Introduction

[00:00:07] Steve MacDonald: Welcome to the Global Engagement Insights podcast. I'm Steve MacDonald McDonald, your host, and we have an incredible opportunity today. We're here with Meredith McQuaid McQuaid. Meredith McQuaid, you've not only been an SIO for several years but were also appointed as the first SIO at the University of Minnesota.

[00:00:23] Steve MacDonald: You've been the chair of the board and president of NASA, and you now consult with several different universities. You've got an extensive view of what's happening in the industry. What changes need to happen? How do we advocate for ourselves? How do we get the attention of presidents?

[00:00:42] Steve MacDonald: How do we do all kinds of things that we need to do to function and grow the international education program? With that, what I'm going to do is I'm going to say. The takeaway from today is how you can raise your university's profile through international education. That's a big job and opportunity, but it's available.

[00:01:04] Steve MacDonald: With that, I'd love to have you expand more on your background and what you're doing right now, and then we'll jump into the subject matter.

[00:01:12] Meredith McQuaid: Sure. Great. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I have a unique perspective because I'm old and have been in the field a long time.

[00:01:20] Meredith McQuaid: Now, with this consulting role, I'm a product of international education. So, I studied abroad when I was a sophomore in college. Then, I had many opportunities to live and work abroad before returning, attending law school, and entering the profession. That combination, my own experience, and my experience becoming the first SIO at the University of Minnesota. I was in that role as the SIO for 15 years just retired last year.

[00:01:48] Meredith McQuaid: That combination, and when I practiced law, I practiced immigration law. So, I looked differently at the values and challenges of international, non-U.S. people moving here for various reasons. That combination has made my career so interesting and allowed me to make a difference.

[00:02:09] Steve MacDonald: I will encourage people at the end, and we're going to ask how they can get a hold of you and ask questions and what I've encouraged them because there's a part of your background that you and I didn't talk about, which is, how you bike to across the world. Fascinating for another time. This is another discussion about a whole different side of Meredith McQuaid.

[00:02:21] Steve MacDonald: I'd love to start this conversation by raising the university's profile through international education. One of the things that you've got to do is get your university presidents to care. You've got to get noticed. You've got to make a difference. You've got to make changes starting with them. Tell us a little about what you think about that and how you accomplish it.

[00:02:45] Meredith McQuaid: Some in the field believe that you can only accomplish much with having the highest person on campus engaged, whether that's a president, a chancellor, or a provost.

[00:02:58] Meredith McQuaid: Having their support is critical, but it's not necessarily critical for them to be your first cheerleader to get the university some traction. Presidents, provosts, and chancellors have a lot on their plates, and the idea that they might even be advocates for, say, study abroad for all of their students or for increasing international student enrollment is familiar.

[00:03:24] Meredith McQuaid: That will never be their highest priority. If it is, it's one out of their eight priorities. At the University of Minnesota, one of the ways we advanced our profile. We advance them by the profile of the International Education Unit to build a coalition, first of the willing, and then to recruit those who had been slightly circumspect, for example.

[00:03:49] Meredith McQuaid: Then, when you have that weight behind you, and I mean the weight of faculty, deans, department heads, that group together can persuade the president that this should be a high priority for the university. Even though a university president likes to travel or likes the idea of increasing international student enrollment, they still need to listen to everything you advocate for.

[00:04:14] Meredith McQuaid: But if you are among the SIO or anyone in your office, if you are among a large chorus of voices, you will get much more attention than if it's just you. Going once a semester in to see the president to say, Hey, what we do matters. You have to show that it matters. You have to show that it matters to many people before taking time away from it, and it is really more critical in the sense of timeliness or crisis-driven decision-making.

[00:04:42] Steve MacDonald: It's a good one, and you just started answering my follow-up question, which is that this really matters. What's the most important thing? I love the idea of starting with those who are the built-in champions and then going in the concentric circles outside of that.

[00:04:58] Steve MacDonald: But when this really matters, what's the most important message that delivers or is behind?

[00:05:06] Meredith McQuaid: You have to tailor it to the personality of the person you're speaking to because there are many ways to talk about the benefits of international education.

[00:05:15] Meredith McQuaid: The message likely resounds. The most effective is that we change a student experience, and it's not just experience because students study abroad, because that would mean we're talking about our American students. It's more than just the experience of the international students who come in; we're focused on that narrower group.

