,000 in grants for students to conduct independent research abroad. 

According to Lorien Romito, director of education abroad and the Global Fellows program adviser, each year, approximately 250 students are Glavin Global Fellows and around 25 students graduate with the certificate. Romito also serves as the campus Fulbright adviser because students who demonstrate an early interest in international issues are prime candidates to apply for the Fulbright program.

To earn a Glavin Global Fellows certificate, students need to take two or more courses in a foreign language and three advanced classes with international content. Additionally, students need to participate in an international experience abroad or a multicultural experience in the United States. 

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Aidan Dennis, who is doing a dual concentration in global business management and social and cultural studies, first became interested in the Glavin Global Fellows program as a first-year student. He says that half of the 20 students living on his floor in the residence hall that first year were international. He describes the Glavin Global Fellows program as “a community of students who are very interested in global issues.” 

Dennis, who will graduate in 2019, has had three international experiences on three different continents. He studied abroad in Argentina and Chile, and he did a short-term elective abroad in Thailand and Laos. He also applied for and received a grant to spend a week in Amsterdam conducting interviews as part of a Glavin Global Fellows project on consumer behavior in the Netherlands. 

He says that spending time abroad helped him understand the challenges that international students at Babson face: “From the Glavin Global Fellows program, I really learned about myself through interacting with all these other people from different countries, and then going abroad myself and coming back is like stepping into their shoes.” 

Education Abroad for Global Entrepreneurs

Dennis is among the 547 Babson students who went abroad in 2016–17. In 2018, 52 percent of Babson’s graduating undergraduate class participated in a credit-bearing education abroad experience. This is an average increase of 10 percent year-over-year since 2005. 

Babson is intentional about its education abroad advising, with a particular focus on early outreach during students’ required first-year seminars. In addition to providing specialized workshops on finances for study abroad, the college awarded more than $368,000 in internal need-based education abroad grants to undergraduate students during the 2016–17 academic year. 

Babson offers a variety of programs of different lengths, ranging from short-term electives abroad to semester and academic year programs. Each year, approximately 150 undergraduate and 155 graduate students participate in faculty-led electives abroad that run during academic breaks. These courses combine classroom instruction on campus in Massachusetts with in-country lectures, company visits, and cultural excursions. Examples include a humanities course on postmodernism in the United Arab Emirates, a theater course in England, and an economics course in Argentina and Uruguay. 

Through Babson’s International Consulting Experience program, student teams work on project assignments with international corporate sponsors. The program includes predeparture sessions in the fall that are focused on consulting methodologies and intercultural competencies, with travel to the company site taking place during winter break. The 33 projects that were carried out over the past 5 years included 126 Babson students, 15 Babson faculty, and engaged partner schools and businesses in 12 countries. Participating companies during this period include Bosch in Germany, the Mariinsky Theatre in Russia, and Care&Share in India.

The college’s flagship education abroad program is a multidestination faculty-led program known as Babson - Russia, India, China: The Cornerstone of the New Global Economy (BRIC). Every fall semester, a cohort of 24 students spend a month each in St. Petersburg, Russia; Shanghai, China; and New Delhi, India. Babson faculty lead each segment of the program, offering a full courseload combined with business visits, cultural excursions, and service-learning opportunities. 

Bill Coyle, professor of accounting and law, has been taking students to Russia since the early 1990s. His relationships with partners there, along with commitment from other faculty and the Glavin Office, laid the foundation for the BRIC program, which launched in 2009. The program was created with a desire to give students a comparative framework within which to understand developing economies. 

Before departing for Russia, students attend an intensive predeparture orientation on the Babson campus that provides guidance on thinking comparatively across cultures. Students also take a two-credit intercultural communications course that spans the entire semester that allows them to reflect on their experiences in different cultural contexts. According to history professor Katherine Platt, the orientation and the communications course help students reflect on their identities as individuals and as a group. 

Notably, participation in BRIC has resulted in significant intercultural development demonstrated by pre- and post-Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) results. On average, participants’ IDI scores increase more than 20 percent. 

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Students benefit from simultaneously taking business and liberal arts classes. “The whole semester is a balance of business and liberal arts courses—entrepreneurship, management, history, and philosophy,” says Platt, who teaches in the India portion of the program. 

Coyle says the liberal arts courses provide a foundation for students to understand the three countries’ business environments. “As a business professor, I have a real appreciation for the fact that you can’t be serious about doing international business if you do not understand the liberal arts aspects of the country you are considering doing business in,” he says. “The way [Russians] do business is based on their history and politics and economics and the literature they have grown up with.”

Alumni Outreach Around the World

With 40,000 alumni in 125 countries, Babson has recently focused on finding innovative ways to build up its alumni network. In 2015, President Healey launched Babson Connect: Worldwide, a three-day alumni conference and networking platform that is held in a different region each year. The inaugural conference was held in Cartagena, Colombia, followed by Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Bangkok, Thailand; and Madrid, Spain. Approximately 400 alumni attended each conference. 

Babson has been able to get significant press coverage prior to the events, which in turn has boosted the number of student applications from that region. “We saw immediately that bringing the conference to the region [gave us a return in investment] in alumni support [that was] many times [more valuable than] the cost of the event,” Healey says. “There are benefits to enrollment, fundraising, and just general reputational benefits. We have the opportunity to rally all of our local alumni in the planning stage to make sure that we have local engagement.” 

