Revisiting The Mission of Internationalization On Campus

Gary Rhodes
Associate Dean, International Education & Senior International Officer,
College of Extended & International Education
Director, Center for Global Education
California State University at Dominguez Hills

Staff supporting international students, study abroad and other internationalization efforts are currently in the middle of program development, implementation, and student support. While we realize that dealing with the details of day-to-day work is a critical part of the job, our new resource was missing a critical element about implementing quality international programs and international student support: revisiting the mission of internationalization on campus and thinking about whether your programs and services are implemented in ways that meet the office and institutional mission.

We have collected sample mission statements as well as statements from college and university presidents and provosts to provide insights on the importance of this work. The mission statements come from individual colleges and universities. The statements from Presidents and Provosts are from efforts by the Association of International Education Administrators: Presidents’ Perspectives and Provosts’ Perspectives series.

In our new “Mission Statements” section, we have taken excerpts from mission statements and Presidents’ and Provosts’ Perspectives that help provide useful statements about the importance of international student support and internationalization on college and university campuses.

The following statement from the Provost of Arizona State University Provost focuses on the multi-dimensional aspect of global engagement and the importance of domestic students learning from international students as well as the need to provide special support to help international students:

"This commitment to global engagement is multi-dimensional. We seek this role to ensure our students have opportunities to develop an understanding of the larger world in which they live and work and how they may contribute to influencing its overall development. We seek to have students from other countries to expose our domestic students to different cultures and experiences that can be shared in curricular and extra-curricular contexts.

“We also have learned how to help our international students make the transition more effectively as they come to study at ASU. As a result, they are achieving higher levels of academic success and having more meaningful cross-cultural experiences in the US. This effort has involved considerable effort from many campus constituencies and has resulted in much higher retention rates for our students attending from around the world."

The following statement from the President of Juniata College focuses on one of the challenges at many college campuses – how supporting study abroad and international students requires collaboration with offices across campus for success. Because of the challenge of limited resources, at times, offices become overly territorial and rather than sharing resources to support collaboration, create barriers that limit collaboration and limit the successes of internationalization initiatives:

"Creating an atmosphere in which students can cultivate intercultural skills of all kinds, from the local to the global, is a noble goal, but it can be difficult to achieve in practice. Too often units on campus perceive themselves as competing for resources or attention, and lose sight of the larger mission to educate students for the twenty-first century. It takes leadership from the highest level to thwart territorialism and inspire a college community to share a common vision, to work together towards meaningful goals."

As noted in that statement, staff in international student and study abroad offices often need clear leadership from the highest levels of colleges and universities to promote resource sharing and collaboration to internationalize a campus and support collaboration to improve the experience of international students and support efforts to implement internationalization efforts that include international students as part of the design.

The President of the University of South Florida highlights an important challenge – often universities are accused of taking on international students only as an opportunity to get additional dollars.

"It's essential to integrate globalization initiatives at every level of the university community. For example, avoid housing all international students in one corner of campus or delivering separate class sections for international students. Do not fall prey to the seduction of new revenues as the primary motivator for globalization."

It is important to implement programs and services that connect to the priorities of international learning across campus and integrating international students as a part of that priority.

The following quote from the University of Michigan highlights an institutional focus on international learning:

"We are committed to providing for our students and faculty international learning, teaching, and research experiences that will prepare them for a rapidly changing global community. The University encourages intellectual and cultural exchange in other countries, and programs that deeply engage scholars from disparate areas of the globe. We support and promote student, faculty, and staff immersion in local and national communities via service, learning, and leadership endeavors. We nurture lifelong relationships with alumni who span the globe."

Although I know that in October, the international office is a busy place and processes and services may make the challenge of looking back at mission statements a challenge, as the above statements and others suggest, it is important to think about the importance of the work we do within a bigger picture and that to really succeed, it is important to have campus-wide collaboration and support from the highest levels of leadership, in both mission statements and in practice.

I hope that the new mission statement section as well as the other sections provide insights on good practices at colleges and universities across the U.S. which provides ideas and suggestions for your campus, including:

I look forward to your feedback and for suggestions on other mission statements and samples of best practices from your campus that we can share as well as other best practices on this new resource.