[00:05:36] Meredith McQuaid: It's not just students' experience in a classroom where a faculty member understands the importance of cross-cultural communication. It's all of those. It's the idea that international education isn't an option that's available for some disciplines, for some faculty, and for some students. We ought to talk about how we are changing the experience of everyone on campus through experiences, conversations, confrontations, and discussions that expand the context beyond domestic, and that's why it's hard to talk about.

[00:06:08] Meredith McQuaid: I once had a conversation with Karen Fisher, who said, ‘Every time I go to explain comprehensive internationalization in an article I'm writing, I need three paragraphs. I'm paraphrasing.’

[00:06:26] Meredith McQuaid: She may not have said it exactly that way. The point is, we only have a very good story to tell if someone's got a good 5-6 minutes at a minimum, but actually, it's more like 15-20. Even among ourselves, we will say wait a minute when you say that you're talking about studying abroad. Part of it is that we need a way to promote this succinctly and deeply because if it's too succinct, it's too shallow.

[00:06:48] Meredith McQuaid: But if we still need to agree on the terms and goals, we'll need help persuading someone who's the least bit suspicious of what we're talking about.

[00:07:01] Steve MacDonald: Believe me, you did a YouTube short or an Instagram really well.

[00:07:06] Steve MacDonald: The bottom line is that it changes the entire student experience. You might be at 6% or 12% utilization of the international education program throughout the university, but a hundred percent of the students and the faculty.

[00:07:20] Steve MacDonald: Yes, and what would you say is the perception of reality? If that's the reality for most presidents, chancellors, and provosts, is that their perception of the impact of international education?

[00:07:34] Meredith McQuaid: If you cold-called half of the US university presidents in the country, private and public, and said, what does it mean to internationalize, you might get consensus on study abroad should be more affordable.

[00:07:49] Meredith McQuaid: That's what they understand. That's what their kids do. That's what their nieces and nephews do because they're in this privileged class of people who probably took their kids abroad when they were little, and students participated in the choir while they were in high school.

[00:08:05] Meredith McQuaid: They went abroad. The people who already have studied abroad are suitable for a very narrow group because it's still a privileged opportunity. So, if you've got a university president who knew that much, they would say, ‘Yep, we shouldn't have study abroad scholarships for everyone.’

[00:08:22] Meredith McQuaid: But that is such a narrow piece of this idea. We need to internationalize the entire undergraduate experience and university experience. Graduate students shouldn't be excluded. Those are two different things, but you won't find several university presidents—many university presidents who came to the SIO track that would be fun to find out. But most of them are like, ‘Oh, yeah. I know you do a good job over there, but get me more international students because those are what we count on.’ That's how we measure success or growth. The things we count it doesn't prove anything.

[00:08:57] Meredith McQuaid: We all know that for those of us in international education, having more students who study abroad or international students doesn't necessarily internationalize the university. Integrating those experiences across the classroom and the campus takes work from there.

[00:09:12] Steve MacDonald: What's interesting is that you're laying out all the steps to follow a how

[00:09:22] Steve MacDonald: What are the current perceptions? You started with some of the how: You get the champions, the true believers, and those concentric circles out. What message do you have to take forward? So, here's the last part of the how

[00:09:54] Meredith McQuaid: Yeah, and that's what we don't do well. The answer may be that we have yet to because we need to know if you can actually get a group of donors. I was on the board of the Carlson School of Management and the board of the international board, and they give great scholarships to their students to have an international experience.

[00:10:12] Meredith McQuaid: They would come in and talk to the board, many of whom were alums and big employers in the Twin Cities, and the student would describe what an incredible experience they had on this trip that was funded with a scholarship, and this would then inspire the board members to raise more money so that more students would have this experience.

[00:10:33] Meredith McQuaid: That's a student at a time selling this. If you're on the board long enough that you actually had 3 or 4 people come in, you do see a pattern. You see, it doesn't matter where they came from, where they were born, or if they were studying accounting or finance. If the experience was profound, and some of it was profound because of what it taught them about business in France, it was profound on a deeply personal level. But in either case, what the board members listened to was these are turning into the kinds of employees we want as people who run businesses.

