Teaching, Learning, and Facilitation

Amid dizzying growth in communities ringed around north Houston, the newest expansion of the 78,000-student Lone Star College System will add just 300 to 350 students—in Jakarta, Indonesia. It is a modest enterprise by Texas standards but is in keeping with other Lone Star efforts to internationalize the education it delivers at its six colleges to all students—2,000 of whom are international. 

The architect of this expansion is Chancellor Richard Carpenter, who as a foster child in Louisiana foresaw a future painting houses before a music scholarship to a community college altered his personal trajectory. He became at 29 the country’s youngest college president in a Kentucky community college and ran systems in Nevada and Wisconsin before becoming Lone Star’s chancellor in 2007. He is a veteran of several economic development missions abroad led by governors and has seen how much interest there is among foreign leaders in building U.S.-style community colleges of their own to expand opportunity. “They look at it like they discovered gold,” said Carpenter, who sits on the board of Community Colleges for International Development, Inc. “We are American ambassadors. We take the American dream and plant it around the world.”

Magnet for International Students

Lone Star, founded in 1972, was North Harris Montgomery Community College District before adopting its current name in 2007. Lone Star’s enrollment stood at 49,000 in 2007. Its growth surge was fueled by the recession that sent unemployed workers to community colleges to improve their job prospects. Local voters approved a $420 million bond issue for expansion in 2008, and in 2012 Lone Star opened a sixth campus, University Park, in office space that once was the headquarters of Compaq computers. But a half-billion dollar bond issue was rejected in May 2013, which may apply the brakes to future growth.

Houston, a global center for the oil and gas industry, remains a powerful magnet for international students. Houston Community College enrolls 5,800, more than any other two-year college. Lone Star was fourth in 2011–12 with 2,000 and has had as many as 2,500. They pay $5,000 a year in tuition, a quarter of what University of Houston charges. “What a gift to get a solid education here and transfer that to a four-year university,” said Nithyanantha J. Sevanthinathan, Lone Star’s chief international officer who heads strategic global partnerships, and “Nithy” to everyone. 

Internationalizing the Faculty

Lone Star committed itself to an international course when it established an International Programs and Services (IPS) office in 2004. Nithy, the first director, formulated the framework and implementation. In 2008 IPS began awarding $4,000 Faculty International Exploration (FIE) awards to encourage faculty to internationalize the content of their courses and create education abroad programs. Fifty-five faculty have shared $270,000 in awards. The first went to then-band director James Stubbs, who visited jazz festivals in Europe and returned the next summer with students who performed at the famed Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and in Italy. “We felt like celebrities,” said Stubbs, now dean of arts and humanities at Lone Star-Kingwood.

Only 41 students studied abroad in 2011–2012, even with the college offering 15 scholarships up to $2,000. “Program cancellations due to low enrollments have been the biggest challenge,” said Malaysian-born Nithy. Six of ten courses offered for summer 2013 were cancelled. Lone Star-North Harris Art Professor Eric Sims has tried unsuccessfully to run an art appreciation program to Spain, but said, “I haven’t given up. Many of these students have never been out of Houston. This is a life-changing experience.”

Stirring Imaginations

Still, Lone Star faculty have taken students to Italy, China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania, and the FIE awards are a powerful stimulant for faculty imaginations. Lone Star-CyFair Psychology Professor Lori Richter and Adjunct Professor Davida Rogers took 16 students in June 2013 to Tanzania, where they studied orphans and children at risk, performed service, and took a safari in the Serengeti. Richter, a former Peace Corps volunteer in The Gambia who also lived in Kenya, said, “I just want our students to experience my experience. I want them to feel like the whole world is open to them.”

Christopher Garcia, 19, a business student and the sole male in the Tanzania group, saved money from several jobs to go. “I’ve been looking at study abroad since I got to Lone Star,” said Garcia, who helped organize a community service project last spring in Houston that drew more than 300 volunteers. Garcia aspires to become an international businessman and when he does, “I want to be culturally sensitive.

Like Richter, Lone Star-Montgomery Spanish Professor Norseman Hernandez, who grew up in poverty in Honduras, embodies a passion for education abroad. “I was one of the kids selling food to people on buses. It’s been a long way for me to be here,” said Hernandez, who’s led students to Mexico twice and Chile once.

“My classes aren’t just about uno, dos, tres, and Ola! Como está? They’re about the world,” said Norseman, who as a boy dreamed of being a pilot. He uses Google Earth in his classes and assigns students to make presentations on different parts of the world. “I also learn. It’s like I’m traveling and I’m there, too,” he said. “I’m not in a cockpit, but I get to go wherever I want now.” 

“I’ve been looking at study abroad since I got to Lone Star,” says Garcia, an aspiring businessman. “I want to be culturally sensitive.”

International Education Conferences

The pride of Lone Star’s international programming is the International Education Conference it has held each spring since 2004 where prominent speakers address global issues and Lone Star’s own professors give workshops on their international  explorations. The conference sprang from a Title VI international studies grant that the North Harris campus won in 2002. “Everything international comes from that grant,” said Anne Albarelli, dean of academic affairs at North Harris. She and Theresa McGinley, dean of instruction in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Business and Economics Division, spearheaded that effort and today serve on the conference planning committee and the IPS Council. 

Lone Star has spent $60,000 on the conferences over the years. The keynote speaker at the 10th conference in April 2013 was Middle East expert Mark Kimmitt, a retired brigadier general and U.S. State Department official. Lone Star has also piggybacked with the World Affairs Council of Houston to host such figures as Lech Walesa, the former Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. McGinley, whose parents survived World War II in Poland, said she always brought international perspectives to her U.S. history courses. Today more than 70 Lone Star courses carry an international studies designation.

Nithy is the impresario of the conferences. He was an international student once who came to Minnesota to pursue opportunities largely unavailable to Malaysia’s Hindu minority. With Fulbright support, he earned a peace studies degree and two MAs while organizing bicycle treks across the United States, South America, and Africa that schoolchildren followed online. “My dream was to journey the whole world on a bicycle,” said Nithy, whose father was a shipyard laborer.

Saving Vietnamese Parents Money and Visiting Wall Street

The largest number of international students come from Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Nepal. Some live with relatives in Houston and commute to Lone Star. The six campuses are more suburban than urban. “They look like (international students’) image of what an American college looks like,” said Melvin Anthony of Lone Star-CyFair, one of 14 international student advisers.

That is the route second year student Chi Cao, 20, followed, journeying from Danang, Vietnam, four years ago to live with an uncle in Houston while she completed high school and enrolled at Lone Star. “I decided to go to Lone Star to save my parents money,” she said. They are going to be saving a lot more. In April 2013 she won a $30,000-a-year scholarship that the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation awards to top community college students. Cao is headed to Texas A&M University and looking forward to buying textbooks for the first time instead of reading reference desk copies in Lone Star’s library.

Cao, a finance major who hopes to help Vietnam develop its financial system, revived a moribund international club at Lone Star, won class office, and was on a Model United Nations team that convened in New York. “As an international student, if you only have grades, it’s not going to help you get into a good school. You have to be involved in school and get this on your resume,” she said. Cao got to visit Wall Street on the New York trip. “It inspired me,” she said.

Naziat Khan, 24, was also on that Model UN team, which represented Bhutan, a Hindu country in the Himalayas. Born in Bangladesh and raised in Texas, Khan, who is Muslim and wears a hijab, said it was hard at first “to think like a Bhutanese.” Now she’s convinced that the best way to resolve problems is to “step into somebody else’s shoes.”

Expanding Overseas Without Taxpayer Dollars

Lone Star will offer dual degrees in Jakarta in a partnership with the Putera Sampoerna Foundation. Classes will be taught in English by Lone Star and local faculty. The venture came about after Nithy met a representative of the Foundation at a State Department-sponsored conference. Putera Sampoerna is an Indonesian industrialist whose foundation was looking for a four-year U.S. college to partner with its new Universitas Siswa Bangsa Internasional. Nithy convinced the foundation executive that Lone Star was worth a look. Sampoerna himself visited and liked what he saw.

Carpenter traveled to Jakarta three times and Nithy four times in advance of the opening. “We sat with the people in Jakarta and said, “We have a lot of expertise. We have the curriculum you need, we have instructional designers, we have technology and IT infrastructure, but we don’t take taxpayer money outside of our neighborhood,” said Carpenter. The foundation agreed to cover Lone Star’s costs up front, including salaries and expenses for two faculty and an administrator, with the expectation that Lone Star will repay that after the college starts generating profits.

Getting Used to Accents

Shah Ardalan is president of Lone Star’s sixth and newest campus, University Park. An electrical engineer who was born in Kurdistan, Ardalan was formerly the system vice chancellor and chief information officer. He has a patent pending on a digital career planning system that has won plaudits from the U.S. Department of Education. Ardalan wants to make University Park, which offers upper division classes in partnership with five Texas universities, “a model as the innovative college for the twentyfirst century.” 

Ardalan believes Lone Star should cast an even wider net for international students. “I want to be a reflection of what the real world is. It’s good for (international students) and good for my American students, too,” he said. When a Texas student complained about a professor’s accent, Ardalan told him to get used to it “because you’re going to hear more and more accents. When you pick up the phone, you cannot expect everybody to talk with the ‘nice’ accent you were raised with.” No one else had trouble understanding the professor, Ardalan noted. 

Dreaming in English

Ita Jervis spoke almost no English when she moved to Houston from Ecuador in 2001. She enrolled immediately in ESL classes, graduated summa cum laude from Lone Star and the University of Houston, and today advises international and ESL students at Lone Star-Kingwood. “What I love about Lone Star,” Jervis said, “is that we act. It’s not just words, it’s actions. We’re not waiting for tomorrow. Everyone works together as a team to do the best for our students.”

She often tells students what she told a classmate who addressed her in Spanish when both were ESL beginners: “Right now our mission is to speak English, so let’s practice speaking English within ourselves, because the faster we learn the language, the better we can achieve our goals.”

Her husband, who worked for an oil company and spoke English, told her that she’d know she was speaking the language, not just translating words, when she dreamed in English. The night that happened, she woke up and “just started jumping, I was so happy,” recalled Jervis.

“What I love about Lone Star,” Jervis said, “is that we act. It’s not just words, it’s actions. We’re not waiting for tomorrow. Everyone works together as a team to do the best for our students.”

She also counsels students to believe in themselves. “The first thing that happens when you come to a different country is that you lose your self-confidence, whether you are educated or not, poor, middle class, or rich. You feel stupid,” she said. One day, she assures them, they’ll be dreaming in English. 

Soon after veterinary pathologist Tony Frank became vice president for research at Colorado State University in 2000, he was asked by the then-president to accompany him to South  Korea. “I wasn’t horribly enthused,” recalled Frank. “I’d been very focused on my own lab and had almost no connections to international activity. I really didn’t see what value I was going to add or how it was going to have a big impact.” But Frank returned from Seoul “an absolute convert,” won over to the idea that forging strategic partnerships with universities overseas could expand Colorado State’s reach and pay large dividends for its scholars, researchers, and students. “To be honest, I spent a lot of time kicking myself after that for having missed as many opportunities as I had over the years,” said Frank, who went on to become provost and, in 2008, president. He now has logged 12 international trips. 

The land-grant institution, established in 1870 when Colorado was still a territory, is working hard not to miss opportunities these days. It has close partnerships with 17 universities in 11 countries including a new Joint Research Institute with East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai and a robust dual-degree program with the Foreign Trade University in Hanoi, Vietnam. It has stepped up recruitment of international students to the picturesque Fort Collins campus in the foothills of the Rockies. In 2008–2009 there were fewer than 900 international students. Today there are more than 1,650, including a recent influx of more than 400 in its new intensive English and academic preparatory program called INTO Colorado State University. 

CSU is following a script laid out in a 2007 internationalization strategy. Leaders speak of “building the brand” and improving lives “throughout Colorado and the world.” Tom Milligan, vice president for external relations, who spearheads the branding push, said, “Being a global institution is part of how we want to think and talk about ourselves and position ourselves. We’re different from other medium-to-large-size public institutions. The things that we’re good at, like water, biomedicine, and veterinary medicine, we’re as good as anybody in the world.”

Links Around the World

Vice Provost for International Affairs James Cooney said, “The heart of our internationalization strategy from the beginning has been to link specifically to institutions around the world, get our faculty involved with those institutions, and develop joint research.” The hiring of Cooney in 2007 to a new position with elevated stature was also part of that strategy. The political scientist was lured to Fort Collins from Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

One aspect of Colorado State’s story is familiar to public universities almost everywhere: steep state budget cuts, amounting to $36 million or 28 percent over three years before a $6 million bump up this year. Only federal stimulus funds spared Colorado’s universities steeper cuts. The National Science Foundation ranked Colorado last among research universities in state funding per student. Colorado State relies on state money for less than 10 percent of its $911 million budget. It conducted $376 million in research in 2012. 

"President Tony Frank came late to international work but now pursues it with a convert’s passion."

