2018 Comprehensive Babson College
The mission of Babson College is to educate entrepreneurial leaders who create great economic and social value—everywhere. Recognized as one of the top entrepreneurship schools in the United States, Babson draws more than 1,000 international students from around the world to its campus in Wellesley, Massachusetts, every year. Nearly 27 percent of the undergraduate students and more than 70 percent of the graduate students come from abroad, with a total student body of just over 3,000.
Internationalization has been at the heart of Babson’s mission as a private business college since entrepreneur Roger Babson founded the institution in 1919. “Roger Babson took away the lesson from World War I that the world needed to come together,” says President Kerry Healey. “The way that he thought that could best be done was through business, executed in the interest of humanity. Roger Babson’s original vision is still applicable for us almost 100 years later.”
Spreading Entrepreneurship Education Around the World
Babson seeks to share its approach to entrepreneurship education beyond the borders of its Wellesley campus. “We want to be the preeminent institution for entrepreneurship education everywhere,” says Amir Reza, vice provost for international and multicultural education and senior international officer (SIO). “The opportunities for internationalization sit within the ‘everywhere’ context. We want to create access to our methodology, which we call entrepreneurial thought and action.”
Heidi Neck, professor of entrepreneurship, oversees the Global Symposia for Entrepreneurship Educators (SEE) program, which is delivered twice a year on the Babson campus and available on demand internationally. “We train other educators from around the world in how Babson teaches entrepreneurship,” Neck says.
Neck also directs the Babson Collaborative for Entrepreneurship Education, an institutional membership organization under Babson’s leadership made up of 23 institutions around the world. “We’re trying to build a better entrepreneurship education ecosystem by collaborating, helping one another, sharing best practices, but also imagining future possibilities,” Neck says. “Babson is very small, but we want to bring what we do with respect to entrepreneurship education to the world.”
Babson has used technology to increase access to its entrepreneurship expertise. The college has contributed six entrepreneurship courses to edX, the platform created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University that provides online learning and massive online open courses (MOOCs). More than 100,000 people in 220 countries and territories have participated in Babson’s entrepreneurship MOOCs, according to Healey.
Bringing Together International and Multicultural Education
The Glavin Office of Multicultural & International Education is at the heart of Babson’s internationalization efforts. It is home to international education, multicultural, service-learning, and multifaith programs. In an innovative approach to internationalization, the Glavin Office aims to foster conversations about identity, diversity, inclusion, and equity on campus.
When Reza became SIO in 2010, he brought together international education—which includes education abroad and international student and scholar services—and multicultural education under the larger umbrella of the Glavin Office. In 2014, the office also assumed responsibility for service-learning and multifaith programs, which provided more intersectionality.
“We have experimented with intentional strategies to bridge the gap between these areas to benefit our students’ education,” Reza says. “Each area continues to have professionals with expertise in their respective fields, and we have seen both organic and intentional programming that has helped us further the mission and goals of each area through the lens of the other.”
Much of the Glavin Office’s programming consequently revolves around encouraging students to explore their cultural identities and how that impacts the ways in which they interact with the world. Glavin’s predeparture orientations for education abroad, for example, take an inclusive approach to the subject of identity. Students are asked to list five to 10 aspects of their identities and are guided through a set of reflection questions that ask them to explore the ways that identities like LGBTQ, gender, and race are seen in their host country and to consider how they will interact on those issues.
“What we are doing is talking about the relationship between identity and place for everybody, using several different examples,” explains Reza. “If I’m an African American student and I’m going to a predominantly white environment, what does that mean? Or if I am a Muslim and I want to practice my faith, what does Islamophobia mean for me?”
Another example of the collaboration between the international and multicultural education teams was the development of a three-part workshop titled “Understanding Race and Racism in the U.S. for International Students.” Designed by arts and humanities professor Elizabeth Swanson, the first workshop gives students an understanding of language and terminology and the idea of race as a social construct. The second segment focuses on slavery and historical race relations in the United States, and the final workshop helps students process current events and issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement and the actions and policies of the Trump administration.
The goal of the workshop series is to help international students gain a better perspective on current events and historical precedents that shape many of the discussions on today’s college campuses.
Salome Mosehle, a senior from South Africa, says that although her country has its own history of racism, she grew up in a predominantly black society. “I came to the United States and was told that there was a struggle that comes with being black,” she says. “It was a tough thing to grasp.”