[00:11:10] Meredith McQuaid: In Minnesota, that may or may not have an international side to it might be purely domestic. Still, our customers are now more than just Minnesotans, and so we have to have employees who can speak to all of these things. Okay, that's one group of people, and you brought in 3 or 4 students to talk to them.

[00:11:26] Meredith McQuaid: You could do it faster. You could have clips. You could show a video and then do the reverse. You could do the international students who came here and just at another event, a fundraiser. For young men who had come, these happened to be men who had come in through Zimbabwe. They just wowed this group of donors with their incredible experience coming to the United States as students. Everybody got out their checkbooks or credit cards because that moved them.

[00:11:54] Meredith McQuaid: But that is no way you cannot base the growth of an international education office on those two things because all you'd be doing all day. It's running around showing videos or having students talk. So, there's got to be a way for these people who aren't in that room to be persuaded that this is a good idea, and I wonder if we've done a good job.

[00:12:14] Meredith McQuaid: I don't know that we can measure how many students were profoundly changed. One of the things we did at the University of Minnesota was a program where experts, I'll leave it at, would sit in on classrooms and observe how the faculty engaged or failed to engage the students in their classroom.

[00:12:33] Meredith McQuaid: These faculty members said, ‘I'm interested in learning more because as I sit here, and I'm teaching, I'm focused on my teaching. I'm not actually picking up the signals of who's dropping out of the conversation.’ This particular venture was designed to find ways to be more inclusive of nontraditional students.

[00:12:52] Meredith McQuaid: Not only international students but also the nonmajority of what the faculty learned was eye-opening for them. They didn't realize that all of their hypotheticals were intensely American in their references or that when they had students break up into study groups, they didn't facilitate those.

[00:13:10] Meredith McQuaid: So everybody who looked like people formed study groups with people who looked like them. It's completely human nature, but if a faculty member isn't persuaded or encouraged to take the time to facilitate those group sessions, that's going to topple every time. What persuaded the faculty is many of them just wanted to be better teachers.

[00:13:30] Meredith McQuaid: Many of them change their evaluations. The end-of-course evaluations were better and higher. After redesigning how they engage with their students, they motivated faculty members who wanted to do their jobs better. Well, they welcome that kind of feedback. And again, we didn't force our way on anyone.

[00:13:49] Meredith McQuaid: These faculty members said, ‘I'm happy with how things are going, or I do this great. Why don't you come in and watch me?’ Then, when they got the feedback, they realized, ‘Oh, there are other things I could be doing.’ But those are separate messages. Not just how profound a study abroad experience was for a student at the Carlson School of Management but how profound it was for an entire group of students to have a faculty member who changed the way they interacted because they were more aware of the cross-cultural communication, that makes the group more welcoming or less alienating perhaps.

[00:14:25] Steve MacDonald: Here's what I took away. This has been consistent with other SIOs and leaders on this podcast: basically, advocating and promoting international education internally is about being a good storyteller. That's great because I'm a trained marketer, and as marketers, we try to tell good stories.

[00:14:46] Steve MacDonald: People engage, interact, and understand stories more than points and strategies. We actually retain stories at a rate of eight times compared to if we're just told some stats about international education, but that does lead to another side of this.

[00:15:04] Steve MacDonald: You answered the question on raising the university's stature through international education by talking about how it impacts the total student experience. There are other ways that it impacts the university. Storytelling is really important, but there's a lot of good data, and the data tells a story and allows for more important decision-making. But we had a wonderful Charlie Bankert.

[00:15:33] Meredith McQuaid: Yeah, I know Charlie well.

[00:15:34] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, he uses the international education program data to meet individually with deans and discuss their schools, and how they can benefit what they have as an opportunity, when they've taken advantage of those opportunities, how they can take advantage of more, what they can do to forward the goals of their different departments; It’s very proactive advocacy. He relies on the data to do that.

[00:16:06] Steve MacDonald: How important is the data or having a digital infrastructure in place so that you don't have silos of data and manual entries, but you have control of the data, and therefore, control of more storytelling and advocacy and things like that? How important is that?

[00:16:22] Meredith McQuaid: It depends on who you speak to at the university.