The 2019 Babson Connect: Worldwide will return to Boston, Massachusetts, to celebrate Babson’s 100th birthday, giving its international alumni a chance to reconnect at their alma mater. “I’m proud to say we are coming home for our centennial,” Healey says. 

Chrystal Holmes-Smith never thought education abroad would be an option. “Traditional study abroad programs just weren’t feasible [as] an education major,” says Holmes-Smith, who graduated from SUNY Buffalo State in 2015 with a degree in elementary education. “Having to do servicelearning and student teaching makes it difficult to spend a semester abroad.”

Influencing Future Generations

The chance for Holmes-Smith to go abroad came about through SUNY Buffalo State’s International Professional Development Schools (IPDS) Consortium program in Santiago, Chile. While abroad, HolmesSmith and her classmates spent 2 weeks learning Spanish and participating in cultural activities and another week working with Chilean teacher candidates to teach children English.

“My last day in the classroom was the most defining moment of the trip for me,” Holmes-Smith says. She worked one-on-one with a little girl who wanted to practice her English. They created sentences related to things that they had in common. At the end of class, the little girl asked to take a picture with Holmes-Smith and set it as the screensaver on her laptop. “On the way home, her teacher told me that this was a student who never participated,” Holmes-Smith says. “She usually seemed uninterested in class and never wanted to try speaking….I decided then that I [wanted] to teach abroad…[and] that I wanted to work with English language learners.”

Since that three-week experience through IPDS, Holmes-Smith has gone from being a teacher candidate who had never thought about traveling abroad to becoming a globally competent educator who has lived and worked in two different countries. She taught for a year in Honduras and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua. Now, as a fifth grade teacher in Harlem, New York, Holmes-Smith works with students with backgrounds from all over the world. “The IPDS experience…helped me become a better teacher for English language learners and a more culturally responsive educator,” she says. “Having the chance to be a language learner myself helped me to learn strategies that make it easier for language learners to comprehend.”

Navigating Diverse Classrooms

Holmes-Smith is one of more than 180 SUNY Buffalo State teacher candidates, along with 20 faculty members, who have participated in the IPDS program since it launched in Chile and Zambia in 2012. Since then, SUNY Buffalo State has established 45 partnerships in more than a dozen countries, including China, the Dominican Republic, England, Germany, Italy, Myanmar, and Rwanda. Additionally, discussions are currently underway to establish a partnership at the graduate level in Colombia. Each location is offered every other year to avoid competing for participants. Students who are unable to travel can participate in a virtual IPDS with a school in Honduras.

The IPDS program was born out of a need to prepare future teachers to work in increasingly diverse classrooms. SUNY Buffalo State faculty designed the program with a short-term travel component due to the difficulty of incorporating international experiences 
into the curriculum of teacher education programs. “Teacher education is notoriously difficult to internationalize because of the prescriptive nature of the state agencies that give teacher certifications,” says Robert Summers, assistant provost for global engagement. SUNY Buffalo State has found the answer in IPDS.

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Centering on Inclusive Programming

Founded in 1871 as the “Buffalo Normal School,” SUNY Buffalo State’s School of Education is one of the oldest teacher colleges in New York state. A large influx of immigrants and refugees to the larger Buffalo area over the last 10 years has further increased the need for teacher candidates to develop global competence in order to better serve students with diverse cultural backgrounds.

Ninety percent of the participants of the International Professional Development Schools program are women, and 25 percent identify as a member of an underrepresented group. “A large majority of our students are first-generation college students, and many have never traveled outside of the United States,” says professor Pixita del Prado Hill.

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Students enroll in a course the semester prior to traveling to help prepare them for a three-week servicelearning trip abroad in January or June. In addition to learning about the culture of their host country, students are asked to reflect on the language differences they might experience and how to adjust their teaching practices in classrooms where they might not have access to the same resources as they do in the United States.

Establishing a Lasting Impact

IPDS students visit schools, observe classrooms, and work with mentor teachers. The Siena, Italy, site is the only site offering student teaching opportunities at an International Baccalaureate (IB) school. At other study destinations, the SUNY Buffalo State teacher candidates often prepare English language lessons and engage in informal conversations with students. In some locations, participants live with local families and have the opportunity to engage with nonprofits in the community, further extending their cross-cultural exchanges.

Faculty at SUNY Buffalo State often remark that one of the most important elements of the IPDS program is helping teacher candidates understand what it is like to learn in a language that they might not understand. To support their work with local students, SUNY Buffalo State students traveling to Chile and the Dominican Republic spend part of their time in-country taking an intensive Spanish class tailored to their own proficiency level. “One of the most important impacts is around language learning and supporting that experience in a very compassionate way when they come back,” says del Prado Hill.

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The impact of the IPDS program has gone beyond the School of Education at SUNY Buffalo State. The Creative Studies Department, for instance, sponsors a trip to Yangon, Myanmar, during which students engage in an IPDS-supported project working with displaced Burmese children living at the Dha Maw Da Monastery School. Another example is the Anne Frank Project, which is facilitated by the SUNY Buffalo State Theater Department and implemented in various schools in Rwanda and Kenya. Participants apply drama-based education tools toward conflict resolution and teacher training.

