Links of Interest for Week of October 30th to November 5th

It’s been a long and busy week for me and my posts to IHEC Blog were a bit sporadic. Sorry about that. I hope that you find some of the following links I pulled from The Twitter to be of interest:

New report “The Spaces Between Numbers: Getting International Data on Higher Education Straight” (via @CitizenDiplomat)

Evaluation of the Youth Exchange & Study Program: Final Report

Good comment by Yale Richmond on evaluation report of the YES program in the Nov 2 Public Diplomacy Review (via @ivante)

Is the World Our Campus? International Students and U.S. Global Power in the Long Twentieth Century

India Looks to Expand Education Partnerships with United States (via @NAFSA)

U.S. Secretary of Education Duncan & Jordanian Education Minister Al-Ma'ani to lead 2-way video conversation between students

Quality Management and Study Abroad [CIEE Our View series n.15] (via @IDPDRIE)

The Value of a Study Abroad Program for Graduate Students in Psychology (via @AustraLearn)

Public Diplomacy: Lessons from the Past - a new publication by @NickCull (via @andrewkneale)

Explore the types of Fulbright Scholar grants that were funded in 2009-10 by academic discipline (via @FulbrightSchlrs)

@WanderingEds Profiles in International Education series: Jim Buschman of NYU

8,500 people submitted applications for the 2010 Fulbright U.S. Student Program, a thousand more than last year (via @WESFans)

My reply to random person who e-mailed me asking for assistance with their literature review can be found in the comments section (see comment #6) of my IHEC Blog post about this message http://ihec-djc.blogspot.com/2009/11/intercultural-miscommunication-via-e.html

For those of you using Google Reader you can view my shared items at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/international.ed.consulting

International Education to what End? Peace & Justice and Global Citizenship Revisited

If you are heading to the 2010 NAFSA: Association of International Educators annual conference from May 30th to June 4th in Kansas City, Missouri then you might want to consider submitting a proposal for a new poster session. Here are the details my colleague Bryan McAllister-Grande posted to the NAFSA Research/Scholarship network discussion forum:

The Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship (TLS) Knowledge Community, in partnership with the Peace and Justice Member Interest Group, will be hosting a new poster fair at this year's annual conference. We're looking for innovative approaches to among the following topics:

- social justice

- global citizenship and civil society

- peace, coexistence, and reconciliation

- gender, race, ethnicity, and religion

- public or citizen diplomacy

- major global issues such as poverty, health, environmental change, access to education, etc.

- sustainable development issues involving a peace/justice component

- research that looks at the impact of international education on communities, livelihoods, and international relations

These posters are aimed at both the research and practice level. So we're looking for "best practices" as much as exciting research and theory. (Ideally, poster submissions will highlight these theory-to-practice connections.)

The deadline for poster submission is 11:59pm, November 14th, 2009.

Please note that there will be no electrical hookups for posters, though wireless can be made available (price tba).

Please go to the NAFSA website for more information and to submit a poster proposal http://www.nafsa.org/annual_conference/call_for_proposals/

Make sure to indicate that you are applying for the "International Education to What End" poster fair.

If you have any questions, please contact Bryan McAllister-Grande (bgrande@brandeis.edu)

Intercultural Miscommunication via E-mail or Something Else?

For several years now I have been receiving requests for assistance or advise from people all over the globe on matters relating to research, selecting graduate schools/programs, starting a career in the field of international education and since I started IHEC Blog and posting to Twitter I’m starting to receive more and more requests from reporters wanting to interview me or requests from reporters wanting to locate certain data and/or people interview who are knowledgeable on their topic they are writing about, requests from publishers for book reviews as well as a whole host of other requests from people. About 2-3 weeks ago I decided to add the following vacation message to my IHEC Gmail account as there has been a notable increase in the number of e-mail messages I’ve been receiving the past 3 months:

“Thank you for your message. I appreciate your interest in my services and will reply to your message as soon as possible. International Higher Education Consulting and IHEC Blog are secondary projects to my family time, my work at the University of Chicago and my doctoral studies so my response time varies depending on my current work and research/writing loads.”