[00:16:25] Meredith McQuaid: I would make a case for more money in my budget every year. The CFO does not want to hear about the life-changing experiences of students. He wants to know why I want more money. So, you have to come at this from all different angles, and the example of Charlie with the deans, I would go annually to each dean. I would show them across the schools why the College of Science and Engineering has many more international students but fewer students who study abroad and ask them if they care about Dean X, the next college.

[00:16:53] Meredith McQuaid: I do a different, presentation, but always allowing them to see as compared to each other because that is very motivating. If you can get the deans to care, even if it is, and I say only, I don't mean merely, even if it's because the numbers matter to them, then you have four or five deans that will go to the president with you and talk about why international education is important.

[00:17:15] Meredith McQuaid: You may have a meeting with the president where he says how much money the international students are bringing in, but that typically is going to be down at the provostial and budgetary levels, and I think the SIO has to know in an instant when you walk into a room. This is a group I have to talk about data, and I’ve got my data.

[00:17:32] Meredith McQuaid: I'm well prepared for that, or I've given my data. Nothing seems to be happening here. I will throw in a few of the stories I know to be true about our impact on student lives and faculty experiences. Being an SIO means knowing how to gauge your audience to tell the story from a factual, data-driven point of view or a more magazine-style or individual experience.

[00:18:03] Steve MacDonald: It's the first time I've ever thought about this, but listening to you is that to be an international education leader and SIO, you've got to be a really good salesman.

[00:18:12] Meredith McQuaid: Yeah, constantly selling.

[00:18:14] Steve MacDonald: You've got people building coalitions. How do you get the president's attention? You've got a lot of work before you even want to try.

[00:18:22] Meredith McQuaid: A lot of work, yes. You really have to because universities are disparate groups; there are international educators at a big campus, like the University of Minnesota, or there are international educators in almost every one of the colleges that may not be their full

[00:18:46] Meredith McQuaid: They feel strength in numbers, which always motivates people to say, ‘Okay, I'm not alone. What can we do together at the University of Minnesota?’ This week, we will conduct our own mini NAFSA across our five campuses.

[00:19:01] Meredith McQuaid: People plan for months. They put in proposal ideas, and we spoke to each other. So, the system campuses talk about how they're serving their international students in these somewhat rural areas. We have faculty who come in and talk about a study abroad program they led, what went wrong, and what went well.

[00:19:21] Meredith McQuaid: We have poster sessions, which have built this really large camaraderie among the people doing this work. Then, they'll return to their colleges on Monday or Tuesday morning. They'll feel energized by what is going on system-wide and talk more. They then promote better within their unit or their college or whatever.

[00:19:42] Meredith McQuaid: Then that becomes known more at their college. It's a constant maintenance or tending of the idea that international education should be connected across the system. I always say across horizontally and then vertically from the smallest to the largest in terms of the hierarchy of a university, so it's always ongoing.

[00:20:03] Meredith McQuaid: I don't know that we'll ever know when we've accomplished comprehensive internationalization, but this idea that more people appreciate what we're talking about is how we're going to change the dynamics of a campus.

[00:20:15] Steve MacDonald: This is the last part of the how

[00:20:20] Steve MacDonald: You've got to define, and then you've got to garner resources. I love everything we've been talking about, but you need the funding to have the staffing; if there’s no funding, nothing will be executed. How do we define and garner these resources that we need?

[00:20:35] Meredith McQuaid: If you're in a place, a small college, a medium college, a huge university where you have made your case in any number of ways, you have tried for the past two years to get yourself heard, and your budget is still going to be cut, or they're eliminating the SIO position that still goes on.

[00:20:53] Meredith McQuaid: They move study abroad into student affairs. They move international students just right over to admissions. This dismantling goes on, and other campuses are growing it. They're creating an SIO for the first time. Your unique situation may have little to do with the fact that you've been promoting and talking about it and telling your story. If you have a president who comes in and says, ‘Yep, but I got choices to make, and you're not one of them.’ Then you can't give up.

[00:21:22] Meredith McQuaid: If we believe in what we do, you just do it on a smaller scale. Then, you are reduced in how you build your coalition of the willing, but there is no magic solution to working for an administration that sees no value in what you're doing.

[00:21:38] Meredith McQuaid: That's true for libraries or sports. Different presidents have different goals, and they say this year, no. So, if the opportunity to even ask for more resources doesn't exist, you have to make your peace with what you can get done. You promote it the best way you can; websites are great.