The $220,000 that Cooney’s office had been given to expand education abroad, strategic partnerships, and other activities was shaved by $40,000. But its budget and staff kept growing thanks to $330,000 in added revenues from the spurt in international enrollments and new partnerships in China and elsewhere. “We feel we have one of the best models for working with China,” said the vice provost. China pays for up to 30 faculty to travel to China for research collaborations and steers talented students from a dozen high schools to CSU. Colorado State, for its part, gives each an $8,000 scholarship. It opened a five-person recruiting office at East China Normal University and recently cut the ribbon on a Confucius Institute specializing in water issues. 

A New Pathway “Into” the University

Colorado State is one of four U.S. universities partnering with INTO, a for-profit British company that forms partnerships with universities in the United States, United Kingdom, and China to recruit students and place them in intensive English and “academic pathways” classes with extensive support that lead to regular undergraduate and graduate studies. Provost Rick Miranda said, “We’d like to have more students come from South America, from Europe, from Malaysia and Indonesia. We don’t want to skew things too much toward China.” INTO has moved into renovated Spruce Hall, CSU’s oldest building. Many students live with domestic students interested in world affairs on a floor of a dorm designated the Global Village.

Haotian “Stewart” Wu, a senior business administration major from Hefei, China, is a live-in mentor there. He transferred to CSU as a junior from Anhui Agricultural University on a 2+2 program. He spent summer 2012 as a paid INTO “ambassador” traveling around China marketing CSU at education abroad fairs. The outgoing Wu has friends on the football team and attends games. Football “is pretty boring, but actually I learn a lot” about U.S. culture, said Wu.

The Office of International Programs teams with the athletics and alumni offices to offer a “Football 101” class where international students learn the rules, try on helmets and shoulder pads, tailgate, and attend a game. “They get a real kick out of it,” said Mark Hallett, senior director of International Student and Scholar Services. As many as 200 turn out and “scream with excitement” at kickoff. 

Grooming Gilman and Fulbright Scholars

Colorado State has also stepped up its education abroad offerings and, by raising funds from colleges, departments, donors, and providers, tripled scholarships to $150,000. Director of Education Abroad Laura Thornes said more than 800 students took classes for credit, and 500 took part in noncredit experiences in 2012–2013. Most went to Western Europe, but 115 studied or worked in China and Japan, 25 went to Kenya, and 17 to South Africa. One in six students has studied abroad by graduation. “If we could get to 25 percent, that would be our ideal,” said Thornes.

A push to encourage Colorado State students to apply for Benjamin Gilman International Scholarships paid immediate dividends. Two dozen won Gilmans in 2012 and 2013, more than the previous four years combined. The awards of up to $5,000 go to students who receive need-based Pell Grants. “We worked with all the diversity offices on campus to make them more aware of the Gilman,” said Thornes. Faculty and staff volunteers read and critiqued students’ essays. Accounting major Sabiha Dubose said her Gilman to study in Antibes, France, was “truly a blessing.”

“We worked with all the diversity offices on campus to make them more aware of the Gilman.”

A similar push is underway for Fulbrights. Karen Gardenier, the Office of International Programs’ assistant director for academic programs, works with representatives from each of CSU’s eight colleges. Fewer than a dozen students applied in past years and only a handful won. “We’re hoping to get those numbers up and create more of a culture on campus for Fulbright,” said Gardenier. That effort includes small stipends for faculty to handpick and groom prospects. CSU also increased incoming Fulbrighters in the past five years from five to 35 annually.

International and Arabic studies major Brooke Lake is spending six months in Morocco and Jordan improving her Arabic before graduation. Lake, who volunteers as a cultural mentor to international students, did charity work in Egypt over an earlier summer, which “kick started my passion for the Middle East.” This all took her family by surprise. “They had no idea who their daughter was. My mom was like, ‘Who are you?’” recalled Lake, but now “she loves it.”

Making Music Together

There is a musical quality to CSU’s partnership with East China Normal University. After President Frank heard a concert in Shanghai, he set in motion a collaboration between the two universities’ musicians. East China’s opera director Cao Jin and Todd Queen, chair of music, theater, and dance, quickly “hit it off,” said Queen, a tenor who sang and taught master classes at the Shanghai institution. Twenty-five ECNU students and faculty came to Fort Collins in 2010 and with CSU’s orchestra and choir they performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, with its “Ode to Joy,” a universal anthem for freedom. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Queen.

Mezzo-soprano Carol Perry sang in Shanghai in 2011. The experience was invaluable, she told a college publication. “In the performance world, we have to adapt to other cultures quickly. Not every production or rehearsal will be in your language. You need to be present in the culture you’re in,” she said. Most recently, Chinese and Colorado State students performed The Yellow River Cantata in CSU’s concert hall.

It is not the arts alone bringing CSU and ECNU together. They created a Joint Research Institute for New Energy and the Environment in 2011, with each committing to spend $300,000 annually for three years on the search for clean alternatives to fossil fuels. Wei Gao, a professor of ecosystem science and sustainability who directs the CSU China Programs office and Confucius Institute, also leads this research institute, which works on land, water, air quality, and climate issues.

Playing Pachelbel and Parsing P&G Financials

Since 2008, 32 economics and business faculty have taught compressed, four-week courses at Foreign Trade University (FTU) in Hanoi, Vietnam, which is “trying to reform its curriculum to mimic ours,” said economics professor Robert Kling. “It has really contributed to the internationalization of our faculty and had the unanticipated effect of giving our department more of a sense of community.” Vietnam’s education ministry pays CSU $23,000 for each course taught.

Thirty Vietnamese students spend their senior year at CSU and earn dual degrees. One is Phong Nguyen, who could be found one afternoon in a theater lobby of Lory Student Center playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D on a grand piano. The dual-degree program “is considered the best in our university,” Nguyen said. Classes at CSU were “more practical and down to earth,” added Nguyen, who liked working in teams to analyze a Dell bond issue and a Procter & Gamble financial report. “We’re learning from each other and from doing the projects.”

FTU is a CSU strategic partner. Many of those partnerships have been forged in rapid succession since 2008. Chad Hoseth, director of international initiatives, said CSU is now assessing all 17 and considering changes. “This is a list that evolves to meet the needs of our faculty and students,” he said.

Protecting Tigers and People

Protecting natural resources is a passion at Colorado State and much of that work is conducted on an international scale. Nearly 90 Indian Forestry Service officers have trained at CSU. Social psychologist Michael Manfredo heads the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, which deals with finding ways for people to enjoy nature without trampling on it. Managing wildlife and natural resources “is 10 percent biology and 90 percent managing people,” said Manfredo, just back from working on an effort to reduce tiger-human conflicts in Dehadrun, India.

The department also offers a Conservation Leadership Through Learning master’s degree that involves a year of classes in Fort Collins and a second year of field work in Mexico. Seven of the first 21 students were international, and the program is expanding to Peru, New Zealand, and Kenya. In the field, Manfredo said, “everybody is a learner. The professors are learning new ways of thinking (just) as the students are.”

Manfredo said the elevated stature of the Office of International Programs helped get that program off the ground. “It sure makes it easier when you’ve got someone appreciative and supportive of what you’re doing,” he said.

Prairie Populism Writ Large

Robin Reid, director of the Center for Collaborative Conservation in the Warner College of Natural Resources, spent 20 years in East Africa conducting livestock research. Support from the top at CSU, she said, “is sparking connections all over the place. It’s causing this cross-campus set of energy and activities that is good for (everybody).” Research ecologist Paul Evangelista, who has worked in Ethiopia for 14 years, said CSU has long fostered his interdisciplinary work. 

Hoseth, the international initiatives director, said, “Our genetics are collaborative.” Case in point: when the College of Business hired its own study abroad coordinator, they placed her in Laurel Hall with the rest of the international program staff.

Hallett, the ISSS director, said, “There’s a bit of the prairie populist about this campus. It’s a land grant, outward-focused (institution) with a lot of idealism,” and now it’s doing extension work writ large on the international stage. 

Thomas Jefferson was the prototype of what every university today professes students need to become: a global citizen. The polyglot president, diplomat, scientist, inventor, and educator was friend to the Marquis de Lafayette and Simon Bolivar. He voiced hope that the university he founded in the foothills of the Blue Ridge  Mountains in 1819 would stand as “the future bulwark of the human mind in this hemisphere.” He recruited five of eight original faculty from Great Britain. Most of the first 65 students journeyed to his “Academical Village” from outside Virginia.

But in modern times, it took until the end of the twentieth century for the University of Virginia (U.Va.) to take what Vice Provost for Global Affairs Jeffrey Legro called “a self-conscious turn to the world.” Building on its success as a top public research university, U.Va. made internationalization a central thrust of its two most recent strategic plans. Under former President John Casteen, it brought international students in far greater numbers to Charlottesville and appointed a vice provost for international affairs. On President Teresa Sullivan’s watch, it reorganized and expanded international programs, pushing students and faculty to venture far beyond the Blue Ridge and finding new ways to embed a culture of global awareness on the Grounds, as the 1,682-acre campus is called.

A Center for Global Health and an International Residential College, where 300 students (60 percent domestic, 40 percent international) live, were created after the 1999 strategic plan. But a faculty task force that looked across the Grounds in 2008 delivered the blunt assessment that while “the University of Virginia is by no means inactive internationally… neither is it a leader."

A Central Strategy and Shared Costs

Since then U.Va. has raised the international banner higher even while weathering diminished state support (but a swelling endowment, now $7 billion). In an institution with 11 independent schools—even separate business schools for undergraduate and graduate students—the president and provost found ways to pull academic  fiefdoms together on internationalization. “The best part is that this is not just in the expected places. Everybody has embraced it,” said Sullivan, a sociologist who became president in 2010. 

The opening of an office in Shanghai—U.Va.’s first overseas—in 2013 marked a milestone in the journey. Justin O’Jack, former China director for the Council on International Educational Exchange, was hired to run the China office with a mission of supporting research partnerships, academic programs, internships, admissions, alumni engagement, and career placement. The university sent a 20-person delegation, including a half-dozen senior leaders, to a two-day conference and ceremonial opening last March. More importantly, boasted former Executive Vice President and Provost John Simon, “I got all of the deans to contribute to the costs of the China office, so everyone has a stake.” Start-up costs were $150,000 and it costs $300,000 a year to operate.

Simon, departing after four years for the presidency of Lehigh University, said schools were accustomed to acting like “independent operators…that could do everything they want whenever they want.” Some had stellar overseas connections “but to me, the issues around global are a centralized strategy. I’m not saying the schools can’t do other things, but that’s not an institutional strategy.” He predicts U.Va. will plant its flag in half a dozen other locations within five years.

Location, Location, Location

Legro, a politics professor and vice provost for global affairs since 2012, chairs a Global Affairs Committee with representatives from all schools and major administrative units. A separate Global on Grounds Committee comprised of faculty, staff, and students is charged with developing new ways to integrate global content into the university experience.

A modest Center for International Studies made way for a more ambitious and deeper-pocketed Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation, which has been given prime space in a historic building in the shadow of Jefferson’s iconic Rotunda.

“It’s location, location, location,” said the center’s director, Brian Owensby, a Latin American historian. It shares space with a new Global Internship Program and a popular global studies major and can dispense $450,000 for research projects small and large. Two teams of environmental scientists split $100,000 awards last year. “Things are going gangbusters,” said Owensby.

The global internship director, Majida Bargach, placed 39 students in jobs in 2014 and 70 this summer. Bargach, a French lecturer who also leads a study abroad class to her native Morocco, said the interns gain the benefit of “a total immersion by themselves in the workplace.”

Student Demand for a Global Studies Major

The evolution of the global studies major attests to the strong voice and tradition of self-governance that students enjoy at U.Va., where they run the vaunted Honor System (exams are unproctored) and a galaxy of hundreds of organizations, many with an international focus.

Students on their own initiative began stumping in 2007 for a global development studies major, arguing in an 8,000-word white paper that U.Va. prepared too few students for careers fighting poverty. Richard Handler, a cultural anthropologist, stepped forward to direct the major in 2009. It’s now bundled into a larger global studies major with tracks on health, the environment, and security/justice.

“Universities these days are full of students who want to go around the world and do good work,” said Handler, who raised $1 million to hire a “professor of practice” to connect students with global development organizations.

Francesca Fiorani, a Renaissance art historian and associate dean, said the attraction of the major is not only for students but also for faculty. “We’re rethinking the traditional disciplines. It’s driving curriculum reform across the university.” Core courses range from economics to anthropology to sociology, all presented from a global perspective. “That’s what students want,” said Fiorani. ”They want to know how to operate with people from all over the world.”

The Center for Global Health has doubled to 55 the number of $5,000 awards to students to work in interdisciplinary teams on projects in developing countries. “In the past, people thought ‘global health’ was only for doctors and nurses, but it’s for the economists, educators, and engineers as well,” said Rebecca Dillingham, MD, the director.