She says the racism workshop helped her understand the new cultural context in which she found herself. “The [workshop] really helped open my eyes about what it means to be black in America,” Mosehle says.
Recruiting International Students Through the Global Scholars Program
When Kerry Healey took office as Babson’s president in July 2013, one of the first things she did was to establish the Global Scholars program, a need-based scholarship for talented international students. She created the program because she wanted to diversify the international student population, both economically and geographically. “I thought that we were missing a great opportunity to bring some of the most talented students from around the world who aspire to be entrepreneurs to Babson,” Healey says.
In 2014, when she offered the first 10 need-based scholarships for international students, more than 900 students applied. Since then, the college has committed more than $1 million a year to fund 10 scholarships, which cover tuition, room and board, airfare, and books, depending on the individual student’s level of need. There are currently 45 Global Scholars on the Babson campus.
A faculty mentor works with each cohort of Global Scholars, and the international student advising team designs a special orientation and plans retreats and cultural events throughout the year.
“Having this group of scholars on campus has been transformative. We have the sense that each and every one of them are going to go back to their countries and become profound change makers,” Healey says.
Lizaveta (Lisa) Litvinava, who earned a dual concentration in global business management and diversity and identity, is an international student from Belarus. Litvinava is among the first cohort of Global Scholars who graduated in May 2018. Her fellow Global Scholars came from Afghanistan, Brazil, Rwanda, and South Africa.
Litvinava says that her experience as a Global Scholar has “meant everything.” “If it weren’t for [this program], I would have never been able to speak about the world in the way that I speak about it right now. I would never have been able to become the person I am right now without the experience and education that Babson gave me,” she says.
Creating a Welcoming Environment for International Students
With a third of its student body coming from abroad, Babson goes out of its way to make sure that international students such as Litvinava feel at home. Babson intentionally avoids separating international students from domestic students throughout their college experience. Many universities offer separate welcome programs for international students, but Babson holds a single orientation for all incoming students. While international students might attend specific sessions on topics such as immigration and work authorization, they are integrated with domestic students for the majority of the orientation.
The college has also taken specific steps to make sure that international students feel welcome in light of recent political developments. “We take our lead from students. When something happens in the world, such as the [travel] ban and attacks against DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], we reach out to students to find out what they need and what’s meaningful to them,” says Jamie Kendrioski, director of international services and multicultural education. “I don’t make any decision about how to react to a crisis or issue without talking to students first and seeing what matters to them,” adds Kendrioski.
International students concur that Babson goes the extra mile to make sure that they feel comfortable. “From emails coming out from the president directly [to students] to teachers speaking about things in class, I think it gave us a sense of comfort and assurance that we are accepted here,” says Ashutosh Pandit, an MBA student from India.
Fostering Global Awareness Through Glavin Global Fellows
In order to bring together all of the various international opportunities available on campus, Babson launched the Glavin Global Fellows program, a cohort-based program for undergraduate students. The program includes a first-year living learning community, a certificate program, and internationally themed events throughout the year. The Glavin Office also sponsors students to take part in international and language case competitions, and it awards more than $12,000 in grants for students to conduct independent research abroad.
According to Lorien Romito, director of education abroad and the Global Fellows program adviser, each year, approximately 250 students are Glavin Global Fellows and around 25 students graduate with the certificate. Romito also serves as the campus Fulbright adviser because students who demonstrate an early interest in international issues are prime candidates to apply for the Fulbright program.
To earn a Glavin Global Fellows certificate, students need to take two or more courses in a foreign language and three advanced classes with international content. Additionally, students need to participate in an international experience abroad or a multicultural experience in the United States.
Aidan Dennis, who is doing a dual concentration in global business management and social and cultural studies, first became interested in the Glavin Global Fellows program as a first-year student. He says that half of the 20 students living on his floor in the residence hall that first year were international. He describes the Glavin Global Fellows program as “a community of students who are very interested in global issues.”
Dennis, who will graduate in 2019, has had three international experiences on three different continents. He studied abroad in Argentina and Chile, and he did a short-term elective abroad in Thailand and Laos. He also applied for and received a grant to spend a week in Amsterdam conducting interviews as part of a Glavin Global Fellows project on consumer behavior in the Netherlands.