It’s flattering to receive all of these voice and e-mail messages and I work hard to helpful and to reply as quickly as possible. I currently have several e-mail messages in my inbox that require a response and some of the messages may be from IHEC Blog readers so please note that I will reply to you soon and I apologize for the delay. I welcome these messages as they often times provide a learning opportunity for me and a way for me help and to meet/network with new people! I’ve connected electronically with so many great colleagues via the various social/new media spaces where I find myself (and I’m including e-mail when I’m talking social/new media spaces) and I look forward to our paths crossing in person some day in the future. Many of the wonderful connections I’ve made over the years were made because I received a request for assistance or advice over e-mail.

Why am I posting about this to IHEC Blog?

Well, while I reply to and try to assist 95%+ of the messages I receive there are just some messages that I receive that I simply delete and never respond to. The following are two e-mail messages I recently received (Oct. 31st and today, Nov. 4th) from the same e-mail address that I thought I would copy and paste here to share as an example for possible discussion:

--Start October 31st message---
HELLO
I AM A STUDENT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AND CIVLIZATION AND I AM PREPARING FOR MY DISSERTATION IN LITERATURE ABOUT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AFRICANAMERICANS IN THE AMERICAN LITERARY IMAGINATION
BUT I DID NOT FIND CORRESPONDING INFORMATION
SO.IF YOU CAN HELP WITH SOME BOOKS,WEBSITES,OR AMY KIND OF DATA I WOULD BE GRATEFUL
I AM WAITING FOR YOUR ANSWER
--End October 31st message--

No response from me other than my automated reply which I mention above.

--Start November 4th message--
I AM STILL WAITING FOR YOUR ANSWER AND I NEED YOUR HELP
,BECAUSE OF TIME CONSTRAINTS MAY I RECEIVE IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE PLEASE?
THANKS
--End November 4th message—

To be sure, this person and I certainly differ on how to communicate via e-mail. What I’m trying to determine is if I should be more sensitive to this person and chalk it (their rude and demanding e-mail messages) up to an intercultural miscommunication or if I should have different feelings about their e-mail messages? I’ve communicated with thousands of students from all over the world in my day job at the University of Chicago and based on my experience I’m not thinking this is an intercultural miscommunication.

Thoughts?

What’s Happening over on the IHEC Blog Facebook Page

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me as I’ve been doing lots of catching up with all the things that were neglected during the Fulbright competition and it’s been difficult to post to IHEC Blog. While I value Twitter and will continue to post there I find that Facebook is a happy medium between Twitter and IHEC Blog. Twitter has allowed me to quickly post and retweet interesting information on international education and public diplomacy (see my previous IHEC Blog post on public diplomacy talk on IHEC Blog) and posting to my blog allows me to provide more information about a topic/issue. What I have come to appreciate about Facebook is that I can post items and links I think are of interest and I can do so using more than 140 characters yet I don’t have to spend so much time crafting a blog post, adding hyperlinks and searching for interesting photos. I can provide a lot of information in less time than a blog post. This doesn’t mean that I plan to blog less frequently. It just means that I’m using the IHEC Blog Facebook page more and more and often times the information on the Facebook page will not find its way onto IHEC Blog or to Twitter.

Here is a list of some of the postings to the IHEC Blog Facebook page:

- One of Many Reasons I’m Proud to be a Lab School Parent

- Nice article on the Fulbright Program in the "Tufts Daily" student paper

- The Student Mobility Network at Universitas 21

- Educational Exchanges at The American Club of Sweden

- Inaugural Lecture of the Josef A. Mestenhauser Lecture Series on Internationalizing Higher Education

You can follow IHEC Blog on Facebook at: http://tinyurl.com/IHECBlogFacebook

Links of Interest for Week of October 23rd to 29th

Continuing my weekly Friday trend, here is a list (a bit brief this week) of some of the most interesting posts that I came across or posted to Twitter this past week:

Institute of International Education launches “Center for International Partnerships in Higher Education”

Latest volume of Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad has been published (via @IDPDRIE)

New Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange website

GlobaLinks Learning Abroad named Small Company of the Year by the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce (via @australearn @asialearn @eurolearn)

NAFSA 2009 Annual Report available

Discussion started on “How to measure impact of international education/exchange programs on US public diplomacy efforts?” on the IHEC Blog Facebook page. Be the first to add your opinion!

New "Research in Internationalization of Higher Education" LinkedIn group

Research Notes: A Brief History of Comparative Education through the 1960s

When examining the literature in comparative education over the past 100 years it is clear that there has been an “identity crisis” regarding its boundaries and much of the confusion stems from the blurred boundaries of the field. Until the late twentieth century, few authors worked to clarify the distinctions between the two fields of comparative education and international education, and in fact, many authors carelessly used “comparative education” and “international education” either inter-changeably or simultaneously without distinction.

There is certainly an overlap in the histories of comparative education and international education, though comparativists seem to have a stronger sense of who their founding fathers are, what the key pieces of literature in its history are, and when important shifts have taken place.

Unlike international education, the founding fathers of comparative education are much more easily identifiable by those in the respective field. It is rare to find an article examining the early stages of comparative education or even current comparative theory without finding mention of Marc Antoine Jullien, Michael Sadler, and Issac Kandel. These authors provided the foundation of comparative education and serve as a reference point for emerging comparativists. Jullien was an early figure encouraging cross-national data collection, Sadler stressed the importance of looking at society as a whole when considering educational systems, and finally Kandel helped to clarify some of the goals of comparative education. In the mid to late twentieth century, as the field of comparative education strived for rigorous methodology, several authors such as Harold J. Noah and Max A. Eckstein, William W. Brickman, George Z. F. Bereday, C. Arnold Anderson, Erwin H. Epstein, and Irving Epstein helped to challenge and clarify comparative theory.

In 1954, The School of Education at New York University began a conference that would, at their third meeting two years later in 1956, establish the Comparative Education Society. Early activities of this organization included working to define the field of comparative education as an academic venture, creating study tours abroad, and publishing the Comparative Education Review, which now appears quarterly. Even then, the overlaps in the domains of comparative education and international education were illustrated by the Comparative Education Society changing its name to The Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) in 1968, the name by which the organization is known today. The 1960s saw the formation of the Comparative Education Society in Europe, which prompted the publishing of Comparative Education beginning in 1964. Several other countries, such as Canada, Japan, and Korea followed suit and created comparative education societies.[1]

The World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES), a non-governmental organization under UNESCO, formed in the late 1960s and holding its first world council in 1970 with representatives from five comparative education societies including the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea, and Canada. The WCCES aims to promote the study of comparative and international education throughout the world and enhance the academic status of this field and to bring comparative education to bear on the major educational problems of the day by fostering cooperative action by specialists from different parts of the world.[2] The organization typically meets every three years in a new country for each Congress.

I hope to be able to pull together a brief history of Comparative Education from the 1960’s to date in the near future.

Previous IHEC Blog on "System Transfer in Comparative Education" is available here.

[1] William Brickman, “Genesis and Early Development of the Comparative and International Education Society” Comparative Education Review 10, no. 1 (February 1966): 9-19.
[2] World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) description of its two specific goals (2006), http://www.hku.hk/cerc/wcces/.

Why Premeds Should Study Abroad

I was searching through my research notes today during lunch and came across a quote that I copied and pasted from a SECUSS-L post (study abroad listsev) from the mid-1990’s that I’ve been referring to in my advising meetings with premed students on the value of studying/researching/working abroad. This is the type of quote that gets students to listen.

"Spending a year of study abroad is a life enriching, life changing experience. Those of us involved in medical school admissions can well appreciate the value of such experience. When we review an application to medical school, of course, we are interested in grades and MCAT scores. But we're also interested in clinical and researchexperience, as well as other kinds of experiences that impact on the applicant's maturity, leadership skills and sensitivities to people of differing backgrounds and cultures. Spending a year living and studying in another country and culture is truly a transforming and enriching experience. And since so few American students study abroad, only 2%, it would be a unique experience as well. Having a year of study abroad in one's background would be a very positive component of an application to medical school." Dr. Ralph Purdy, ChairMedical School Admissions CommitteeUniversity of California, IrvineOctober 24, 1996

To be sure, premed students shouldn’t study abroad just so they are more competitive in the medical school application process. It’s just a nice outcome of a transformative educational experience.

Promotion of a Better Understanding on the Part of American Citizens of the other Peoples of the World at the University of Chicago in 1923

Over the weekend I was scanning through a book entitled The Story of The University of Chicago 1890-1925 by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed (1925) and was pleased to find the following paragraph:

"In the very last days of President Judson's administration, Mr. and Mrs. M. Haddon MacLearn and the sons of Mr. Harris, Albert W. Harris, Norman D. Harris, Hayden B. Harris, and Stanley G. Harris, gave the University $150,000 for the endowment of the Norman Wait Harris Memorial Foundation, in memory of Norman Wait Harris, for many years one of the leading business men of Chicago and head of the Harris Trust and Savings Bank. The fund was given in the name of Mrs. N.W. Harris. The income of this endowment was to be expended for the "promotion of a better understanding on the part of American citizens of the other peoples of the world, thus establishing a basis for improved international relations a a more enlightened world order." The first conferences under the Harris Foundation were held at the University during the Summer Quarter of 1924. Lectures were delivered by eminent Men of other countries and heard with great interest." (p. 186-187)

The fact that this endowment was established in 1923 to promote better understanding between Americans and other peoples of the world is impressive and interesting to me. What is equally impressive is that the Norman Wait Harris Memorial Foundation Fund is still in existence and is one of the oldest endowments at the University of Chicago. You can learn more about how the Norman Wait Harris Memorial Foundation Fund is being used here.

Photo: Asia Lecture Series at the University of Chicago 25 to 29 May 1949. The 25th annual institute of the Norman Wait Harris Memorial Foundation in International Relations dealt with Nationalism and Regionalism in South Asia. Speaking at the far right is Phillips Talbot, director of the 1949 Institute, and visiting assistant professor of political science.

Archival Photographic Files, [apf3-01135], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

International Education Offices, Organizations and People on Twitter & Facebook or MySpace

From time to time I have posted to IHEC Blog about new media (or social networking sites) and the growing number of users in the field of international education. In fact, my last several IHEC Blog posts on Fridays has been a list of interesting links that I pulled from Twitter.

In my opinion, international educators should not underestimate the power and value of new media tools (Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Study Abroad Alumni International, ExchangesConnect, NAFSA’s network discussion forums, etc.). Find a few extra minutes in your day to investigate and to participate!

If you are looking for a place to start, my colleague Penny Schouten has been compiling a growing list of international education programs and colleagues on Twitter and Facebook/MySpace. You access Penny’s list for Twitter here and her list for Facebook/MySpace here.

For those of you attending the upcoming NAFSA: Association of International Educators Regional conferences I thought I would add the following information that Penny posted this past Friday to SECUSS-L:

"The hashtag (#) is used in Twitter so that people can follow a specific conversation. So far the hashtags designated to be used by the regionals are:

Oct 26-29th Region 3: #NAFSAR309
Nov 7-10th Region 6: #nafsa609
Nov 11-14th Region 8: #NAFSA09VIII
Nov 3-5th Bi-regional 10 & 11: #nafsaxxi

If you are tweeting from a conference, please include the appropriate hashtag so we can follow your tweets and find out what's happening at your conference.

Even if you don't have a twitter account, you can see what people are talking about at each conference by going to http://twitter.com/ and putting the corresponding hashtag in the search box."

You can follow Penny on Twitter at http://twitter.com/PennySchouten

Links of Interest for Week of October 16th to 22nd

Here are some interesting links I have found and posted to Twitter this past week. There are a few that focus on China mixed in with a little bit of Fulbright. I hope you find some of them to be of interest.

LinkedIn group "Research in Internationalization of Higher Education"

"Experience Being Abroad w/ the State Dept." event in DC Nov. 2

US F1 student visas fall 25% in Times of India

60% of U.S. business & industry leaders place premium on new recruits’ international experience, new IIE survey (via @IIEglobal)

Fulbright Program Adapts to Obama Administration's Priorities

National Education Abroad Fair calendar

University of Buffalo and China Collaborate on Language Initiative in Schools (2 min audio piece available)

Top Producing Schools for Fulbright came out in the Chronicle of Higher Education (via @FulbrightPress)

How do you answer: "What are, or should be, the ethics of public diplomacy?" (via @mountainrunner)

Tentatively named my personal international education library & archive the "Bury International Education Library & Archive"

Univ. of Chicago to open new center in China for University’s divisions & schools. Fall '10 opening (via @globalhighered)

U.S. and China marked 30 years of science and technology cooperation (via @dipnote)

Institute of International Education (IIE) Launches Center for International Partnerships in Higher Education (via @globalhighered)

Free & open access “Journal of International Education in Business”

Counting International Student Numbers in Non-English Language Destinations (via @WESFans)