Vanquishing the Fear of Missing Out

Two thousand students studied abroad in 2013– 2014. More might go but for a much-discussed malady known as FOMO, or the fear of missing out. U.Va. is a school rich with traditions, from secret societies to fall football to a spring steeplechase race. “We’re challenged to get more students to go abroad for a semester or year. That’s where a lot of our energy is going,” said Dudley Doane, director of the International Studies Office.

“They don’t want to miss any of their eight great semesters here. But it’s a bit of an urban myth. Nine of 10 who go abroad will tell you it was their most meaningful semester,” said Legro. McKenna Hughes, 22, an English and linguistics major and peer adviser in the International Studies Office, said, “The thing about traditions is they happen every year. We push them to realize they’ve got three other chances.”

Meg Gould, 22, spent a summer in Morocco and a full semester in Paris and was selected by peers for one of the coveted rooms for seniors behind the colonnade on the Lawn. She also represented students on the Board of Visitors. “U.Va. definitely opened the doors for me,” said the global studies and French major. “Amazing experiences can occur outside of Grounds.”

The International Studies Office partners with the Department of Anthropology to offer CORE (Cultural Orientation, Reflection, and Engagement) seminars to prepare students for crossing cultures and demystify the experience. “It’s a wrap-around curriculum,” said coordinator Catarina Krizancic, an anthropologist. “It isn’t enough to put people in a different language or culture. You have to mentor and teach them through it.”

This academic year is the last in which U.Va. is sponsoring the Semester at Sea program. It has provided a dean and sent other faculty and staff on the voyages since 2006. 

Making Room for International Students

By law 70 percent of U.Va.’s 15,000 undergraduates must be Virginians. Nine hundred—5.5 percent—are international. It is twice as hard for out-of-staters to win admission, and even harder for international students. “The burgeoning of our reputation internationally” keeps driving up the number and quality of applications, said Richard Tanson, senior international student and scholar adviser.

International students can fall under the thrall of Charlottesville, too. “I cherish this U.Va. experience,” said “Grong” Yexiao Wang, a senior from Chengdu, China, majoring in math and political philosophy. Few friends at other campuses are “so fond of their schools.” Wang banded together with classmates to start a U.Va. China Fund that last February honored economics professor  Kenneth Elzinga for his steadfast support— including driving a visiting Chinese scholar and his wife to the hospital one icy night in time to deliver their baby. The award is named for U.Va.’s first graduate from China, educator and diplomat Weiching  Williams Yen, Class of 1900.

Sophomore Lexi Schubert, an economics and cognitive science major from Munich, Germany, leads a new organization called Global Greeters that helps students settle into college life. That was not a problem for Schubert, who speaks five languages and is learning Indonesian and Hungarian. “Studying in the U.S. was always a dream of mine.”

Rafat Khan, a senior from Dhaka, Bangladesh, cut a distinctive figure on campus with an upswept coif he calls “a faux-hawk.” He threw himself into a host of activities, including the Global on Grounds Committee, and worked to overcome the self-segregation of international students. “The ideal university environment is one where there’s a flowing, cross-cultural dialogue and people have friends from all over the world,” said the commerce major and philosophy minor. “U.Va. has done a good job, but there’s always room to grow.”

Humanities and Business in the Global Context

Befitting an institution whose founder once said that liberal education would help “guard the sacred deposit of [citizens’] rights and liberties,” U.Va. has partnered with other universities to uphold the place of the humanities in a globalized, business-minded world. The Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures works with Delhi University, Nanjing Univer sity,  Oxford University, and London’s School of Oriental and African Studies on a mission of connecting scholars “across conceptual, imaginative, and continental divides.” Two Mellon Foundation grants since 2011 topping $6 million are allowing the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to hire 20 new interdisciplinary faculty and providing research funds for dozens of faculty and graduate students. The latest $3.5 million grant focuses on the Global South, including new courses and research on the histories and cultures of Africa, Latin America, and South and East Asia.

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Fiorani, the associate dean, said U.Va. views itself as both an importer and exporter of humanities faculty. “All sorts of places across the globe have a strong interest in developing the liberal arts education for which the U.S. is uniquely famous.”

The bifurcated business schools, the Darden School of Business and McIntire School of Commerce, have stood in the vanguard of curriculum internationalization. Darden Dean Robert Bruner led a national task force that produced an encyclopedic report on The Globalization of  Management Education. It found business schools innovating rapidly to globalize but also forecast a high failure rate for their experiments, which Bruner said “is actually indispensable because only by that will we identify a sustainable path or paths forward.”

McIntire Dean Carl Zeithaml, a global management strategy expert, was taken aback by a “lack of international orientation” when he came to Charlottesville in 1997. “I really felt that most people thought that the boundaries of the world were consistent with the boundaries of Albemarle County.” After a visit to Asia with other deans, he proposed opening an office there. “I guess I wasn’t very good at it because it took another 17 years,” he said wryly. 

Back to the Future

Jefferson’s Rotunda was sheathed in scaffolding during the spring of 2015, undergoing renovations to make the old new again. The global offices in the Academical Village were also undergoing renovations to fit everything under one roof. 

The university’s reinvigorated internationalization is a type of reconstruction, too, as U.Va. seeks to reclaim the legacy of America’s earliest global thinker. “That is our goal, and though there are challenges, we are well on our way to realizing it,” Legro said.

With the University of San Diego’s (USD) Spanish Renaissance–style architecture, sunny climate, gardens in flower year round, and postcard view of Mission Bay, it might seem hopeless to convince students to tear themselves away to study abroad. But nearly three-quarters of the undergraduates do so and, befitting USD’s religious identity, many jump at opportunities to perform service in South Africa, Jamaica, Haiti, and elsewhere. “One of our distinguishing marks is that we take seriously the need to become global citizens,” said former President Mary Lyons. “As a Catholic university that belongs to a worldwide network that has global outreach, global presence, and pays attention to global concerns, it comes naturally to us.”

Today’s USD is the product of a 1972 union between colleges for women and men built after World War II on a hilltop called Alcalá Park that sits 22 miles from the border with Mexico. The founding Sacred Heart nuns modeled the women’s college after the University of Alcalá in Spain, professing a belief that those attracted by its beauty would also find truth and goodness. The college has been under lay control since the merger and only half the student body is Catholic. Undergraduates must take philosophy and two religious studies classes. Kuwaiti student Khaled Alaskar, a mechanical engineering major, initially regarded the requirement as a burden, “but I learned a lot about different religions. USD does a good job at addressing how religion is important in people’s lives without enforcing it.” 

Expanding the Global Footprint

Lyons, a former captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve and president of the College of Saint Benedict (a 2012 Simon Award winner) and the California Maritime Academy, has just retired. She drove two, multiyear strategic planning efforts during the past 12 years that both placed greater emphasis on international study and research. An International Center headed by an associate provost was created in 2007, bringing three separate study abroad offices under one roof. A 2011 strategic plan set a goal of “expanding USD’s global presence” and developing a “footprint” in major cities abroad to promote international partnerships, exchanges, and collaborations.

In August 2014 it opened a 10,000-square-foot USD Madrid Center with classrooms, meeting and study spaces, and facilities equipped with videoconferencing and high-speed connections to the home campus. The university spent $400,000 to open the center near Retiro Park and the Prado museum. Lyons said it represented the culmination of a decade of efforts “to graduate men and women who are truly global citizens.”

USD had already been sending 90 students to learn Spanish, live with host families, and take other courses each fall in the Spanish capital. The center now has two administrators and a large roster of local faculty teaching classes that run the gamut from art history to business to political science. It is also home to summer programs for the business and education graduate schools.

Denise Dimon, associate provost for international affairs, said the goal is to enroll 200 students each year at the USD Madrid Center—115 went in 2014–2015—and attract students from other U.S. colleges as well. While students studied in Madrid before, “the difference is we are now a recognized educational institution in Spain,” Dimon said.

Paula Cordeiro, former longtime dean of the School of Leadership and Education Sciences (SOLES), is considering designing a graduate course that would bring future school principals to Spain. To do that, she said, “I need to make connections with schools and professional organizations there. It will be much easier to do that if I have a base— our Madrid Campus—to work out of.”

Seeking to Make Peace and Social Innovation

Thanks to a $25 million gift and $50 million bequest from Joan Kroc, widow of the McDonald’s founder, USD is home to the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice and the Kroc School of Peace Studies. The institute won a Simon Spotlight Award in 2011 for its Women PeaceMakers program, which provides several months’ respite for community activists from war-torn countries.

Mrs. Kroc gave instructions that the institute was to not just “talk about peace, but make peace.” Perhaps no school could adequately fulfill that lofty ambition, but USD’s leaders admit that Kroc has had, in Lyons’s words, “fits and starts.” Built in 2000, it began offering master’s degrees two years later, followed by a minor for undergraduates. The Kroc School, opened in 2007, has six faculty members and 33 graduate students. But a conference it organized in November 2014 on “Defying Extremism” drew 125 international policymakers, religious leaders, and peacebuilders from 30 countries. The institute followed that up with a February 2015 regional conference on extremism that drew participants from eight Asian countries to Manila and the conflicted island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Provost Andrew Allen said Kroc has the potential to become the hub for peacebuilding studies and actions that span the university.

It has already begun strengthening ties with USD’s other schools. Patricia Marquez, Kroc’s dean since 2014, came from the School of Business Administration, where she taught entrepreneurship for social change. While still at the business school, she spearheaded creation of a joint Center for Peace and Commerce with Kroc and launched a Social Innovation Challenge that has grown beyond the campus. Last spring the Challenge awarded $75,000 to eight teams of students from universities across San Diego for such ventures as building portable toilet seats for landmine victims in Uganda and opening a school in Ghana.

Marquez is a Venezuelan-born and University of California-Berkeley–educated anthropologist—her research was on street children in Caracas—who takes an iconoclastic approach to how Kroc should pursue its mission. “I’m not interested in the same old categories. If business is going to come up with solutions to social problems, we need to bring into the conversation people very different from us in their thinking,” said Marquez. “We do focus on peace, but we’re not training philosophers of peace. We’re training people who understand philosophy, sociology, anthropology, economics, and all these things to solve some of the most intractable problems in the twenty-first century.”

Her successor at the joint center, economics professor Stephen Conroy, said it occupies “a rare space that folks on either side quite frankly might be somewhat uncomfortable with. But for me, being a force for good and trying to improve standards of living is what business should be all about.” USD is also an Ashoka Foundation Changemaker Campus, part of a network of 30 universities seeking to incubate innovative approaches to solving global challenges. 

Priming the Pump for Study Abroad

Half the undergraduates who study abroad do so for a full semester. Students receive $170,000 in need-based aid and get a 30 percent tuition discount on credits earned in short-term programs. As many as 100 faculty teach short-term courses overseas during January intersession and summer terms.

“We have centralized support from the international center. Graduate schools do their own programming as well,” said Dimon. “We offer a variety of study abroad programs, research missions, and service-learning activities, packaging them in different ways for students’ different needs.”

The study abroad staff is lean—Director Kira Espiritu and Associate Director Jessica Calhoun work with four advisers and an operations manager, handling all logistical arrangements and student service support—which means schools and faculty must shoulder some marketing and administrative burdens. Chemistry professor James Bolender said there are fewer such burdens than when he pioneered a field study class for science majors on Mexico’s Baja Peninsula in 2001. He remembers “flying by the seat of my pants” back then. Bolender has led students back to Baja ever since and worked alongside them on a humanitarian water quality project in Mbarara, Uganda.

A Taste of International Education for Sophomores

USD’s lofty study abroad participation rate has also been helped by the Second Year Experience Abroad, part of a wider effort by the student affairs office to encourage freshmen to return for their second year. Students take a global studies seminar and travel in cohorts in January of their sophomore year to Florence, Italy, or Antigua, Guatemala. Courses offered run the gamut from language and art to chemistry and statistics. More than 10 percent of freshmen—150 students—sign up each year.

“I consider this a big retention strategy,” said Carmen Vazquez, vice president for student affairs. It’s also delivered striking results for the International Center. Espiritu said 85 percent of those sophomores wind up studying abroad again.

Piper Bloom transferred from a community college, so she missed that sophomore opportunity, but “immediately decided that I wanted to have some of that experience, even though I’m a little older than everyone else.” She chose a popular summer Shakespeare course in London. “You hear from friends who went and it just inspires you to go,” said the English major, who was headed to Japan after graduation to teach English.

Building International Experiences Into Graduate Curricula

International experiences are par for the course for many of USD’s graduate and professional schools. Dimon has a direct hand in that as she remains director of the Ahlers Center for International Business as well as associate provost. Ahlers has sent 150 MBA students to 13 countries to do international practicums, consulting directly for foreign companies or tackling projects in teams alongside MBA students from the local university. Notwithstanding that most are working professionals who are pursuing MBAs part time, a majority graduate with an international experience on their résumés, Dimon said.