[00:21:56] Meredith McQuaid: There are still things you can do, but if you're at a place where there are resources, and you just have to argue for them, that's when I think this idea that you have to have a team of people that aren't international educators. You have to have the scientists. You have to have the lab people.

[00:22:11] Meredith McQuaid: You have to have the librarians. You have to have other people who will speak positively about what this does for a university atmosphere or how we educate our students. This is a necessary piece of it. It's not just the SIO that keeps talking about it.

[00:22:27] Steve MacDonald: What you've laid out here clearly sounds like the job for three SIOs.

[00:22:33] Steve MacDonald: The amount of time that would take. Yes. When you speak with SIOs and recommend how they're structuring their programs, their time, and what they can do, how do you tell them? Here's how you can accomplish all this.

[00:22:49] Meredith McQuaid: I probably just say, ‘Here's how you might accomplish all of this.’

[00:22:52] Meredith McQuaid: This field requires people with a passion. Unless you're a one-person office and have nobody, you've got somebody, and you really have to empower your deputies or your lieutenants, whatever, acknowledging them to speak passionately every chance they get.

[00:23:10] Meredith McQuaid: You have to reward them for that. You're still there at the University of Minnesota, where people ran the international student office, the learning abroad center, the China center, and the internationalizing of the campus. You just have to empower people.

[00:23:24] Meredith McQuaid: It would be great if it could always be through raises, but it can be done in many ways. You just have to allow them to represent the unit. This idea that only the SIO can speak about this will wear people out and it’s wrong. You can't be everywhere all the time. So promoting, acknowledging, and supporting the people on the front lines, and even the front lines in front of those lines, the ones who are the student advisors, appreciating people, giving out shout-outs at a staff meeting, giving some kind of award that doesn't come with money, but comes with recognition, a personal day off.

[00:24:00] Meredith McQuaid: At the University of Minnesota, we had a shared intranet, which people could give something we called cupcakes. The cupcakes, for example, say, ‘This is what Steve MacDonald did yesterday for me at this meeting, and I just want to recognize him.’ It really doesn't take much for people to feel appreciated.

[00:24:18] Meredith McQuaid: Of course, that just promotes the idea that we're in this together and that it's not only, and probably never, just the SIO that's out there to promote this work.

[00:24:27] Steve MacDonald: You're right, the power of recognition because most people in international education are only sometimes in it for the money.

[00:24:33] Meredith McQuaid: Yeah, universities profile the money.

[00:24:35] Steve MacDonald: You're in it because of the belief of what it is, the fact that it makes.

[00:24:39] Meredith McQuaid: Yeah.

[00:24:39] Steve MacDonald: That brings me full circle back to the title of this episode: How do you raise the profile of the university? We've talked a lot about raising the profile of international education. Please connect that dot for us in terms of how that raises the university's profile. 00:24:57] Meredith McQuaid: It could be done right now. Some universities, for example, will have a story about an international alum on their website's home page. The idea is that universities and public education are under fire.

[00:25:12] Meredith McQuaid: Now, many university presidents are talking about this idea: How do we promote the idea that we're actually in this for the good of the many and not just the few? It is about how to make the Midwest, for example, a more welcoming environment for people who weren't necessarily born here.

[00:25:29] Meredith McQuaid: So, this is just cross-cultural understanding. This question of equity diversity is also being challenged. However, it still points out that colleges and universities provide unique experiences and opportunities to everyone, whether part

[00:25:49] Meredith McQuaid: All of that is a microcosm of a society. The idea is that you can provide experiences where people understand each other better, where you learn more than just a second language; you learn about cross-cultural behavior that will impact your opportunities when you become a professional in whatever field.

[00:26:09] Meredith McQuaid: This is a long way to explain it because we don't necessarily do it. We haven't convinced those who are even doing the marketing that this idea that you enter University X this way, and you exit it 3-7 years later–you're a different person because not only of what you learned in the classroom but what you learned in the environment. It's certainly not an easy answer to say international education will make universities a better place because the answer is, what do you mean when you say that? Then, we get into these long discussions, but in a college or university setting, the idea is to create experiences.