Teacher candidates also participate in comparative education research while they are abroad. Students have completed projects on topics such as recess in different countries and comparisons of the use of native languages in IB schools in the United States and Italy. Upon return to Buffalo, the teacher candidates present their research findings to instructors and peers.

Music education major Kristine Murnieks worked with another student on a project looking at music as a tool for second language instruction, while studying in Torremaggiore, Italy. “We taught second grade students in English using a bilingual book we authored ahead of time,” says Murnieks, who graduated in 2018. “Collecting data for our research has really aided my understanding of pedagogical parallels for teaching language and music.”

Carrying Out the Vision of Faculty Stakeholders

The program’s international partnerships are largely faculty driven and entail collaboration with universities and schools in the host locations. Once the initial connections are established by individual faculty members, other professors are brought in to help make the partnerships sustainable. These partnerships provide access to unique learning opportunities for SUNY Buffalo State’s teacher candidates.

del Prado Hill developed the partnership with Universidad Mayor in Santiago while she completed a Fulbright fellowship to Chile in 2011. The leadership at SUNY Buffalo State and Universidad Mayor were strategic in identifying parameters to make the relationship reciprocal. Every other February, Universidad Mayor’s teaching training program sends its students and faculty to Buffalo for 3 weeks, giving SUNY Buffalo State students the opportunity to get to know Chilean students. del Prado Hill has also collaborated with Universidad Mayor faculty on a few projects. “They’ve contributed a chapter to a book that we’re in the process of publishing,” she says. “We also share resources and expertise.”

For another pivotal partnership, professor Hibajene Shandomo was instrumental in setting up the International Professional Development Schools program in her native Zambia. She used her own networks to develop partnerships with the University of Zambia, local schools, and an orphanage. “What our teacher candidates see, what they experience in a day of visiting these schools and teaching these students, is equivalent to many, many hours of reading a book about other countries,” Shandomo says. 

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SUNY Buffalo State

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From street signs pointing the way to its study abroad centers to parking signs in 11 languages, internationalization at Dickinson College is evident from the moment one steps on campus in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. With 60 percent of students studying abroad and 14 percent of its population made up of international students, the private liberal arts college is the first two-time winner of the Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization.

When Sagun Sharma began her studies as an international student at Dickinson College, she had no idea she would end up working as a writing tutor for international fellows from the nearby U.S. Army War College. At first, Sharma was worried she wasn’t up to the task, especially since many of the fellows’ papers focused on international relations. “The topics of their essays are usually very different from what we are familiar with,” she explains. “It’s very interesting to learn through their essays, but they’re also very receptive to our feedback.” Sharma’s efforts were acknowledged at the end of the year when the War College presented her with a certificate of appreciation.

Serving Students Across Languages

Dickinson’s Norman M. Eberly Multilingual Writing Center is the only writing center in the United States that offers tutoring services in English and the 11 modern languages taught at the college. The center has a partnership with the War College to offer writing tutoring to the 80 senior military officers from around the world who participate in a yearlong fellowship in Carlisle.

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In addition to tutoring international fellows, Sharma often works with native English speakers. As an international student from Nepal, English isn’t Sharma’s first language, which caused her some apprehension at the beginning. “When I got offered the position, I was nervous because I wasn’t sure how I could help American students who have been doing this in their language for such a long time,” she says. “But my job is more of helping students to think differently about writing. The approach we take is more of focusing on the writing process.”

According to Noreen Lape, director of the writing program and associate provost of academic affairs, the writing center tries to flout what she calls “native speaker privilege.” “We do have native speakers tutoring in the language, but right now we have about seven Vietnamese students and other international students tutoring English writing,” Lape says. “And then we have U.S. domestic students tutoring in the various foreign languages. Some may be heritage speakers of that language, but others went and studied abroad and increased their proficiency.”

Sharma is one of more than 300 Dickinson undergraduates who come from abroad, making up 14 percent of the degree-seeking 2,300 students on campus. The writing center isn’t the only place on the Dickinson campus where international and domestic students come together. International students serve as orientation leaders, participate in a mentoring program for first-year students, are represented on the President’s Commission on Inclusivity, and run an international student advisory board.

Sharma says she appreciates Dickinson’s efforts to integrate international students into the campus community while at the same time offering specific support. “One of the challenges that comes with being an international student is finding that balance of not standing out too much, but also finding recognition that I have different needs because I am an international student,” she notes.

Increasing Diversity On Campus

Dickinson has a long history of international education, dating back to its creation in 1783. The college’s founder Benjamin Rush, a physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, earned his medical degree abroad at the University of Edinburgh. That deep-rooted appreciation for international exchange is found throughout Dickinson. The college created its first study abroad center in Bologna, Italy, in 1965 and further grew its international profile with support from a series of international education grants in the 1980s.

When Dickinson was named one of the winners of the inaugural Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization in 2003, the institution had already sent a significant number of students abroad and boasted a broad array of courses and majors with an international focus. But at the time, there were only a few dozen international students on campus. Since then, the college has invested significant resources in recruiting international students and diversifying its student population.

From 2009 to 2018, the racial and cultural diversity of the entering freshman classes has changed dramatically. International enrollment has grown from 5 percent of the first-year cohort in 2008 to 14 percent in 2018. The top six countries represented on campus are China, Vietnam, Nepal, South Korea, India, and Pakistan.

