Best Practices Conference in June, 2001

Participants:

• Thomas Falkner
• Karen Edwards
• Jeffrey Lantis

Project Title: Setting the Agenda for Comprehensive Internationalization

Project Description:

The College of Wooster has committed itself to the comprehensive internationalization of the institution and in the last several years has made significant progress toward that goal. The International Education Committee has completed a thorough inventory of the College's international resources as reflected in its academic programs, its faculty, staff, and students, and its co-curricular opportunities. These have been described and published in a 34-page booklet World Wide Wooster: A Guide to Resources for Global Education at The College of Wooster (2000); the booklet includes the College's first mission statement on global education and a letter of support from President R. Stanton Hales. This effort has been accompanied by the development of several grant proposals, and the extensive discussion around them has resulted in a range of suggestions for the development of new initiatives and opportunities.

While there is a strong sense among members of the IEC and others that the College ought to take its efforts toward comprehensive internationalization to the "next level," these efforts have brought with them challenges. Whatever their individual merits, it is not always clear how these various initiatives can be coordinated toward a common goal. Moreover, the proliferation of opportunities and initiatives takes place alongside an understanding of the finite nature of the College's resources, human and material, and an awareness that not every worthy idea can be implemented. In short, the College will need to set priorities for its internationalization and do this in a way that will maximize the way in which new initiatives can be mutually reinforcing. The team attending the conference will attempt to contribute to that end by developing a plan for identifying priorities and an agenda for their implementation, and the team has set as a specific goal for the conference the drafting of such a document.

While the team will hope to learn much from the practices of other institutions represented at the conference, it plans to consider in depth several areas for potential development at Wooster, with an eye to how different initiatives in these areas can be prioritized and developed in relation to each other.

1. Creating an International Studies Program Office. The College needs to establish better linkages among international programs on campus and should consider creating common administrative offices for them. This might involve services currently offered through the International Relations Program, the Cultural Area Studies Program, the International Programs Office (for off-campus study), and International Student Affairs. This is particularly essentially as the College enters an intensive period of new building and renovation of campus facilities.

2. Making the most of international students as an educational resource. The College needs to consider how its highly international student body (currently 119 students from 34 countries--some 7% of the student body) can best contribute not only to co-curricular programs but also to the academic program as representatives of their various nations and cultures.

3. Creating a more formal lecture/public event series to feature international speakers. It has been suggested that the College needs to recognize its commitment to internationalization by establishing a "high profile" event series in the spring that would focus on global issues to complement the Wooster Forum series held each fall. If so, this would need to be carefully coordinated with other international activities in the spring semester.

4. Promoting international research in Independent Study. The College's nationally recognized program in Independent Study ('I.S.'), a required year-long senior research project, presents a range of opportunities for international education. The College needs to consider how it can increase opportunities for student travel and field study to support I.S. and how the fruits of such international research can best be shared with the community more broadly.

5. The IEC has also asked how the international dimension of the College might be represented most effectively in the admissions recruitment effort, especially given the increasing international interest and sophistication of high school students. This presents additional opportunities for different international constituencies at the College to learn from and about each other's work and to communicate this in a coherent and comprehensive way.

Participants:

Name: Thomas Falkner

Title: Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Classical Studies

E-mail: tfalkner@wooster.edu

Biographical Information:

Name: Karen Edwards

Title: Assistant Dean of Students for International Student Affairs

E-mail: kedwards@wooster.edu

Biographical Information:

Name: Jeffrey Lantis

Title: Assistant Professor of Political Science and Chair, Program in International Relations

E-mail: jlantis@wooster.edu

Biographical Information: