The American Council on Education represents the presidents of over 1,800 US institutions. Patti McGill Peterson, ACE’s Presidential Advisor for Global Initiatives, tells us about the association’s advocacy to promote leadership in internationalisation of HE, as it becomes a higher priority in the US.
The PIE: Tell me about the focus of ACE and CIGE.
PMP: The Center for International and Global Engagement was formed about a year and three quarters ago. We have a two-pronged mission. One is to provide analysis, information, research, guidance and services to our member institutions on various aspects of internationalisation. And then there’s the larger focus of ACE as the convener of US institutions vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
Even though ACE is called the American Council on Education we very much realise that that means being committed to higher education in the rest of the world.
The PIE: CIGE’s priorities are based on recommendations from the Blue Ribbon Report [on global engagement]. What developments have occurred since those founding days?
PMP: One development is with Boston College’s Center for Higher Education, where we’ve developed a brief and webinar series called International Briefs for Higher Education Leaders that’s either country-focused or issue-focused as it relates to US higher education’s engagement with the rest of the world.
We also have a strategic partnership with the Association of International Education Advisors where we do the deep dive for a day at their annual general meeting on a specific issue as opposed to people moving around to different topics every hour. With AIEA, we also started the Institute for Leading Internationalisation (IEL) to help develop leadership within our institutions for global engagement.
“We now see internationalisation is one of the top five priorities in institutions”
The PIE: Why is now the time to launch an initiative to support leadership in internationalisation?
PMP: This is an area where we’re just beginning to see people designated as senior members of the president’s team. Usually these have been scattered operations – a study abroad office here, an international recruitment function there. If you looked at our mapping survey, we now see internationalisation is one of the top five priorities in institutions. Presidents are beginning to see that they need a member of their senior team who effectively brings these things together and sees the synergy between them.
The PIE: What is included in the IEL programme?
PMP: We can see professional development happening in various organisations but we’re trying to lift it yet another notch by saying this cadre of administrator is going to be joining the president’s team by virtue of how important international education is in all of our institutions.
They need another dimension of what we call “managing up”- how do you effectively bring the international dimension to the institution strategy, to the use of its sources, the allocation of resources and to the advice you give to the president. If you begin to see the position as critical to the institution’s aims and success then it’s a very different scenario you develop for helping those people be really effective in their roles.
“We can see professional development happening in various organisations but we’re trying to lift it yet another notch”
The PIE: What are the biggest challenges US institutions face in internationalising?
PMP: Coordination of disparate efforts within the institution but also seeing the need for coordination and the need to bring leadership to it in association with the president’s goals. Many presidents are committed to this and understand that their institutions will not be vital in this part of the 21st century if they don’t think about how they position themselves internationally. [more>]
PMP: But they’re running around among many flowers. Once the president articulates the vision, who will implement it and what will they have the power to do? It’s so easy when you’ve been fortunate in terms of the development of your higher education system to say we’re where we need to be. The fact is you’re never where you need to be especially in higher education. If US higher education is going to be useful and effective with its students, it must be connected in all of those facets, globally. That could be developing research networks with other institutions around the world or connecting classrooms.
And it’s not just Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. 47% of our students are studying in community college so the question is how do they become globally attuned. That’s a huge challenge because those intuitions have not traditionally had a lot of study abroad going on because of the nature of the student body. Many of those students are working, they have families, social-economically it’s very difficult for them to think about a traditional study abroad programme. We’re working on how to bring the global to those classrooms.
The PIE: What are you doing to get the word out?
“And it’s not just Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. 47% of our students are studying in community college”
PMP: We’re trying to disseminate the Mapping Report. That data shows where institutions are doing well over the sector of type of institution and where there’s room for improvement. We’re also revving up and building capacity in a number of our programmes. One is the Internationalisation Lab where we offer the opportunity for an institution to go into a year long process in which they audit themselves in terms of where they are in a number of dimensions of internationalisation.
They then assess those and build a strategy around that to improve and build direction for their internationalisation efforts. We also have a new section called “Internationalisation in Action” where we try to be helpful in very specific ways to internationalisation efforts on campuses and offer things that need to be done and how other institutions have done it.
The PIE: Where do you think MOOCs will fit in to internationalisation?
PMP: I would put this in the framework of the delivery of higher education. How can we cost effectively, with quality, deliver higher education across the world. There are many countries where the cost has gone very high, the US for example, and there are others who are just beginning to develop their higher education systems. The demand for higher education is growing exponentially and the question is how to meet it.
“My sense is we’re going to see more and more discussion about MOOCs and the blended use of them”
My sense is we’re going to see more and more discussion about MOOCs and the blended use of them. There’s a high degree of scepticism in the US about whether or not this is going to be an effective way to educate students and in other parts of the world there is concern about the knowledge and professors that are being shared through the MOOCS being very much based in the West and North of the globe.
I don’t think they’ll go away. Will they change, will they morph with they be carefully considered in other countries in terms of how they might be used? Yes. I think this is one of those stay tuned topics.