According to Provost and Dean of the College Neil Weissman, Dickinson’s current international engagement is based on a continuation of partnerships and programs that have been in place for decades. “We’ve continued to have a really deep commitment to study abroad. We’ve continued to have a high percentage of internationally oriented courses in the curriculum. We continue to hire faculty into positions and programs that are international in their scope,” says Weissman, who has been at Dickinson for 44 years and provost for 22 years. “The most noteworthy change is the increase in international students on campus. We’ve continued to internationalize the student body and try to do so in a way that…is not focused on a single country.”

Committing to Inclusion and Intercultural Competency

Margee M. Ensign, who became the college’s 29th president in July 2017, says the institution’s commitment to global education is part of the reason she was attracted to Dickinson. Prior to coming to Carlisle, Ensign spent 7 years as president of the American University of Nigeria, a legacy and direction that she has brought to Dickinson.

Given her expertise in Africa, Ensign has delivered several guest lectures for a course that took students to Rwanda for 2 weeks in May 2019. She also found private funding to sponsor four young Chibok women from Nigeria who had been kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorist group. This led to the creation of a program wherein young people whose education has been disrupted by war and natural disaster can complete high school and eventually study at Dickinson.

Ensign returned to the United States at a time when an understanding of other countries and cultures is more critical than ever, she says. “A lack of international knowledge is one of our greatest national security threats,” Ensign argues. “We’re deeply committed to deepening our intercultural competency, not just for international students, not just for students who are studying abroad, but throughout campus.”

Under Ensign’s leadership, Dickinson’s internationalization efforts have provided more structure for initiatives that promote inclusivity and intercultural competence across all aspects of the college’s operations. She created a new vice president position focused on institutional effectiveness and inclusivity. Brenda Bretz, the new vice president and chief diversity officer, co-chairs the President’s Commission on Inclusivity with Samantha Brandauer, who serves as associate provost and executive director of the Center for Global Study and Engagement (CGSE). Representatives of the Office of LGBTQ Services, Popel Shaw Center for Race and Ethnicity, and the Women’s & Gender Resource Center, as well as faculty, are also included on the commission.

Bretz says that an element of integrating global learning and inclusion into the college experience is helping students navigate all kinds of difference. “We are thinking about positionality, power, and privilege and how that relates to both our students going abroad and also international students coming here and trying to adjust to the culture of the United States,” she explains. “It’s new territory for both groups and a good opportunity for talking across issues.”

Implementing a Cross-cutting Approach to internalization

Ensign has ushered in a three-pillared approach that cuts across Dickinson’s liberal arts core: global study, sustainability, and civic engagement. In line with that approach, as executive director of the CGSE, Brandauer oversees education abroad, international student and scholar services, and global learning on campus.

Brandauer works closely with the Center for Sustain­ability Education (CSE) and the new Center for Civic Learning & Action (CCLA), which opened in January 2019 with a $900,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The three centers operate in partnership to ensure that the themes of global study, sus­tainability, and civic engagement run throughout the curriculum. As part of their general education requirements, all ­students have to take courses that center on U.S. ­diversity, global diversity, and sustainability.

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One of the ways that Dickinson has promoted cross-fertilization between global study, sustainability, and civic engagement is by having the director of each center sit on the strategic planning committee for the other two, according to CCLA founding director Gary Kirk. “We’ve already started at the margins to be really intentional about integrating civic learning outcomes into the coursework associated with our study abroad programs. I want to make sure that’s happening in every program,” he says.

That begins with support from the faculty, Kirk adds. Professors at Dickinson's study abroad sites have received training through the Valley & Ridge professional development workshops offered through the CSE. “We’ve started focusing on faculty who are going to be directing one of our study abroad programs to help them integrate sustainability into the different kinds of courses that they’re teaching,” says Neil Leary, associate provost and CSE director.

The CSE also promotes place-based education, which pushes students to connect what they are learning with where they are studying. Professor Ed Webb has a joint appointment in political science and international studies and helped establish the college’s Middle East studies program. For his courses on international politics, students keep a diary where they track their consumption of water, food, and fuel over a specific period.

“They have to write a detailed blog post reporting on what they used and how much they used and how that compares to U.S. national averages,” he says. “But then they also compare it to the countries we’re studying and Middle East and North Africa. What I’m trying to do there is connect [what they’re studying] with how we live on this campus. It makes it a little more visceral.”

Promoting Education Abroad Throughout Campus

One of the areas where Dickinson has been most successful is its student and faculty mobility. Nearly 70 percent of students who go abroad participate in a Dickinson program. The CGSE offers 17 programs in 13 countries: Argentina, Australia, Cameroon, China, Ecuador, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, and Spain, plus one in New York City.

Some countries such as England have multiple programs. In Italy, students can choose between the Italian studies and European studies programs, as well as take courses from the University of Bologna. The South American program starts with a month-long intensive language course in Ecuador and includes a semester in Argentina.

A distinguishing factor of Dickinson’s education abroad programs is the number of students who complete a semester- or yearlong program. Dickinson consistently ranks in the top five for long-term study abroad, according to the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors data. Of the students who study off campus, 67 percent spend a semester off campus; among those who go abroad, 14 percent study for an academic year in one or more locations and 2 percent combine a short-term experience with study for a semester or academic year.

Recent graduate Alden Mohacsi spent a semester at the Dickinson center in Bologna, Italy. His experience left a lasting impression even upon return. As a tour guide for the Dickinson campus in Carlisle, Mohacsi always made it a point to show prospective students the international signposts when he was leading them around campus.