Ahlers has forged close ties with EGADE Graduate Business School of the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico, whose retired dean, Jaime Alonso Gomez, is now a USD distinguished professor of strategy and international business. He teaches business students and executives that in additional to the proverbial three Ps—people, products, and profits—they need to treat peace and prosperity as equally important considerations for their bottom lines. “That is the true meaning of education: bringing not only material wealth, but building better communities, better neighbors, better everything,” Gomez said.

SOLES, the leadership and education graduate school, since 2008 has required every student to participate in an international experience. “We didn’t do it on a whim. We take it very seriously,” said Linda Dews, assistant dean of the School of Leadership and Education Sciences. “We’re seeing that it’s making a difference for the way students approach their professional career.”

Most students spend only brief periods abroad, but that does not tell the full picture, said Assefa Tessema, a doctoral student from Ethiopia who directs the school’s Global Center. “When people hear it’s a one-week or 10-day program, they may assume it’s superficial work. But it’s very intensive engagement for students and for faculty, who start planning a year in advance.”

An Emphasis on Service as Well as Learning

Many study abroad programs encourage students to perform service. Political science professor Mike Williams weaves that into the summer course he teaches in South Africa. “I’m a cheerleader and also an organizer,” he said, “trying to get more people to think about how we advance our social justice mission and how to do this in their classes.”

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A conversation with Williams convinced Jennifer Bradshaw to switch majors from business to international relations and to follow Williams to the village of Makuleke, where the group slept in huts, worked alongside community leaders, and mentored youth. “They were some of the most genuine, welcoming people I’ve ever met. That experience made me rethink my own life here in the U.S. I think about it every day,” said Bradshaw.

The Mulvaney Center for Community, Awareness and Social Action arranges service immersion trips to Jamaica, Guatemala, and other countries, but also guides students to assist immigrants, the homeless, and poor in San Diego’s Linda Vista section, Tijuana, and other border towns.

In a Jamaica program led by John Loggins, director of community-based learning, students learn the history of the Atlantic slave trade, tutor kids, and participate in activities from cooking classes to jam sessions in the town of Duncan near Montego Bay. “There’s all kinds of different ways they can learn,” said Loggins, an alumnus and former Peace Corps volunteer in Jamaica. “It’s really transformed the dynamic in that community.”

“We’re doing this international work because it’s good education,” said Chris Nayve, an assistant provost and the center’s director who has three USD degrees (BA, JD, and MBA). “It’s not just the content of the class. It’s about who are you becoming.”

The University of Delaware (UD) traces its roots to a colonial academy that produced three signers of the Declaration of Independence. It was chartered as a college in 1834 and selected as a land-grant institution after the Civil War. It has a rich tradition of study abroad, a robust intensive English institute, and a $200 million research enterprise. But when Patrick Harker became president in 2007, he was perturbed to learn that only 39 incoming freshmen—1 percent—came from other countries. No institution could reach the first tier of research universities with so few international students in its classrooms, he told the faculty. Today UD enrolls nearly 700 international undergraduates as well as 1,300 graduate students with 1,600 others learning English. “We turned that around. You can feel it on campus today. It just feels more diverse. But we’ve got more work to do,” said Harker, former dean of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Structural changes were necessary to accommodate the growth spurt. UD’s Office for International Students and Scholars (OISS), which once consisted of two people in tight quarters, now has a 10-person staff ensconced in a Georgian mansion at the heart of campus. “I feel like Cinderella,” said Frances O’Brien, the assistant director.

The relocation to the Wright House, formerly the faculty club, is “both metaphor and evidence of the university’s commitment to its international community,” said Nancy Guerra, former associate provost for international programs and director of the parent Institute for Global Studies (IGS), which provides grants to faculty, forges international partnerships, and oversees OISS and education abroad. Creating the institute was a key recommendation in a 2008 “Path to Prominence” strategic plan on how to elevate the stature of international programs and intensify global activity on all fronts.

“We made a small number of critical organizational changes that paid big dividends,” said Nancy Brickhouse, former deputy provost. Consolidating international programs provided “a much higher degree of visibility and access across campus” and enabled UD to attract faculty and professionals with deep experience in global education, said Brickhouse, now provost of Saint Louis University.

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Among them was OISS Director Ravi Ammigan, who brought a wealth of programming experience from Michigan State University in 2013. The international office ramped up activities and “now we are a center of cross-cultural engagement as well,” he said.

Placing Delaware on the Map

Delaware, the first state to ratify the Constitution, is second smallest by size and forty-fifth by population. “Our big challenge is how to increase our international visibility. We don’t yet have really good global recognition,” said Guerra, a psychologist who stepped down as associate provost and IGS head to return full time to teaching and research on stopping childhood violence. Chris Lucier, vice president for enrollment management, said, “The location actually appeals to students once they know how close we are to Philadelphia, Washington, and New York. The strength of our engineering and business programs are major selling points.”

Reeling in more talent from abroad makes academic and economic sense, because UD already must look outside Delaware’s borders for 60 percent of its 21,000 students. It describes itself as a “state-assisted” institution, not fully public, since it is governed by its own trustees (the governor is an ex officio member) and gets only 13 percent of the budget from state coffers. “People assume we’re a big public institution. The reality is we’re medium sized and a public-private hybrid,” said Amy Greenwald Foley, IGS’s associate director for global outreach. “We have smaller classes and offer amenities you’d expect to find at a private institution.” 

UD competes with larger flagship schools such as Penn State, Rutgers, and the University of Maryland. Among the attractions are the classic college-town feel of Newark (population 32,000) and a picture-book campus with stately elms shading Georgian buildings that line the Green.

Push for Global Engagement

Harker, a management expert trained as a civil and urban engineer, shook up UD’s budgeting and pushed colleges to eliminate low-demand programs. He believes the changes spurred departments to become more entrepreneurial and globally engaged. “It’s helped people be more creative about what kinds of programs we can offer and what types of grants we can go after,” said Harker, who stepped down in July to become president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

Since 2003 UD has hosted top students from the Middle East and North Africa for civic leadership training funded by the U.S. Department of State, and more recently it was selected as one of 20 universities providing coursework and mentoring for young leaders from across Africa. It launched a UD Africa initiative in 2013 to increase partnerships with African universities and send more faculty and students to the continent. “A host of faculty do research in Africa,” said Gretchen Bauer, chair of political science and international relations, who is headed to Ghana on a Fulbright in 2016.

Norma Gaines-Hanks, a human development and family services professor, has taken students to South Africa for study and service eight times. Enrollment is capped at 30. “If the kids had their way, we’d take 100,” she said.

Academic and Cultural Ties with China

UD has made its greatest progress in expanding academic ties in China. A close relationship with Xiamen University extends back to 2007, including a dual doctoral degree in oceanography. UD is one of the U.S. campuses where Xiamen is sending dozens of doctoral students being groomed as future faculty.

Xiamen helped UD land a Confucius Institute in 2010 and provides two Mandarin teachers on loan, and the two universities are partnering to open a State Department–funded American Cultural Center on the Xiamen campus, one of 24 such centers across China.

“There are so many Confucius Institutes around the country. We want to be different,” said Jianguo Chen, the director and a professor of Chinese literature. He wants to provide expertise for Chinese entrepreneurs who are seeking to break into U.S. markets and American firms looking to do business in China.

Engineering in the Forefront

The pacesetter in many of UD’s efforts to extend its global reach is the College of Engineering led by Dean Babatunde Ogunnaike, a former DuPont researcher and member of the National Academy of Engineering. A new global engineering program combining bachelor’s and master’s degrees in five years is on the drawing boards. “My tagline for students is, ‘Let’s go change the world together,’” said the Nigerian-born Ogunnaike. Engineering is the most international of UD’s colleges, with 627 students from other countries, including Ugochukwu Nsofor, who is studying electromagnetics and nanophotonics for his doctorate. Nsofor volunteers at orientations for international students, which have undergone “a huge improvement” since OISS expanded, he said.

The four dozen students in UD’s Engineers Without Borders (EWB) chapter are trying to change the world already. They designed and built a bridge connecting two remote villages in Guatemala, completed a clean water project in Cameroon, and have scouted projects in Malawi and the Philippines. Over winter break, senior Kelsey McWilliams traveled to India with a UD team on a Gates Foundation–funded project to improve latrines. That project was started by the late civil engineering professor Steve Dentel, who recently lost a battle with cancer. Dentel, the original EWB adviser, had been to Cameroon 11 times.

IGS and the College of Engineering split costs of a newly created associate director position to manage the college’s international programs and work across disciplines with other colleges.

Keeping Study Abroad Affordable

The junior year abroad originated at UD. The first students’ embarkation in 1923 on an ocean liner bound for France made front-page news in the New York Times. Now 1,300 students head abroad each year, mostly in classes taught by scores of UD faculty over the five week winter term. One-third study abroad before graduation.

But costs are a concern, said Lisa Chieffo, the associate director. Fees for some programs top $10,000 (including airfare and housing but not tuition). The university has doubled aid for study abroad to $1 million and launched a Delaware Diplomats program that allows freshmen to earn up to $1,500 for study or internships abroad by participating in global events on campus, including lectures and international coffee hours. Fifty students enlisted in the first corps.

Kerry Snyder, 22, a wildlife conservation major who works in the global studies office, put several scholarships together that paid for a service class in Cambodia and two research trips to Nicaragua. “I’d like to see programs that are more affordable, honestly, because that is a barrier. Students come in and they’re so excited, but they just don’t have the money,” said Snyder.

In 2014 the university launched a World Scholars Program that offers incoming freshmen the opportunity to spend their first semester at John Cabot University in Rome. Six signed up, including Daria Collins, a budding linguistics major now learning Japanese and planning to study abroad again. “I definitely feel like a world scholar,” she said. Thirty-eight freshmen started classes in Rome in fall 2015 and Foley began scouting for a second partner university in Madrid. 

Cynthia Schmidt-Cruz, professor of Spanish and interim director of the Center for Global and Area Studies, believes study abroad scholarships could entice more students to pursue a new minor in global studies that attracted 10 students last year.

A Fruitful Partnership on International Recruiting

UD’s English Language Institute (ELI) has grown so rapidly that its classrooms have spilled into seven buildings, including what was once the home of a Delaware paper mill magnate. Sixteen hundred students passed through its classrooms and labs in 2014–2015. More than a quarter came through a Conditional Admission Program (CAP) that guarantees entry to credit classes with no TOEFL required once they make the grade in language classes.

Once UD gave a green light for CAP in 2009, “we were off to the races,” said Director Scott Stevens, who won NAFSA’s 2015 Cassandra Pyle Award for Leadership and Collaboration for his efforts to raise standards for intensive English programs. 

The ELI and UD’s Admissions Office once worked apart on international recruitment, but “it’s a very integrated team now,” said Vice President for Enrollment Management Lucier. International applications shot up 50 percent in two years. The enrollment surge presented challenges for UD as some students struggled to adjust to campus and academic life. “The whole transition to the culture of academia is critical,” said Stevens. The institute now forms cohorts of five to eight CAP students, each with a U.S. student mentor. Residing in global living communities, they read books together, work on study skills, and learn respect for academic standards, but also go on scavenger hunts and a weekend retreat.

The campus wide collaborative culture is apparent in the Global Recruitment and Retention Group that includes academic advisers and representatives from residence life, career services, and the counseling center. It meets monthly to brainstorm not only how to attract international students, but also how to better support them once they arrive. 

Breaking the Ice with Facebook

Jill Neitzel and Patricia Sloane-White’s popular Anthropology 230 class on the lives of the “Young, Global, and Privileged” takes an innovative approach to breaking the ice between domestic and international students. Neitzel and Sloan-White assign readings and videos but the bulk of the work consists of student responses on a private Facebook page to a volley of questions on topics including inequality, race and gender, and pop culture and partying.

Students watched videos on racial tensions in Ferguson, Missouri, but also viewed a hilarious skit by the Fung Brothers, a duo of Chinese-American comedians, on “the Asian bubble” on U.S. campuses. They examined the huge gaps in both countries between the rich and working classes.

“It’s not all just ‘Let’s be friends,’” said Neitzel. “We approach this as a serious academic class, but rather than my standing up there lecturing, it’s participatory engagement in learning about other cultures anthropologically.”

The class drew raves. “I really wanted to have some Americans friends. Before this class, it did not work out,” said a Chinese student. “I even got to know Chinese culture better.” Using Facebook as a teaching tool was “absolutely brilliant,” said an American student.

The message is impossible to miss. One day each fall at North Central College dozens of senior administrators, faculty, and students don maroon T-shirts emblazoned with a three-word imperative: Please go away!

Students are heeding the study abroad pitch, not just because of the human billboards, but because the college has hired more advisers, made study overseas possible at no additional cost beyond airfare, and nearly tripled the number of semester offerings. North Central has come a long way since opening a small Office of International Programs two decades ago at a time when it enrolled fewer than 30 international students and sent only 23 abroad. Now 10 percent of the 3,000 students study in other countries each year. Recruiting efforts and copious financial aid now bring nearly 100 international students to the United Methodist–affiliated college in the suburbs of Chicago each year. At an institution where 90 percent of students are from Illinois, North  Central is progressing toward a goal of a 5 percent international student population.