[00:26:47] Meredith McQuaid: That's why the online stuff that pure COVID, everybody stays home, everybody works so hard to figure out ways to provide meaning to those virtual classrooms, because there are very few substitutes for sitting down next to somebody who comes from a different place, physically, emotionally, spiritually, whatever, and engaging in meaningful experiences, whether that's a conversation or a joint project. It's not an easy question, and that's why many university presidents are curious about it, but they don't put it into their talking points because they need to know where it goes from here. I hope that makes sense.

[00:27:23] Steve MacDonald: It does, and as a compilation of things I've heard across all of these podcasts, We’re in one world.

[00:27:30] Steve MacDonald: We're a global economy and will have a more global workforce. Both exist, but because of technology, borders are coming down, and cultures are melding across countries. We are becoming globalized, and if we're not prepared for that and don't appreciate that we can't communicate across, then we're not equipping students as universities to go out and be a part of this brave new world.

[00:27:55] Steve MacDonald: I have one more thing in terms of raising the stature of the university, helping universities address one of the biggest concerns around right now: their very viability, especially in light of their enrollment decline, the enrollment cliff that's coming up, or the constant decline that's happening.

[00:28:14] Steve MacDonald: If I had to do this, on a scale of 1 to 10, would you have put a line in the sand? How important is international education in addressing the enrollment cliff and the decline in enrollment? One, it's not important at all. Then, it's vitally important to address the decline in enrollment and help universities grow.

[00:28:34] Steve MacDonald: Because without the resources of the university and themselves and the vitality of the university, where does that leave the international education program as well? Where do you put it on that one

[00:28:43] Meredith McQuaid: It's important because bodies are important. On that narrow, how do we get more people sitting in classrooms at a university?

[00:28:54] Meredith McQuaid: You can do it through transfer students. You can go to an untapped market. Go to Texas and try to get those students to come north. But that's not part of international education. That's a business thing. How do I get more students to come here? If we have fewer than we'll ever need within the borders of the U.S., then the answer is to go outside of the U.S., but that is an international education to me. That's a business decision. If all these predictions about the enrollment cliff are true, everybody should be out recruiting international students if they want to fill their seats. Then, by the way, we're all chasing the same group because not every student outside of the U.S. intends to come to the U.S., so now you've got even a smaller pool, and now you've got all the big universities all fishing in that same pond for people who will enroll at their universities. That's a very practical solution to a problem. Still, it is only international education to me if you have some plan for them to engage in meaningful ways when they arrive here.

[00:29:54] Meredith McQuaid: But, sure. Finding new students to meet the looming cliff is about six to most presidents. Because if you don't have tuition, you can't pay the bills. But it should only be part of international education if there's another question or five more questions.

[00:30:10] Steve MacDonald: I got it. So, we talked about it a lot. If there was one main takeaway that you wanted people to have from this podcast, what would it be?

[00:30:21] Meredith McQuaid: Our field has to be able to describe what we do in a way that is appreciated by people who don't already know it. Many people get what we mean by cross-cultural understanding or an international experience.

[00:30:40] Meredith McQuaid: Many more hear that and say, ‘Okay, but why and so what?’ I had one of those cross-cultural experiences, and it was awful. So, we talk to each other all the time about why it matters, the vast difference it's made in our own lives and other people's lives, and why.

[00:30:59] Meredith McQuaid: It's just too bad that other people don't get it. That's what we talk about. We've all had amazing experiences. We've all seen the positive impact international education can have. But the idea is to get that better known within the academy—within the layers of bureaucracy that run these universities when there are a lot of other competing interests. I think we could do it as a field.

[00:31:22] Meredith McQuaid: Everyone's busy doing their daily work or arguing for their budget. We have more work to do. We really want university presidents to get hired as their 1st-year presidential position, and one of their priorities is internationalizing the university.

[00:31:36] Meredith McQuaid: I don't know of any president that has come in with that on the agenda.

[00:31:40] Steve MacDonald: That makes perfect sense. If people had follow-up questions, would it be appropriate to give them a link to your profile on LinkedIn so they can reach you?

[00:31:50] Meredith McQuaid: Sure.

[00:31:51] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming and sharing all these insights and laying out the different stages of the how-to guide to raise the stature and profile of international education and, therefore, the university in total.

[00:32:02] Steve MacDonald: I really appreciate it.

[00:32:03] Meredith McQuaid: Yeah, and thank you for the hard work questions!