He says that spending time abroad helped him understand the challenges that international students at Babson face: “From the Glavin Global Fellows program, I really learned about myself through interacting with all these other people from different countries, and then going abroad myself and coming back is like stepping into their shoes.”
Education Abroad for Global Entrepreneurs
Dennis is among the 547 Babson students who went abroad in 2016–17. In 2018, 52 percent of Babson’s graduating undergraduate class participated in a credit-bearing education abroad experience. This is an average increase of 10 percent year-over-year since 2005.
Babson is intentional about its education abroad advising, with a particular focus on early outreach during students’ required first-year seminars. In addition to providing specialized workshops on finances for study abroad, the college awarded more than $368,000 in internal need-based education abroad grants to undergraduate students during the 2016–17 academic year.
Babson offers a variety of programs of different lengths, ranging from short-term electives abroad to semester and academic year programs. Each year, approximately 150 undergraduate and 155 graduate students participate in faculty-led electives abroad that run during academic breaks. These courses combine classroom instruction on campus in Massachusetts with in-country lectures, company visits, and cultural excursions. Examples include a humanities course on postmodernism in the United Arab Emirates, a theater course in England, and an economics course in Argentina and Uruguay.
Through Babson’s International Consulting Experience program, student teams work on project assignments with international corporate sponsors. The program includes predeparture sessions in the fall that are focused on consulting methodologies and intercultural competencies, with travel to the company site taking place during winter break. The 33 projects that were carried out over the past 5 years included 126 Babson students, 15 Babson faculty, and engaged partner schools and businesses in 12 countries. Participating companies during this period include Bosch in Germany, the Mariinsky Theatre in Russia, and Care&Share in India.
The college’s flagship education abroad program is a multidestination faculty-led program known as Babson - Russia, India, China: The Cornerstone of the New Global Economy (BRIC). Every fall semester, a cohort of 24 students spend a month each in St. Petersburg, Russia; Shanghai, China; and New Delhi, India. Babson faculty lead each segment of the program, offering a full courseload combined with business visits, cultural excursions, and service-learning opportunities.
Bill Coyle, professor of accounting and law, has been taking students to Russia since the early 1990s. His relationships with partners there, along with commitment from other faculty and the Glavin Office, laid the foundation for the BRIC program, which launched in 2009. The program was created with a desire to give students a comparative framework within which to understand developing economies.
Before departing for Russia, students attend an intensive predeparture orientation on the Babson campus that provides guidance on thinking comparatively across cultures. Students also take a two-credit intercultural communications course that spans the entire semester that allows them to reflect on their experiences in different cultural contexts. According to history professor Katherine Platt, the orientation and the communications course help students reflect on their identities as individuals and as a group.
Notably, participation in BRIC has resulted in significant intercultural development demonstrated by pre- and post-Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) results. On average, participants’ IDI scores increase more than 20 percent.
Students benefit from simultaneously taking business and liberal arts classes. “The whole semester is a balance of business and liberal arts courses—entrepreneurship, management, history, and philosophy,” says Platt, who teaches in the India portion of the program.
Coyle says the liberal arts courses provide a foundation for students to understand the three countries’ business environments. “As a business professor, I have a real appreciation for the fact that you can’t be serious about doing international business if you do not understand the liberal arts aspects of the country you are considering doing business in,” he says. “The way [Russians] do business is based on their history and politics and economics and the literature they have grown up with.”
Alumni Outreach Around the World
With 40,000 alumni in 125 countries, Babson has recently focused on finding innovative ways to build up its alumni network. In 2015, President Healey launched Babson Connect: Worldwide, a three-day alumni conference and networking platform that is held in a different region each year. The inaugural conference was held in Cartagena, Colombia, followed by Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Bangkok, Thailand; and Madrid, Spain. Approximately 400 alumni attended each conference.
Babson has been able to get significant press coverage prior to the events, which in turn has boosted the number of student applications from that region. “We saw immediately that bringing the conference to the region [gave us a return in investment] in alumni support [that was] many times [more valuable than] the cost of the event,” Healey says. “There are benefits to enrollment, fundraising, and just general reputational benefits. We have the opportunity to rally all of our local alumni in the planning stage to make sure that we have local engagement.”
The 2019 Babson Connect: Worldwide will return to Boston, Massachusetts, to celebrate Babson’s 100th birthday, giving its international alumni a chance to reconnect at their alma mater. “I’m proud to say we are coming home for our centennial,” Healey says.