Mohacsi says that while he was in Italy, his professor helped facilitate a meeting with asylum seekers from Nigeria so that he could better understand what was happening in Italy. “I don’t think I would’ve had that experience at any other school,” he says.

Dickinson’s education abroad portfolio is further bolstered by the college’s strong modern languages programs, which include Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Modern Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. All students are required to obtain at least an intermediate proficiency in a foreign language. In 2017–18, 40 percent of education abroad participants enrolled in programs that have a language prerequisite.

During the 2017–18 academic year, the CGSE team developed and launched a mandatory three-part intercultural workshop series for all students studying off campus for a semester or academic year. Using Kathryn Sorrells’s Intercultural Praxis Model as the foundation for the curriculum, these interactive workshops establish the campus community and Carlisle as prime settings for students to start practicing and fine-tuning their intercultural skill sets in preparation for living, learning, and growing in an unfamiliar country, and within an unfamiliar culture. This intentional predeparture programming has helped to expand the profile and benefits of education abroad.

Dickinson has made great strides in making sure education abroad is accessible to underrepresented students. Fifty-two percent of first-generation students, 66 percent of students of color, and 58 percent of Pell Grant recipients in the graduating class of 2018 participated in education abroad. Students pay the same comprehensive fee that they are charged on campus and are able to use their institutional aid on semester-long programs coordinated by Dickinson and by its partners. The CGSE works closely with other offices, such as the Popel Shaw Center for Race and Ethnicity, and staff overseas to make sure that underrepresented students are supported before, during, and after study abroad.

Also contributing to Dickinson’s education abroad enrollment numbers are its international students. Harry Qiu is a Russian and international studies major from China who spent a semester in Moscow, Russia. When he came to Dickinson, he wanted to learn a second foreign language and eventually chose Russian. “Because the Russian department here is pretty small, the professors are very welcoming to me because I’m from such a different background,” he says.

Qiu serves as a community adviser in the Russian House, where he lives with other Russian majors and an exchange student from Russia who comes from the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH), which hosts the Dickinson in Russia program. The connections that students build often extend far beyond the campus walls. “When we go abroad to that university, those students who previously studied here also often meet with us and are in charge of some trips and just taking us around,” Qui says.

Engaging Faculty Partnerships

Provost Weissman says that one of the keys to Dickinson’s dynamic education abroad offerings is having long-standing relationships with partners abroad. When it comes to developing programs, “there is no one size fits all except that we always work with at least one local partner university,” Brandauer says. “Many have permanent staff and our own locally hired faculty and, in some cases, we work directly with the international office at the university for student support.”

Brandauer herself is a product of Dickinson’s global education, studying abroad on programs in Cameroon and Germany and a Dickinson program to France. After Brandauer earned her undergraduate degree from Dickinson, she did an Austrian Fulbright teaching fellowship during which time she met her Austrian husband whose eventual faculty position at a college near Carlisle brought her back full circle. “I’m a Dickinson alumna, was gone for 20 years engaged in international education, and I’m now associate provost at the best college to do the work to which I have devoted my career, ” she says.

Having faculty and staff with an international perspective reinforces the college’s commitment to intercultural competency. “The core concept for us in study abroad is this hybrid notion that we want our students to have an immersive experience,” says Provost Weissman. “At the same time, we have our own staff there when we can. And being there for a long time, we can identify faculty and courses that fit our [curriculum] here.”

Roughly 40 percent of faculty have participated in the two-year resident directorship at Dickinson programs in England, Italy, and Spain, or have run a short-term faculty-led program. Faculty members can apply for the two-year positions through a competitive application process. In the next few years, the college plans to move one of the two faculty directorships from England to New Zealand.

Creative writing professor Susan Perabo was the resident director for the Norwich Humanities program at the University of East Anglia in England from 2013 to 2015. In addition to teaching, the resident directors often help students manage logistical issues such as planning cultural excursions and learning how to navigate a university that is much larger than Dickinson. “I loved that piece of it, because it allowed me to get to understand the way that the country works and to think about the kinds of things that were important for the students to do,” Perabo says.

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Perabo feels refreshed after spending 2 years in England: “I was able to bring some of that energy back here, but also just make connections with a lot of British writers that I’ve been able to take advantage of since coming back here.”

Innovating Internationalization

Innovation has been integral to internationalization at Dickinson, both on and off campus. When professor Carolina Castellanos arrived at Dickinson, Portuguese was not being taught on a regular basis. Since then, a Portuguese minor was approved in spring 2012 and the college will soon launch a Dickinson in Brazil program in partnership with study abroad provider CET Academic Programs and the University of São Paulo. “I had complete support from the get-go to build the program,” Castellanos says.

Japanese professor Alex Bates adds that the college is supportive of and even encourages new ideas: “If I come in and say that I want to do this funky summer program, but I’m not sure if it’ll work, they’ll say, ‘Okay, let’s help you make it work.’”

One of Dickinson’s most recent innovations is the launch of graduate courses on peacebuilding, established through a memorandum of understanding with the War College. Dickinson has already developed several electives for the War College’s master’s of strategic studies. According to President Ensign, Dickinson is also designing a full master’s program with Tulane University’s Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. “We’ve just launched our first course, which is [on] how social media is used to support and counter violent extremism. It’s one of the first courses in the country on the topic,” Ensign says.