The college was founded in 1861 by leaders of what is now the United Methodist Church to serve the families of German immigrants. The 65-acre campus sits in downtown Naperville, an upscale suburb 30 minutes from Chicago’s bustling Loop and lakefront. It changed its name from NorthWestern College in the 1920s to avoid confusion with much larger Northwestern  University. Early graduates served as missionaries in Japan and China. “Service and civic engagement are an important part of the culture of this campus,” said President Troy Hammond, who has a PhD in atomic physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but came to academe from the business world. 

Nudging a Campus to Internationalize

Hammond’s long-serving predecessor, Harold Wilde, set the regional college on a course to internationalize in 1994 when he tapped English professor Jack Shindler to direct the fledgling international office, a job he still holds today. Shindler wrote a dissertation on Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, but turned early in his career to directing the English as a second language program at Texas Southern University before joining the North Central faculty in 1981. When the international office started, it was just Shindler and a part-time secretary but he now runs a heavily trafficked, six-person shop with its own English Language Institute. Framed above the door to Shindler’s den-like office is a poster inspired by a salute from Wilde calling Shindler the campus “nudge” on all things international. “I nudged not just faculty but students out of the nest,” said Shindler, who as a Williams College student once convinced a chapel board to convert an empty fraternity house into a coffee house and gathering space. “I feel like we’re still doing that. This is a kind of coffee house in the best sense of the word where people come, share talents, talk to each other, network, and make this place more international.”

“We couldn’t have gotten where we are without him,” said Devadoss Pandian, the now retired vice president and dean of the faculty. Norval Bard, a professor of French, said Shindler “has a disarming way about him. He rarely says no. When you come to him with a new idea, he might say, ‘We’ll look into it,’ but he always leaves the door open to explore new ideas.” Francine Navakas, a humanities professor and associate dean who directs interdisciplinary studies, credited Shindler’s “magical planning” with helping land nearly $1 million in Title VI and foundation grants to build East Asian and Middle East/North African (MENA) studies. The college’s structure, with four academic divisions but no separate schools dividing liberal arts from business and science, helped, too, said Navakas. “We don’t have the big walls and barriers that some institutions do.”

Broadening Student and Faculty Horizons

North Central has marshaled resources to give students and faculty ample opportunities to learn and do research in other countries. The college provided grants to 33 faculty over the past five years for projects overseas. The  Office of International Programs arranges lectures, film screenings, and other events on campus focusing on global themes and works closely with faculty to incorporate these topics into courses. It once switched topics yearly, but now spends three years drilling deeper into a single global concern. The current cycle examines globalization and its ramifications. Islam, environmental change, and human rights have each been the focus in the past. The college provides stipends for faculty to join a summer reading and discussion group and sends them to a summer institute at the University of  Chicago’s Center for International Studies.

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Perry Hamalis, professor of religious studies and director of the College Scholars Honors Program, has taken part in nine of those seminars. His honors students are required to study abroad. “We’ve just redone the curriculum and added a new history of ideas minor,” said Hamalis. “The new curriculum now is truly global, pulling from the Indian subcontinent, Africa, Asia, South America, as well as European and North American sources. Previously, it should have been called history of Western ideas.”

The college distributes $40,000 to $50,000 each year in Richter Grants for undergraduate research anywhere in the world. These awards up to $5,000 date back to 1977 and for many years were funded by the Paul K. and Elizabeth Cook Richter Trusts, which provided similar opportunities at other colleges. Recently the college has supported the grants with its own funds. Miguel Purgimon Colell, a junior from El Salvador in the honors program, used his award to fly to Rio de Janeiro during the World Cup in 2014 to study the economic impact of the games on the lives of ordinary Brazilians. His economics professor, a Brazilian, put him in touch with academics and a government official in Rio, and he interviewed residents from all walks of life. He also managed to snag a ticket to the Brazil-Colombia match. “North Central has allowed me to do things I never would have imagined I could do,” said Colell, who is president of the International Club and is studying to become an actuary.

International Students’ Outsize Impact

North Central had just 51 international students when Jesús Velasco was hired as international student adviser in 2012. Two autumns later there were 94 from 40 countries. “Our exchanges from partner universities really boomed,” he said. But the college also stepped up recruiting to enroll more four-year students. It once took “an armchair approach,” said Marty Sauer, vice president for enrollment management. “We didn’t do much outreach or travel. It was simply a matter of accommodating international students who found us.” Now Megan Otermat, an assistant admissions director, recruits overseas and devotes full time to working with international applicants and advising those who enroll.

Otermat found Uyen Lam, 20, at a college fair at an international school in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Lam had spent a year at high schools in Florida and “had a long list of criteria that I wanted for college. North Central fit about 80 of them,” said the finance major. A $20,000-a-year scholarship clinched the deal.

Rosa Moraa received a full scholarship when she transferred from a sister school, United States International University, in Nairobi, Kenya. Now, with a bachelor’s in international business in hand, she is completing a master’s in leadership studies and overseeing student activities as a graduate assistant. Moraa, raised on a farm, said she was once “very introverted” but discovered “it was very easy to make friends. I’d recommend this school to anyone, even those who are scared to come, as I was.”

Exchange student Youssef Balti was among 80 young Tunisians chosen by the U.S. State Department for scholarships and sent to institutions across the United States for a year. “I’m here to learn about democracy and the American culture and take the best from it and bring it back to Tunisia,” said the 20-year-old finance student. A Thanksgiving feast with a friendship family “was a huge experience for me.”

A new pipeline opened with the launch of the English Language Institute in 2014. Applicants are conditionally admitted to the college and already four of the first 15 students have gone on to matriculate. “It will take a little time to measure how many stay and how many go, but the early signs have been very positive,” said Katherine Pope, the director.

Making Study Abroad Affordable

North Central has put study abroad within the reach of students by charging a flat $3,500 fee on top of tuition regardless of whether a program costs two to three times that much, as some do.

When Kimberly Larsson was hired in 2003 as the sole study abroad adviser (she also advised international students), North Central had only nine exchanges and a half-dozen direct enrollment programs. Now it has 17 and 31. It operates programs of its own—one in Costa Rica, one in England, and a third in which students study in both China and Japan. “Study abroad at North Central is very personal. It’s not an assembly line. When we started, we didn’t have a study abroad fair or even a brochure,” said Larsson, who herself studied and worked in Sweden and taught English in Japan. North Central has three 10-week terms with some classes in December. If students choose a fall program abroad that extends into December, they can earn 15 credits without paying an overload fee. Financial aid also carries over. “It can be a fantastic deal,” said Larsson.

The faculty-led December courses now are more “professionalized,” said William Muck, a political science professor who coordinates global studies. “It used to be the faculty would pitch an idea and say, ‘I’d like to take a group of students here.’ It was very loose in terms of organization. Now the faculty must propose courses a year in advance, submit syllabi, and go through a rigorous academic review process.” For long-term study abroad programs, students must take a two-credit seminar that meets weekly in the term before departure, write an essay while abroad, and upon return participate in reentry activities and write a capstone essay. 

Pushing Students Out of Comfort Zones

Kimberly Sluis, vice president for student affairs and dean of students, who coteaches a preparatory class, credits Shindler and Larsson with “busting open the possibilities” for study abroad. Sluis has twice taken students to Ghana, where she was once a Peace Corps volunteer.

International business professor Robert Moussetis has led hundreds of students on classes and cultural trips to more than a dozen countries, including Mongolia. “I tell them, ‘That will be the best and most wonderful learning experience you will ever have. You will survive. You will figure it out.’”

Three North Central students were in Nairobi, Kenya, when the Westgate shopping mall massacre occurred in September 2013. Two left, but Ben Redmond resisted entreaties to come home, and kept studying at United States International University and volunteering in an AIDS clinic. A biochemistry major who aspires to work for Médecins Sans Frontières, he credits North Central with “sparking my interests by pushing international experiences so much.”

Three seniors won Fulbright scholarships in 2014 and two more in 2015, including Heidi Nelson, 21, an education major who’ll teach English in Argentina. She studied in Costa Rica and Peru. “They’ll do anything to support us with our international goals,” she said. “When I had questions on my applications and on my Fulbright, I knew I could go in there any time and they’d stop what they were doing. It’s always an open door.” 

Marie Butnariu had a remarkably global upbringing in Tivoli, Italy, and Chicago. She got U.S. citizenship by virtue of being born on a New York–bound flight from Italy. She spent her first December term studying in France and the second in Israel and Palestine, then took a full semester at the University of Glasgow. The 20-year-old sees international work in her future. “You don’t just get an education here, you build character. It’s special.”

North Central’s enrollment has risen 20 percent over a decade. It opened a $30 million concert hall in 2008 and broke ground in May on a $60 million science center. When Hammond became president in 2013, he recalled a bit of wisdom he heard from his days as a business consultant in New Zealand: for that small, island nation to prosper in the global economy, it had to “punch above its weight.” That strategy is evident in North Central College’s international programs.

When Mary Lyon opened the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in western Massachusetts in 1837, the United States had 120 colleges for men and none for women. FDR’s path-breaking labor secretary Frances Perkins, obstetrical anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar, and playwright Wendy Wasserstein passed through its Gothic halls and strolled the campus landscaped by the son of Frederick Law Olmsted. Even 16-year-old Emily Dickinson, the poet and “Belle” of nearby Amherst, attended classes for a year.

Following in their footsteps today are more than 600 international students, over a quarter of the student body. “You walk through a mini-U.N. on campus,” said Eva Paus, director of the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives. President Lynn Pasquerella calls it “a microcosm of the world.” It is the second largest concentration of international students at any four-year college. International and domestic students alike are drawn to the country’s oldest college for women with a longstanding commitment to admit young women of talent with little regard to their ability to pay.

Mount Holyoke is not a newcomer to internationalization. The first international student, a Canadian, arrived two years after Lyon opened the doors to a college offering advanced instruction in “science, literature, and refinement” for the good of “our country and for the world.” Mary Woolley, a storied successor and the only female U.S. delegate to a League of Nations disarmament conference in 1932, wrote, “Internationalism has been woven into the very warp and woof of this institution from the beginning.” Today’s mission statement speaks of providing “an intellectually adventurous education in the liberal arts and sciences” to prepare students “for lives of thoughtful, effective, and purposeful engagement in the world.”

Steering a Distinctly International Course

But it is in this century that Mount Holyoke has steered its distinctly international course. A 2003 strategic plan laid the groundwork for the McCulloch Center. By 2007 admiring accreditors were saying that “with little fanfare” Mount Holyoke had created “a veritable world college” in the Connecticut River Valley. While faculty and administrators across the campus share that responsibility, Paus and her five-person staff make it happen. The McCulloch Center has a $12 million endowment of its own and, all told, the college has raised $30 million in endowed funds supporting international studies, teaching, research, and other activities, with more than half generating scholarships for international students.

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The McCulloch Center runs study abroad, develops curated international internships, and provides international student services. It also serves as the fulcrum for activities such as bringing a global scholar to campus each fall (former Norwegian President Gro Harlem Brundtland and Liberia’s Leymah Gbowee, the 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate and parent of a Mount Holyoke student, among them) and organizing biennial Global Challenges Conferences. Paus, a development economist, said the center’s overriding purpose is “to bring greater cohesion and visibility to global learning and to deepen it through new cross-disciplinary initiatives.”

Prizing the Contributions of International Students

Faculty, a quarter of them foreign-born, relish the diversity in their classrooms. When Jon Western, a professor of international relations, needed assistants for a foundation-funded project tracking civilian deaths in Syria, three of the eight students he hired spoke Arabic. “If I talk in my human rights class about Islam, I’ll have Sunni and Shia students who can elaborate on distinctions,” he said.

Politics professor and alumna Kavita Khory, originally from Karachi, Pakistan, said international students often “are much more politically engaged and aware” than U.S. classmates, but the latter “love that we present ourselves as an international college in so many ways.”

“Mount Holyoke is a fantastic place to teach the history of global inequality,” said Holly Hanson, a Uganda expert who as a teen volunteered in Africa for a year on her mother’s advice to “do something useful for the human race” before starting college. “I had this very profound African experience. The classes that I’m teaching 40 years later are answering the question (about inequality) that was formulated for me as a teenager.”

Mount Holyoke relies on tuition for over half its budget. Nearly 80 percent of students receive aid, but the college also looks for students whose families can pay. “We have expensive values… but we have to bring in a class that we can afford,” said Sonya Stephens, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty.

Nearly two-thirds of international students come from China, India, Vietnam, Pakistan, and South Korea. Pasquerella said the college decided last year to recruit and admit more students from the Middle East, Africa, and South America because “if you want to be truly multicultural and international, it can’t be all Asian students.”

Paying for Internships at Home or Abroad

Although it might be assumed that a college with a $700 million endowment was well insulated from the financial pressures felt by other private liberal arts colleges, it is not. That made all the bolder the college’s decision in 2014 to fund with its own dollars summer internships for sophomores or juniors. They are guaranteed $3,000 if they land an unpaid U.S. internship or $3,600 to work internationally. 

A third of the 400 students who took the college up on the offer in 2014 landed international placements in 52 countries. Their contributions ranged from participating in community outreach for an archaeological project on Easter Island to advising Fulbright applicants in Brussels to teaching poor farmers in India to become beekeepers.

Alumnae abroad help the students find openings and often directly super vise and mentor them. “Mentorship is really important because we see the internship not just as a preprofessional experience, but a cocurricular experience,” said Kirk Lange, director of international experiential learning. Students must show how the internships fit their learning goals “and both the host organization and the student’s faculty adviser must sign off on them.” 

Maggie Jacobi, a senior majoring in economics, worked as an AIDS educator in Gulu, Uganda, and said she “only had to pay $10 out of pocket for the entire summer. This is a good environment to have really big dreams.”

Schuyler Cowan, an Italian and politics major from Lake Placid, New York, spent her internship in Venice translating documents for the website of Ca’ Foscari University. She believes it helped her win a Fulbright, as four other seniors did this year. Cowan will teach English in Germany.

When Jenny Watermill was hired by the Career Development Center in 2008 to coordinate internships, two others did similar work. Now there are four full-time staff and a dozen others who also spend time on internships.

“The wonderful thing is students are no longer evaluated for internship (grants); if you’re a student, you get it. What we evaluate are the quality of the internships,” said Eleanor Townsley, associate dean of the faculty. 

The guaranteed funding for an internship is part of the college’s Lynk Initiative to connect academic work with practical applications of the liberal arts. The college emphasizes course work and skill-building in preparation for the summer intern ships and research. Back on campus afterwards, many make presentations at a student showcase on their experiences.

Supplementing, Not Supplanting, Study Abroad

The internships are intended to supplement, not supplant, study abroad. “The most important thing for us, actually, is the blend of international internships and study abroad opportunities,” said Stephens. Students who enroll in classes abroad pay the tuition and fees charged by the program or host university.

Students who are on financial aid receive Laurel Fellowships to help pay for Mount Holyoke’s own study abroad programs in Montpellier, France; Shanghai, China; and Monteverde, Costa Rica, or other preferred programs and exchanges. When Sinafik Gebru, a biology major from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, told her father she had won a Laurel Fellowship to study environmental challenges in Costa Rica, he asked, “Aren’t you already studying abroad?” International students cannot use Laurel Fellowships to study in their home country.

Students’ past preference for spring study abroad “created difficulties on campus. We had overcrowding in the fall and empty beds in the spring,” said Joanne Picard, dean of international studies. It righted the imbalance by waiving a $900 administrative fee for studying abroad in the fall.

Bringing International Experts to Class Remotely

Most faculty research grants in recent years have supported work done in other countries or with global partners. Many collaborations cross disciplines. International relations professor Western and Spanish professor Rogelio Miñana team-teach a course that combines human rights law and new media in Latin America. The students’ main assignment is to build a bilingual website for a mock human rights organization and to mount a media campaign aimed at local Latino communities. “Students love the connection between the foreign and local aspects,” said Miñana, an authority on Cervantes’ Don Quixote and the seventeenth century character’s enduring cultural impacts.  

With guidance from a nine-member Faculty Advisory Board, the McCulloch Center keeps a hand in numerous projects aimed at internationalizing the curriculum. In 2011, working with Library, Information and Technology Services, it induced faculty to bring expert voices from around the world into their classes. 

A dozen faculty took a seminar on the pedagogy, techniques, and logistics of videoconferencing, from simply using Skype and Adobe Connect to relying on high-end equipment in designated classrooms. More than 50 faculty have participated and the project, dubbed VP-50, won an award in 2014 from the American Council on Education and the SUNY Center for Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL).

The McCulloch Center offered a carrot to encourage faculty and their international guests to participate in the hook-ups. Faculty members get $150 the first time they arrange an international speaker, and the guest receives a $100 stipend. “It’s just a little gesture, but videoconferencing is a wonderful, economical way of bringing in international perspectives,” said Paus.

Language professors connected classes with universities in France, Italy, and Russia, and an Asian studies class on Chinese opera heard from a renowned performer of traditional Yue opera in Beijing.

Making the Case for Women’s Colleges

Senior Jelena Jezdimirovic from Uzice, Serbia, researched the history of international students at Mount Holyoke while working in the college’s Archives and Special Collections. The economics and critical social thought major catalogued 5,000 alumnae from other countries, including the first from the Balkans nine decades ago. “I couldn’t believe it. People still wonder how I found Mount Holyoke. How did someone in 1924 find out about it?” she asked.

Graduates include the first female editor of the Bombay edition of the Times of India, a spokeswoman for the government of Ethiopia, novelists, and diplomats. “It’s important for students to see that there’s a legacy. Tradition is very important to Mount Holyoke. We’ve always done some things that other schools haven’t done,”  Jezdimirovic said

Half a century ago there were 200 U.S. colleges for women. Today there are barely 40. “In the landscape of higher education, being a women’s college is not the norm. That’s OK with us. Mount Holyoke was an anomaly in 1837, and we have remained a women’s college by choice,” the Mount Holyoke website says. “We know that women thrive in an environment where all the resources are designed for and dedicated to them.”

Professors attest to that. Western, who also teaches international relations at the other members of the Five College Consortium— Amherst, Smith, Hampshire, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (students have reciprocal rights to take classes at the other campuses)— calls the classroom atmosphere at Mount Holyoke “profoundly different.” Paus said that in coed settings, male students often speak out “whether or not they have something to say while women wait to have the perfect answer.”

“The cooperativeness of the way the students interact in classes is really striking,” said Darby Dyar, an astronomy professor who conducts lunar and solar system research for NASA and the National Science Foundation. Dyar is an alumna of Wellesley College, another of the Seven Sister schools.

At a time of great financial pressure on private colleges, staying single-sex comes at the price of cutting off half the potential pool of applicants. “It’s a question that we’ve asked ourselves,” Pasquerella said. “We looked in our most recent strategic plan at coeducation and reaffirmed our commitment to women’s education, believing that it is more important than ever before. It’s a tough sell, but we have so much to offer.” Referring to the attempted assassination of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenage advocate for girls’ education, Pasquerella said, “If women are still dying around the world to get an education, then Mary Lyon’s historic mission hasn’t been fulfilled.”

Khory, the politics professor, said faculty share a conviction that Mount Holyoke is doing the right thing in making internationalization its calling card. “That’s really what we see as our past, present, and future.”

At first glance, Greenville, situated in eastern North Carolina, might seem to be an unlikely international education hub. The town of around 90,000 is home to East Carolina University (ECU), a public research institution serving students from the surrounding rural areas. Since the 1950s ECU has been a leader in distance education in North Carolina, and it was one of the first universities in the United States to offer an online degree. With a mission to maximize access through innovative learning strategies, ECU has capitalized on this leadership in online learning to bring global opportunities to its campus.

Technology Boosts Internationalization

With few international students on campus and low study abroad participation rates, ECU views technology as a medium to boost internationalization. The Global Academic Initiatives (GAI) program was started as a way to promote international collaborative learning through technology. “Our charge is to use innovative technology-based learning strategies to provide ECU students with international education experiences,” says Jami Leibowitz, GAI interim director. GAI coordinates the Global Understanding (GU) program, which virtually connects ECU students and faculty with partners around the world. The program has been running for more than a decade, starting with a two-week pilot course in 2003. Elmer Poe, professor emeritus and technology specialist, cofounded the program with former ECU psychology professor Rosina Chia, after discussing the lack of opportunities for cultural exchange available to ECU students.

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“One day we were commiserating about how we could provide experiences to more students that would really give them an opportunity to interact with students from other cultures. We decided that we would try using some form of electronic communication,” Poe says.

They used their assessments of the pilot program as the basis of what would later become the Global Understanding courses. “We took the lessons that we learned and began to work with our anthropology and political science departments to create a course that would introduce students to cultures,” Poe adds.

The program has grown significantly since its inception. Today ECU boasts more than 60 partners in approximately 30 countries. Each year the program connects approximately 1,400 ECU students with 2,700 partner students—a total of 21,000 students since the program started.

The program was built on simple video technology that engages partners from all over the world. “We use technology that allows the partner with the lowest connectivity to interact with the partner with the highest connectivity,” Poe explains.

Broad Topics Lead to Cultural Conversations

GU courses are multidisciplinary with a broad focus so that classes of different subjects can connect. Each GU class works with three international partners for approximately four weeks each. The partners switch off to work with all of the other partners over the duration of the course. Students discuss topics such as college life, family, cultural traditions, and religion. The class then concludes with an online collaborative project.

Sixty percent of class time is spent online with partners, and the remaining time is for the professor to facilitate disciplinary-based discussion. For example, a business class learning about multigenerational households in another country may discuss marketing strategies for that culture.

Anthropologist Blakely Brooks has taught in the program with partners in more than 10 countries. His students are generally nervous at the beginning but often become close with their partners: “I have had several students come up to me on campus and say ‘Dr. Brooks I am still talking with my global understanding partner in Nigeria!’”

Leibowitz says that students often switch to a more internationally focused major and have incorporated international perspectives into their theses after taking GU courses. ECU also sees the Global Understanding program as a stepping stone for future study abroad.

Enhancing Upper-Division Classes

ECU uses the same technology to provide enhancements to upper-division courses. Brooks, for instance, has used the technology in his anthropology courses. In a course on peoples of Central and South America, ECU students discussed topics such as favelas, racism in Latin America, and the 2016 Olympic games with Brazilian and Peruvian peers. “Utilizing [technology] gave students the opportunities to discuss complex cultural topics,” Blakely says.

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Professor Patricia Clark runs a class for youth theater majors in which she links to partners in Egypt and Japan. They collect cultural stories from their partners and turn them into dramatic scripts. “We perform at various schools and community centers to try to promote an interest in different cultures,” she says.

Clark has worked closely with counterparts at University of Shimane in Japan, which created an opportunity to take three students with her to Japan to meet their partners. “They produced a show that was a collection of worldwide tales” Clark explains.

Providing High-Level Logistical Support

One of the pillars of the GU program is providing a high level of technical and logistical support to both ECU faculty and partners.

Leibowitz says one of her biggest challenges is coordinating the master schedule. For the 2015–2016 academic year, ECU offered 37 sections of the Global Understanding courses. “We have to take into consideration time zones, different academic calendars, different holidays, and different class days,” Leibowitz says.

ECU has also created a community among its partners by instituting an umbrella organization, Global Partners in Education (GPE). Every year, a partner institution hosts an annual conference, which involves networking, presentations on best practices, opportunities to learn about the host institution and country, a review of the previous year, and setting future goals.

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“The conference is an opportunity for partners to meet, learn about each other, and open conversations of activities that they can do with each other,” Leibowitz says.

For many partners, participating in Global Understanding creates international experiences for students who are unable to travel. According to Cajetan Nnaocha, a Nigerian professor teaching at the University of The Gambia, Global Understanding was the first time his students were able to engage in cultural exchanges. “Most of them were for the first time interacting with white students,” he says, adding that another significant benefit of the program was learning IT skills.

Other partners see it as a significant part of their own “internationalization at home.” “Offering GU has given us a great opportunity to bring direct intercultural experiences to more students,” says Kathrin Ullrich, head of international programs at Universidad Regiomontana in Monterrey, Mexico.

Changing What It Means to Be International

According to Leibowitz, the impact of the GU program has been felt across campus: “We’re changing the attitude on campus about what it means to be internationalized, and that you don’t have to necessarily offer a summer study abroad trip for your class to be international.”

GAI is working to extend the initiative beyond the classroom to reach even more students. This fall ECU will pilot a student organization, WorldWise, with four partners. Each month, students will link with an international partner to engage in a cocurricular collaborative activity on a common theme.

Provost Ron Mitchelson says that Global Understanding has been an effective way to promote comprehensive internationalization. “It really has provided a marquee program that elevates interest and administrative awareness across the campus. This program is sort of priming the pump and getting folks energized about opportunities,” he explains.

Vice President of Academic Success Chris Locklear says ECU is also currently looking at ways to capitalize upon the existing GU partnerships for recruitment purposes: “We want to increase our international presence on campus. We have around 529 international students on campus right now. We hope to grow that to 1,500 over a five-year period.”

Part of ECU’s ability to expand its partnerships includes closer future collaboration between Global Academic Initiatives and the Office of International Affairs, which manages international student services and study abroad, under a global affairs umbrella.

GAI recently launched its first course with a travel component. Working with a language teacher at University of Shimane, an ECU faculty member led an ethnic studies course focused on culture in Vietnam and Japan that culminated with ECU students meeting their Japanese peers for a service-learning trip to Vietnam.