From its cutting-edge graduate courses to new study abroad partners in Brazil and New Zealand, Dickinson continues to innovate while maintaining its deep commitment to comprehensive campus internationalization. “Heavy faculty involvement, long-term commitment to particular sites abroad, and the ability to innovate and change have been critical. There are also checks and balances along the way to make sure that we’re still in dialogue with our curriculum,” Brandauer says.

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A leading research university founded in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1764, Brown University is known for its open curriculum that allows students to become the architects of their own education. Through its strategic planning, myriad study abroad opportunities, and wide spectrum of international student support services, Brown continues to drive its internationalization agenda forward.

Brown University graduate Nothando Adu-Guyamfi was not the typical education abroad student. “I’m from South Africa, so I always joked that I’m already on study abroad,” she says.

Adu-Guyamfi and 10 classmates from Brown traveled to Ghana in January 2019 as part of a social sciences course, “The African Atlantic Diaspora: Race, Memory, Identity, and Belonging,” taught by professor Shontay Delalue. The course looked at the long-lasting ramifications of the transatlantic slave trade and how they impact questions of race and identity in the United States and abroad. The students visited sites such as the slave castles at Elmina and Cape Coast and tied them back to their own lived experiences. All travel expenses were covered through Brown’s Global Experiential Learning and Teaching (GELT) grant program.

Adu-Guyamfi hadn’t planned on studying abroad when she enrolled at Brown, but she couldn’t pass up the chance to take the course with Delalue, who serves as vice president for institutional equity and diversity. “What drew me to that class was my experience in coming to America as a black person and not necessarily initially understanding the social dynamics of that,” Adu-Guyamfi says.

As a member of Brown’s International Student Advisory Board, Adu-Guyamfi has had conversations with many other students about how their identities, “both those that they acknowledge and recognize and those that are put upon them when they come here,” shape their experience in the United States.

“Understanding my positionality was something that was eye-opening for me,” Adu-Guyamfi says. “The discussions we had and the framework that we were looking at definitely helped me grapple with my time here at Brown and understand what it means to be a black international student.” Adu-Guyamfi’s time abroad and participation in Delalue’s class added additional dimensions to those conversations.

Prior to her current position as chief diversity officer, Delalue served as dean and director of international student experience. Her own experience working in international education and diversity services has helped to elevate the discussion of identity and student experience both in her classroom and across the institution. “I am proud that we are really thinking about internationalization and its intersections with domestic diversity,” Delalue says.

Fostering Internationalization Through Strategic Planning

A focus on identity, inclusion, and the student experience has become a cornerstone of Brown’s global engagement. Internationalization at Brown took on new momentum in 2016 with the launch of Global Brown, a plan that guides the university’s international partnerships, research and curriculum, education abroad programming, and support for international students and scholars.

After becoming provost in 2015, Richard Locke tasked Deputy Provost for Global Engagement and Strategic Initiatives Shankar Prasad with developing an operational blueprint to help integrate a global perspective into the university’s 10-year strategic plan, Building on Distinction. The idea was that internationalization, much like diversity and inclusion, should be integrated into the institution’s strategic priorities.

To accomplish this task, Prasad first wanted to take stock of how the university might better support “Brown in the World” and “The World at Brown,” looking at outbound mobility and engagement abroad as well as the international community that exists on campus in Providence, respectively.

Prasad began by talking to stakeholders across campus to identify areas where there were gaps of support. Those conversations led to both organizational and structural changes. To streamline Brown’s global engagement, various international initiatives were centralized under the Office of Global Engagement (OGE), which reports directly to the provost. The OGE helps to coordinate activities between units such as the Office of International Programs, which oversees education abroad, and the Office of International Student & Scholar Services, which offers immigration support.

The OGE also created a new position focused on international travel safety and security that serves the entire institution. In this role, director Christine Sprovieri has developed a number of policies and procedures to help mitigate risk for student, staff, and faculty travel, and she created an emergency response plan.

In addition to providing resources and hiring more staff to support international students, Brown opened up a dedicated center for the international population. “Students don’t care who reports to whom in this university; they just want to know where to go,” Prasad explains. “So we created a one-stop shop.”

“Most of us still continue to report to different parts of the university, but we make up Global Brown,” he continues. “The idea is that the 40 people who support internationalization, whether that’s going abroad or coming here, are united by this common mission.”

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Tying Partnerships to Strategic Priorities

During the development of the internationalization blueprint, Provost Locke wanted to make sure that Brown’s approach to global partnerships supported the university’s strategic plan. “Brown’s approach to global engagement had been similar to many universities’, and focused on entering a number of MOUs with organizations all over the world,” he says. “We decided to rethink this, undertake a careful review, and continue with the ones that align with Brown’s academic strengths and priorities and have substantive activity taking place.”

Shaira Kochubaeva, associate director for global engagement, oversees all aspects of Brown’s international partnerships to advance its international efforts in the areas of research, teaching, and service. The OGE team has adopted a “less is more” approach by focusing on approximately 75 robust partnerships, the majority of which are concentrated in Brazil, China, France, India, Japan, South Korea, and Spain. Brown also aims to establish more institutional partnerships that encourage a multidisciplinary approach and involve different departments around campus.