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Anthropology major Sara Heath was one of 13 participants to travel to Vietnam: “As a nontraditional student, I have worked full time as a certified nursing assistant. Because I have paid for my own education, it was never possible for me to take off for a summer program or a semester-long study abroad. This two-week experience was perfect for my situation.”

Leibowitz hopes that in the future ECU is able to offer more courses that integrate the virtual component with study abroad: “I think that it will just be a natural that some of these courses have a mobility component. You can connect and continue those relationships you develop when you’re abroad and establish some relationships before you go to enhance the on-the-ground activity. We’re actually really excited about that, especially in terms of comprehensive internationalization.”

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East Carolina University

Read more about East Carolina University

On January 31, 1891, the Tampa Bay Hotel, the pet project of railroad magnate Henry B. Plant, opened its doors with 500-plus rooms and quarter-mile long corridors. More than 125 years later, Plant Hall, as it’s known today, serves as the main administrative and academic building of the University of Tampa (UT), which moved into the iconic building in 1933. Just as tourists flocked to the Tampa Bay Hotel at the dawn of the twentieth century, the University of Tampa itself has become a destination for more than 8,000 students from 50 states and 140 countries.

Ronald L. Vaughn, who became president in 1995, says that UT began internationalizing in the early 1990s. “Early on we invested heavily in exposing our faculty to the world and different cultures. That definitely helped to speed along our development,” he says.

Early international initiatives paved the way for comprehensive internationalization, culminating with a 2005 accreditation review by the Southern Association of College and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). UT chose to create and implement a quality enhancement plan (QEP), Building International Competence, as part of the accreditation process.

“When I look at us now, compared to where we were several years ago, we really have opened up the world of opportunities for our students and faculty. We’ve built a broad portfolio that everyone can take advantage of,” Vaughn says.

Leveraging Accreditation to Push Internationalization

The current structure of UT’s international programming has been in development since the mid-1990s, when under President Vaughn’s leadership, the university made internationalization a strategic priority. By 2005 those early efforts became the foundation for UT’s QEP, according to Marca Marie Bear, PhD, associate dean of the International Programs Office (IPO) and associate professor of management and international business at the Sykes College of Business.

“We were able to leverage the QEP and build internationalization into the vision that President Vaughn had for the university,” she says.

As the center for international programs of all kinds, the IPO oversees education abroad, international student and scholar services, and on-campus global programming. A sampling of its portfolio includes semester abroad, travel courses, international internships, service learning, research and athletics abroad, immigration advising, and advising for postgraduate opportunities abroad.

The office provides comprehensive support for any university-sponsored activity abroad, ranging from predeparture orientations to assistance with logistics and health insurance. The IPO also sponsors more than 50 international events each academic year, including its Global Scholar Speakers Series, and publishes World View, an annual magazine showcasing the institution’s international initiatives.

A number of other initiatives came out of the first QEP, including funding for faculty to explore international issues. Annually, the Office of International Programs sponsors five to six faculty members to participate in International Faculty Development Seminars (IFDS) organized by the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE).

Celebrating Global Competence with a Certificate of International Studies

Another achievement of the QEP was the development of UT’s Certificate of International Studies (CIS). According to Bear, approximately 40–50 students are working toward the certificate at any given time.

Students must obtain intermediate foreign language proficiency, participate in education abroad, and complete five global engagement projects. Students are also required to take 12–16 credits in non-Western and global awareness courses and complete a capstone course. Students are recognized at graduation with a cord of distinction.

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Victoria Tully, a 2016 graduate, majored in international and cultural studies and completed the CIS. “The certificate allowed me to get involved on campus. You do internationally based projects and events,” says Tully, who studied abroad in both Spain and Brazil and is currently serving in the Peace Corps.

One of the ways the Office of International Programs encourages students completing the CIS is to get involved with Spartans Abroad Ambassadors, which helps build awareness of education abroad options throughout campus. “As a Spartans Abroad ambassador, I have been able to help other students in going abroad by sharing my experience,” Tully says.

Creating a Study Abroad Pipeline Through Early Global Experiences

In 2016 UT launched a new QEP, Learning by Doing, which focuses on experiential learning. Bear says the new QEP will have increased focus on international internships and service learning. Provost David Stern adds that it will also create an impetus to develop opportunities for undergraduate research abroad.

One recent initiative that bridges the two QEPs is the creation of a four-year study abroad pipeline beginning with opportunities for freshmen to go abroad during—or even before—their first year. Two groups of first-year students will have the opportunity to spend the second semester of their freshman year in Ireland or Spain. In August 2016 UT will also launch Spartans Academy Abroad, a summer pre-enrollment program in Costa Rica aimed at incoming freshmen.

Working through the admissions office, UT has leveraged the programs to attract highly qualified incoming freshmen that they expect to become “repeat participants,” as Stern puts it, when it comes to international engagement. The idea is to expose students to international experiences early in their college careers in order to maximize impact.

For the Costa Rica program, UT has partnered with the Monteverde Institute to offer eight credits in biology and social science to approximately 20 students. Biologist Mason Meers and political scientist Kevin Fridy will teach a two-week multidisciplinary course that focuses on environmental politics, conservation, sustainability, and biological diversity. Upon return, the students will study 
together in a freshman learning community for the rest of the year.

Fridy says that the program will also give students a chance to engage with research early on in their college careers. “We hope we can encourage them to become not only more international, but also more scholarly,” he says.

Exploration Through Inspiration in the Honors Program

Recruiting for Spartans Academy Abroad has been done in close collaboration with the UT Honors Program. According to Director Gary Luter, some 1,300 students are enrolled in the honors program, which requires a 3.5 GPA.

“One of the pillars of our mission statement is to prepare honors students to be global citizens,” Luter says.

To achieve this goal, UT offers a number of honors travel courses with a research element. It also provides travel scholarships of approximately $1,000 to 20 honors students each year to help them go abroad. One student a year is also awarded $2,500 through the Timothy M. Smith Inspiration Through Exploration Award.

“This is a unique experience where students create their own itinerary. They have their own objectives and we underwrite the cost,” Luter says.

The UT Honors Program also sends three students per semester to study at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, covering the cost of tuition and housing.

Last year Selene San Felice, a junior journalism major, took part in the program, which is run on a tutorial system where students work one-on-one with a professor. She says it gave her a chance to study underground rap and hip hop and the history of sexuality in the twentieth century.

“I got to do really intense academic work. I wrote between 10 and 12 research papers during the eight weeks I was there. It’s not the typical study abroad, but it was really rewarding,” she says.

Promoting Sportsmanship Abroad

UT tries to make international opportunities available for all students, regardless of major. For student athletes, fitting study abroad into training schedules can be a particular challenge.

“Athletes don’t get the opportunity to study abroad like most students do because they can’t leave for the entire semester. We think it’s important that the coaches take them abroad and expose them to other cultures,” says Larry Marfise, UT athletic director.

The UT Spartans play in Division II for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) with eight men’s and 11 women’s varsity sports. The NCAA allows teams to go on international trips every four years, an opportunity of which Marfise tries to take full advantage.

Marfise adds that increased cultural awareness is not the only benefit of sending his teams abroad. “Every single team that has gone has not only come back with a better appreciation for what goes on in this world, but they also come back as better teammates,” he says.

In recent years, he sent the UT volleyball team to Sweden and both men’s and women’s soccer teams to Germany. In January 2014 they also sent the UT baseball team to Cuba, where they participated in cultural exchange activities and played—and won—three exhibition games with minor league Cuban teams.

Fostering Cultural Connections with Cuba

The baseball team playing in Havana isn’t the only recent connection between the University of Tampa and Cuba. For more than five years, UT has participated in a number of educational, cultural, and artistic exchanges with various Cuban institutions. In March 2016, for example, UT’s Scarfone Hartley Gallery hosted an exhibition of contemporary Cuban art that was visited by more than 2,000 community members.

UT has also participated in two different educational delegations to Cuba in the last year. In October 2015 UT was part of a group of 12 U.S. higher education institutions selected to travel to Cuba as part of an Institute of International Education (IIE) initiative to increase the number of partnerships between the United States and Cuba.

Through its Global Access Partnership, coordinated through the Sykes College of Business, UT also ran its own travel program in March 2016 designed to provide a platform for university faculty and community partners to understand business opportunities in Cuba. President Vaughn led the delegation.

In addition, UT has been deepening its own partnerships with Cuban institutions. In April, UT and the University of South Florida (USF) hosted the first UT-USF International Conference on José Martí, a nineteenth-century political activist and man of letters who was instrumental in the Cuban fight for independence from Spain.

During the conference, UT was inaugurated as the first U.S. affiliate of the Center for José Martí Studies (Centro de Estudios Martianos), a research institution in Havana that promotes Martí’s work.

Professors Denis Rey and James Lopez have taken the lead in establishing the academic partnership between the two institutions. They have been leading travel courses to Cuba since 2009, when U.S. President Barack Obama lifted restrictions for educational travel.

Rey and Lopez currently offer an honors course, Cuba and the U.S.: Then and Now, which examines U.S.-Cuba relations throughout the twentieth century. Rey says that his students have the opportunity to visit the Center for José Martí Studies. “What’s unique about our course is it’s one of very limited opportunities that U.S. students have to hear the Cuban perspective,” he explains.

Rey adds that the relationship with the Center for José Martí Studies has been instrumental in closely linking UT with a wider network of Cuban institutions. “In regards to the University of Havana, there exists mutual interest in fostering greater ties between the two institutions,” he says.

Senior Benjamin White traveled to Cuba with Rey and Lopez in January 2013. “Cuba is a nation that not many Americans have had the opportunity of visiting. It was a very good experience to have another perspective. It adds a layer to your thinking and analysis, and an understanding of the complexity of the negotiations that are occurring right now,” he says.

Academic Excellence Abroad Through Travel Courses

UT’s education abroad portfolio promotes opportunities for approximately 500 UT participants per year. One of the main ways that UT has sought to expand its education abroad portfolio is through the development of travel courses, which include an on-campus component followed by a faculty-led experience abroad. UT currently offers 17–20 travel courses to approximately 19 countries in a variety of disciplines.

Faculty members are provided with a stipend on top of their teaching salary. “It is a symbol that we recognize the value that they’re adding,” Stern says.

French Professor James Aubry leads a travel course to France every year. His course, Paris, Study of a City Throughout its History, explores the history of the French capital with a focus on lesser known landmarks.

Students who participate in the course are required to take at least two semesters of French prior to traveling. “When it comes to the language, I make them participate in everything from purchasing subway tickets for the group to ordering meals in French,” he says.

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Aubry appreciates that UT allows him to run the program with a small group of five to six students. “The students get more out of the experience,” he says.

Professor Tressa Pedroff leads a travel course to Costa Rica for nursing and public health students. The course, Transcultural Healthcare in Latin America, covers concepts such as community health promotion and disease prevention.

Pedroff says the course is an opportunity for future health care providers to understand their own medical system in a comparative context: “It’s a way of becoming much more culturally aware. It makes them have a new appreciation for other cultures and the resources that they have here in the United States.”

The Sykes College of Business also offers a range of travel courses for both undergraduate and graduate students. Business Professor Julia Pennington leads a travel course in qualitative market research to Swaziland in Africa. Her students visit game parks and interview local residents about their views on rhino conservation. “What I found out in my teaching is that qualitative research in study abroad is fantastic because you really have to connect with the locals,” she says.

Sykes also offers travel courses that look at international markets for graduate students. Amy Beekman, director of graduate business programs, says that it’s harder for graduate students to spend a semester away, so travel courses are an attractive option.

“Our international travel courses are a combination of business programs and cultural excursions, and they do projects for companies that we visit,” she says.

For their executive MBA program, Beekman recently led a 10-day trip to Ireland where students consulted for high-tech companies at a business incubator in Dublin. The students spent a few days on site with the company and then worked virtually after returning home.

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“Particularly in the executive MBA program, it’s all about the application. Our students already have a lot of professional experience. It’s a great learning experience for our students to be able to take everything they’ve learned in the program and to be able to apply it. Then you have the cultural dimension on top of it,” Beekman says.

Using Diversity as a Recruitment Tool

Over the last decade, the University of Tampa has increased not only its total enrollment but also the share of international students on campus. Total enrollment has increased from around 5,000 students in 2005 to nearly 8,000 in 2015, with the percentage of international students growing from approximately 9 percent to 20 percent during the same period.

When Vice President for Enrollment Dennis Nostrand came on board eight years ago, he couldn’t help but notice just how internationalized the campus had become. “I felt that it was something from a marketing standpoint that I really needed to take advantage of, and make sure that students that were going to come to the University of Tampa realized how internationally diverse the student body was,” he says.

To help attract international students, Nostrand created a bridge program with an English as a Second Language (ESL) provider. It is unique because it only enrolls students who plan to matriculate into UT once they achieve English proficiency, thus building a strong enrollment pipeline.

UT’s success in internationalization has also become one of its major selling points. “We want to make sure that students really understand the advantages of having an international campus,” he says.

As Boston’s only public research institution, University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston) sets itself apart in a number of ways, including the composition of its student body. The diversity of UMass Boston, with minority students making up 48 percent of its more than 17,000-student population, means that the global truly starts at home.

Chancellor J. Keith Motley says the university’s current mission goes far beyond its original mandate from 1974: “While we are an institution that began as one that was born to serve the citizens of Boston, we realized that in doing that we also serve the citizens of the world because this campus has transformed into one with over 90 different languages spoken on campus and 150 different countries represented.”

Designated as an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution (AANAPISI), UMass Boston is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a minority-serving institution. Many students are first-generation college students who come from immigrant backgrounds.

Senior anthropology major Michelle Chouinard says she has benefitted from opportunities to travel abroad as well as the global composition of the student population: “Our student population is so diverse. As someone who grew up in suburbia, it’s altered the way that I look at my own backyard.”

Embracing the Urban Context

Chancellor Motley and Provost Winston E. Langley view UMass Boston’s profile as an urban public research institution as central to its global vision. The university’s mission statement, which was revised in 2010 as part of its strategic plan, explicitly links the urban and the global: “The University of Massachusetts Boston is a public research university with a dynamic culture of teaching and learning, and a special commitment to urban and global engagement.”

According to Langley, the goal is to make UMass Boston the most cosmopolitan public urban research university in the United States. “By cosmopolitan, we mean that our students upon graduating should be able to live, thrive, and establish their social wellbeing any place on earth and do so with cultural ease. If our students are going to be citizens, not just occupants, of that society, they must be actively engaged and must be capable of crossing cultural cleavages and borders with facility,” he says.

A Systems Approach to Internationalization

One of the first things Langley did when he became provost in 2009, after more than two decades serving UMass Boston in a variety of other academic and administrative positions, was to establish the Office of Global Programs. Global Programs currently manages all internationalization efforts at UMass Boston under the leadership of Schuyler S. Korban, who came on board in 2013.

The Office of Global Programs has become the campus’s internationalization hub under Korban’s leadership as vice provost. Global Programs oversees a wide portfolio, including international student and scholar services, education abroad, exchange partnerships, an international visiting scholar academy, international internships, and a Confucius Institute, among others.

Robyn Hannigan, dean of the School for the Environment, has seen a huge change in terms of internationalization at UMass Boston in the seven years she’s been at the institution: “Since Schuyler has come on board, there has been a culture shift where what the faculty are doing (with international opportunities) is not only appreciated, but it’s expected and it’s merited. Our provost and our chancellor are fully aware when we’ve travelled abroad.”

Korban says he draws on his academic background as a molecular biologist in his approach to internationalization. “We think in terms of systems, so I look at internationalization as a system. I’m interested in expanding our network and along with the expansion of that network, identifying nodes of strength in terms of our partnerships overseas,” he explains.

One example of a “node of strength” is the Center for Governance and Sustainability (CGS). Under the leadership of Robyn Hannigan and Maria Ivanova, codirector of CGS, UMass Boston has received an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) grant from the National Science Foundation for its transdisciplinary program, Coasts and Communities. This grant, focusing on international research in the Horn of Africa, has helped shape internal campus development by promoting collaborations among the McCormack Graduate School for Policy and Global Studies, the College of Science and Mathematics, the School for the Environment, the College of Management, and the College of Liberal Arts.

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Ivanova approached Korban about offering a short course in Ethiopia. “I said, ‘Think about it in the bigger context. Let’s think about it as an opportunity to create something sustainable,’” Korban says.

He gave Ivanova funding to establish a regional environmental diplomacy institute that brought together representatives of the Ethiopian ministries of foreign affairs and environment with parliamentarians, academics, and nongovernmental organizations. “We shared our research findings about how countries are implementing their obligations under international environmental conventions,” Ivanova says.

Seed Funding to Increase International Engagement

One of Korban’s first initiatives as vice provost of global programs was to launch a competitive seed grant program that supports internationalization of teaching, research, and outreach. In total, the Office of Global Programs has dedicated $150,000 to the initiative.

“The idea is to support faculty who are interested in internationalizing education, research, and service. As a result, our faculty-led programs have increased. Then, in turn, they develop these new courses that end up impacting our study abroad programs,” Korban says.

Last year, Felicia L. Wilczenski, associate dean of the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development, received a $5,000 seed grant to bring in representatives from John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin in Poland for an international conference, Building Inclusive Communities, in December 2015. She also used the funding to help take a group of UMass students to Poland for a course and study tour titled Focus on Inclusive Policy, Practice, and Educational Reforms in Poland.

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“The funds helped me to enact parts of the MOU that UMass Boston previously executed with the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) in Poland. These two activities helped to deepen the partnership between our two institutions. We also have a joint research collaboration in the planning stages,” Wilczenski says.

Since 2014 the Office of Global Programs has also committed $50,000 annually to incentivize faculty to internationalize their curricula for both undergraduate and graduate programs. Faculty and teaching staff can receive up to $1,500 for curricular enhancements, the creation of online modules, or travel abroad.

Student Mobility Through Exchange and Short-Term Programs

The Office of Global Programs has focused on developing short-term and exchange programs, largely due to the makeup of the student body. “With the demographics that we have, we have been focusing on short term as opposed to semester or year-long programs,” Korban says.

Over the last five years, the number of UMass Boston students studying abroad has increased from 75 students in 2009–10 to 466 in 2014–15, according to Ksenija Borojevic, assistant director for study abroad.

The Office of Global Programs has also focused on the development of reciprocal exchange agreements. UMass Boston currently offers its students more than 35 exchange options, which also help boost the number of international students on campus. In 2014–2015, 78 exchange students enrolled at UMass Boston.

Natalia Pisklak, a senior biology major, spent last summer at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. She worked one-on-one with a professor to study neurophysiology.

“It made me gain confidence in talking with professors about science. I was always scared of talking about a field that they know so much about, but now I am so much more comfortable,” she says.

Lurlene Van Buren, coordinator of student exchange, says that undergraduate exchange programs also serve as a recruiting tool to attract international students to UMass Boston graduate programs. Marco Bellin, an Italian MBA student, was such an exchange student in 2009–2010.

“I felt from my exchange program here seven years ago that this was a place I could call home. I saw UMass Boston as a good value for money option where I could get a top notch MBA at the fraction of a cost of other institutions,” Bellin says.

UMass Boston also offers 25 faculty-led programs, which have helped contribute to significant increases in students studying abroad. The number of students participating in these programs jumped from 132 in 2011–12 to 219 in 2014–15.

The Honors College offers one such program, a year-long seminar called International Epidemics. In between the two semesters, students participate in a 12-day field experience over winter break to South Africa led by Rajini Srikanth, dean of the Honors College, and Louise Penner, associate professor in English. Last year, Srikanth and Penner also took students to India for the first time.

Penner says that the discussion in the classroom is much richer the second semester after students have returned from their field experience. “The spring semester is very gratifying in some ways, because students make complex associations and analyses, and conversations become very far ranging. That’s why we are both always surprised at the kind of impact that 12 days has on them,” she says.

An Entrepreneurial College Working Across the University

Most of UMass Boston’s faculty-led programs are run through the College of Advancing and Professional Studies (CAPS), which collaborates with all academic departments and the Office of Global Programs. In addition to administering faculty-led programs, CAPS oversees an English as a Second Language (ESL) program, online learning, and a number of certificate and degree programs.

Dean Philip DiSalvio describes CAPS as “the entrepreneurial arm of the university.” However, he stresses that the aim of CAPS, as a self-sustaining unit, is not to generate profit but to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus. DiSalvio’s team works hard to make study abroad affordable to as many students as possible, with programs generally operating at cost.

CAPS often builds on relationships that professors bring with them to UMass Boston. One recent program was Conflict Transformation Across Borders in Quito, Ecuador.

Building on his affiliation as a Fulbright fellow to the Department of International Studies and Communication at FLACSO (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) Ecuador, Assistant Professor Jeff Pugh wanted to continue running study abroad programs in Ecuador when he joined UMass Boston. During the three-week summer course, students learn about conflict resolution, and acquire skills such as negotiation and proposal writing. They also visit indigenous communities along the border between Ecuador and Colombia. “We talked about how the refugee issue has been affecting their identity as a border community where a lot of people have family on both sides of the border,” says Pugh.

Abdul Aziz, a master’s student in conflict resolution and Fulbright scholar, was one of 14 participants in the program. He was able to find parallels to his own experiences in his native Indonesia. “I didn’t expect to be able to relate my own stories with those of the refugees that I met. It feels very similar with what happens at home in Indonesia with all the identitybased conflict,” he says.

International Exposure for First-Year Students

Within the College of Science and Math, Dean Andrew Grosovsky has helped establish the Scotland Exchange Program in partnership with Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), an urban university in Scotland. UMass Boston freshmen majoring in science and mathematics engage in the exchange as part of their participation in a freshman success community.

Since 2011 UMass Boston and GCU each send six freshmen to the other institution for a week-long exchange. At UMass Boston, each of three freshman success communities within the College of Science and Math nominate two student ambassadors to travel to Glasgow for a week during the fall semester. Other members of the freshman success communities are responsible for hosting the visiting Scottish students.

Grosovsky says that the larger goal of the exchange is to strengthen and better integrate the three freshman learning communities, which are made up of around 70 students in total. They benefit from working together to host the Scottish students, and at the same time, gain exposure to another culture.

“Sometimes people say that six students for one week doesn’t sound like a lot, but we have had more than 10 times that number who are participating. They are all interacting closely with the Scottish students and are experiencing the value of the exchange,” Grosovsky says.

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Megan Fung is a freshman biochemistry major who traveled to Glasgow as an ambassador. “There’s a lot more to the exchange than people understand. A lot of it is about networking and developing relationships not only with the Glasgow Caledonian students, but also with each other,” she says.

The School for the Environment also offers its freshmen an early international experience. In fact it is the only academic unit on campus that requires students to have an international experience before graduation. As part of the freshman seminar for environmental science, 15 freshmen traveled to the Azores islands in Portugal to learn about geology, ecology, and land-use practices.

Erika Welch, a sophomore environmental science major, said that having an international experience so early in her college career made her want to study abroad again. During summer 2016, she spent three weeks in Brazil in another program piloted through the School for the Environment.

Global Engagement Outside the Classroom

Kim Montoni, director of international education, organizes a number of programs geared toward engaging the larger campus community in global affairs. Her flagship initiative is Global Ambassadors, a leadership program that requires students to commit to working with international programming for an academic year.

Five to 10 students are selected each year to serve as global ambassadors. Throughout the year, they participate in workshops and professional development opportunities. They are also responsible for organizing activities for international students on campus, and they assist Montoni with international student orientation and with the U.S. Department of State’s International Education Week.

“Our job as global student ambassadors is not only to be a bridge, but also to create a very strong community,” says Aroma Kazmi, a psychology major from India.

The students traveled with Montoni to New York City, where they visited the United Nations (UN) headquarters. Last year, global ambassadors also attended the NAFSA 2015 Annual Conference & Expo in Boston.

Montoni collaborates with other offices on campus, offering predeparture orientations and health and safety support for non-credit-bearing servicelearning trips offered through the Office of Student Leadership and Community Engagement. She also works closely with the Division of Student Affairs, whose activities often dovetail with those of the global ambassadors.

Growth Through Strategic Recruitment

The last five years have seen a remarkable increase in the number of international students on the UMass Boston campus, from 675 in 2009–10 to nearly 2,500 in 2015–16, currently making up approximately 12 percent of the entire student body. The boost in international student enrollment has largely been a combination of an active recruitment strategy abroad and pathway programs such as the Navitas at UMass Boston Undergraduate Pathway Program. UMass Boston has focused on the development of pathway programs that allow students to work on language skills prior to pursuing a bachelor’s degree.

According to Michael Todorsky, manager of international partnerships, UMass Boston’s first pathway program began 14 years ago with four students from one program with Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Since then, it has expanded to Vietnam and South Korea. UMass Boston has also established a residential ESL program at the Massachusetts International Academy in Marlborough that currently serves around 300 students.

Lisa Johnson, vice chancellor for enrollment management, would like to increase the share of international students from its current 12 percent. However, the challenge lies in continued growth in domestic enrollment.

The freshman class of fall 2015 was the largest in the history of UMass Boston, with nearly 3,400 new students—and even more growth is projected in upcoming years. To accommodate the expected growth, the campus has been under construction with two new buildings completed in 2015 and 2016, with an investment of more than $700 million. In 2018 the university will open its first residence hall to provide housing for 1,000 students.

Johnson is excited about the prospect of on-campus housing to boost international student enrollment: “We just opened these two academic buildings. We’re building another. The residence halls are going to be beautiful. When all of these dirt piles are gone, you can get back to driving around this peninsula. Who would not want to come here from another country?”