One example is Brown’s long-standing relationship with Charles University in the Czech Republic. Starting with a faculty collaboration in Slavic linguistics, the partnership now extends to American studies, applied mathematics, classics, East Asian studies, Egyptology and Assyriology, history, Italian studies, and Slavic studies.

Brown is in the process of planning a new pan-university center for global health that will support research, education, and service in four focus areas: global health and migration/displacement, global health and gender/gender equity, current and emerging epidemics, and global aging. The key values will be to promote health and well-being for all people of all ages around the world; advance social justice, emphasizing equity, diversity, inclusion, and sustainability; and ensure transparency and accountability in all partnerships, local to global, according to Susan Cu-Uvin, director of the current Global Health Initiative. The working committee is led by Susan Short, director of the Population Studies and Training Center.

Leveraging Networks to Expand Study Abroad

One of the outcomes of Brown’s emphasis on productive partnerships is that more than 500 Brown students study outside of the United States each year, facilitated by the Office of International Programs (OIP). Brown-sponsored programs currently operate in 13 countries. The majority of participants spend at least a semester abroad, though Brown also offers short-term programs to Ireland, Italy, Russia, and Spain.

Since 2014, Brown has led the Consortium for Advanced Studies Abroad (CASA). The group is made up of 12 comprehensive research institutions, including the University of Melbourne in Australia and Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. Prior to the creation of CASA, a number of the consortium members were running separate programs in the same cities. By working together, they can better attain a “critical mass of students,” says Kendall Brostuen, OIP director.

Another benefit is being able to leverage the partnerships that CASA members have with local universities. At many of CASA’s locations, the strength of the consortium opens doors to learning opportunities beyond the classroom, including internships, community engagement, and undergraduate research.

“We’re able to take advantage of the vast network that our universities have in those locations,” Brostuen explains. “If we are able to pool our resources, it can be much more beneficial for our students, and we can think strategically when it comes to investing in these programs.”

Recent graduate Nicole Comella, who studied public health, took part in the CASA program in Havana, Cuba. “The program is run out of Casa de las Américas, which is essentially one of the most renowned cultural institutions in the city,” she says. “We have classes within the consortium with Cuban professors, and they’re pretty well-known Cuban academics. And then you also have the choice to take classes with the University of Havana.”

Every 5 years, CASA identifies a theme that transcends national boundaries to promote undergraduate research and faculty engagement. “We want to use these institutional relationships on the ground with key partner universities as a catalyst for faculty engagement,” Brostuen says. “To this end, we have opportunities, for example, for faculty and researchers from the partner university to actually carry out research that is funded by the consortium.”

Cultivating Research and Experiential Learning Abroad

During her time abroad, Comella also completed a photojournalism project on the Cuban health care system through Brown’s Global Independent Study Project (GLISP). Students work with a Brown professor to pursue an independent research project, and they receive funding for any local travel that might be required. More than 225 students have undertaken research abroad through GLISP over the last 10 years.

“GLISP encourages students who are going abroad to actually carry out research on a particular theme that they could never explore here in the United States,” Brostuen says. “The purpose of this is really to tie the international experience back to Brown.”

Makedah Hughes participated in a Brown-sponsored program to Paris where she studied comparative literature and French studies at the Sorbonne. Her GLISP project was a comparative analysis of how black identity is expressed in French literature and music. “Personally, I have always been really interested in black identity or Afro-descendants in French spaces,” Hughes says. “It was so hard to do that kind of work here at Brown because there’s just not a large population of francophone black folks here. It was great to be in that community and to make connections like that.” Hughes’s connections from the program also helped her to successfully apply for an English Teaching Assistant Fulbright to France in fall 2019.

In addition to GLISP, Brown has supported faculty and graduate student research abroad through the Global Mobility Grant since 2015. The program provides funding to faculty who seek to conduct short-term research abroad and graduate students who wish to devote a summer or semester conducting pre-dissertation research at an international institution.

A fifth-year PhD student in comparative literature, Edvidge Crucifix used the grant to travel to North Africa and her native France to do archival research. “The grant really was the turning point in my research. It completely changed what I was doing,” she says.

Global studies and reflective cultural awareness are also elements woven into Brown’s executive master’s programs (EMBA) for mid-career adult students. EMBA students study in South Africa and explore the challenge of entrepreneurship in Cape Town’s townships, while students in other programs study comparative international health care systems and learn about corporate science and technology practices in South Korea, according to Karen Sibley, dean of the School of Professional Studies.

Brown also sends students abroad through the GELT program, which embeds a travel component into a longer course. Faculty can apply for a course development grant with the possibility of securing an additional $35,000 to cover travel costs for up to 12 students. GELT course topics have included Delalue’s course on the African Atlantic diaspora and another on the geology of volcanoes in Greece. Since 2014, between three and five faculty have received funding each year.

“When faculty apply to teach GELT courses, we’re looking at how explicit they’re making the learning goals for the course and how the travel component of the course can actually help students achieve those learning goals,” explains Sarah Mullen, chief of staff and assistant director of curricular programs in the College. Brown is distinctively known as a University-College, with undergraduate education based in the College.

In addition to the many ways in which Brown undergraduates are inspired to study abroad, Brown’s pre-college program offers multiple study abroad opportunities each summer, demonstrating the value placed on global experience to prospective Brown undergraduates.

Supporting International Students Through the Global Brown Center

Global Brown also focuses heavily on the international community on campus. Seventeen percent of the university’s 7,000 undergraduates are international. At the graduate level, 42 percent of master’s students and more than half of doctoral students come from abroad. The top sending countries are China, India, Canada, South Korea, and Turkey.

Supporting international students and scholars at Brown is part of President Christina Paxson’s vision for comprehensive internationalization. “One of Brown’s greatest strengths is our diverse, global community. We value the more than 2,000 international students and scholars who are essential to our university. And the ideas, experiences, and perspectives they bring are critical to our capacity to engage in teaching, research, and service with excellence and distinction,” Paxson says. “We are committed to attracting the most talented and promising students and scholars from all countries of origin, cultures, races, religions, identities, and experiences, and to cultivating an environment that ensures the free exchange of ideas and advancement of knowledge.”

That commitment begins with open, ongoing dialogue with international students about their goals and needs. In her former position as dean of international student experience, Delalue spent much of her time talking to international students about what they really needed from the university. “A big part of my responsibility was to assess the landscape and really help the senior-level administration understand what would be needed to best support international students,” Delalue says.

She created the International Student Advisory Board as a forum for international students to share their experiences and concerns. One of their recommendations was to reserve a dedicated space on campus for the international population. Students also expressed a clear need for more academic and extracurricular support.

In response, the Global Brown Center for International Students (GBC) was established under campus life in May 2017. Several months later, Brown opened the Global Brown Lounge, known as “the Globe,” which provides a physical space for international students. The GBC has the same status as other affinity centers on campus such as the Brown Center for Students of Color, the LGBTQ Center, and the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender. Any student who identifies as international— including students with immigrant backgrounds and U.S. citizens who grew up abroad—is welcome.

Former GBC program director Christina Bonnell, along with a staff of 12 students, ran a mentoring program and planned orientation and other programming for international students. The GBC currently works with 40 internationally focused student organizations.

Ramisa Fariha, a biomedical engineering master’s student from Bangladesh, works in the GBC as a community fellow responsible for organizing events for international graduate students. She is also a member of the International Student Advisory Board. “Being a part of the advisory board is really cool because you’re actually involved with identifying problems pertaining to international students,” she says.

Fariha has coordinated events such as a healthy meal prep night led by a former international student who now runs her own start-up company. “We’re always cooped up in our labs or doing research, so we need a few social events,” Fariha says.

Designing Programming for International Student Success

In support of the international community, Brown created academic dean positions to serve as advisers to both international undergraduate and graduate students. Part of the rationale for the new positions was that “no student should come here and feel like they have no idea how to navigate the college experience,” Prasad says.

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Some international undergraduates, for example, might need help in understanding Brown’s open curriculum, which means that there are no core curriculum or distribution requirements that students must complete in order to graduate. Students are able to choose the classes that most interest them and, in some cases, design their own major, known as a “concentration” at Brown.

As the associate dean for international undergraduate students, Asabe Poloma has focused on identifying some of the academic barriers and challenges preventing international students from thriving. She has started conversations with faculty and advising deans about culturally relevant pedagogy and inclusive advising practices and worked with the campus career center, CareerLAB, to bring attention to professional development for international students.

“We try to approach all of our programming with the intention of thinking about the international student identity and experience as an asset,” Poloma says.

Divya Mehta, a former international student and Brown graduate, was hired as the first international student career coordinator. Working with Poloma, she co-organized an annual undergraduate career conference and helped connect international students with Brown alumni. “This year, we had alumni from several different fields and industries come in to create a first step to mentorship, but also have the opportunity for students to understand what their career trajectory could look like,” says Mehta, who recently left her position to attend graduate school at London School of Economics.

Creating Spaces for International Graduate Students

The international graduate student population at Brown has grown rapidly over the last decade in tandem with the expansion of its master’s programs. Because Brown as an institution is largely focused on undergraduate teaching, international graduate students advocated for a dedicated support person for their particular needs.

Coming out of the Global Brown strategic planning process, “we knew we needed someone to be the point person for international grad students,” says Shayna Kessel, the associate dean of master’s education and interim associate dean for international graduate students.

The international graduate students “were using these undergraduate resources to try to resolve housing issues, tax issues, social issues, and nobody really knew what to do for them,” she adds.

As the associate dean of master’s education, Kessel was already serving as the primary adviser for many of Brown’s international graduate students. So it made sense to appoint her as the point person for international graduate students. “What we’ve taken away from me being in this position for a year is that there has to be a physical connection between the Graduate School and Global Brown,” she says.

Third-year PhD student Sophie Brunau-Zaragoza has been the chair of international advocacy on the Graduate Student Council for the last 2 years. She says the biggest part of her job has been asking how new policies and programs might impact international graduate students. “There’s usually a very easy solution to include international grad students. It’s just that no one else had thought about it,” she says.

Brunau-Zaragoza worked closely with Bonnell at the Global Brown Center to revamp the international graduate student orientation. “We got rid of as much of possible of the academic structure,” she says.

A concrete example of the changes that Kessel has been able to make is allowing graduate students to have their degrees conferred at multiple points during the year. Students were staying in Providence longer than they needed to because they were unable to get jobs at home without a physical diploma. Brown turned out to be the only Ivy League institution that only conferred degrees once a year.

“Just knowing international graduate student needs and being able to do something about it, and having really receptive administrators, has been really important,” Kessel says.

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