Community College Corner: Theory for Practitioners: UIUC's Studies Research Seminar

The following is a guest post by Derek Shouba, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Morton College.  This is Derek's second contribution to the IHEC Blog  'Community College Corner'.

Thanks again to David Comp for inviting me to address international education issues in the community college-setting.  This post is dedicated to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Global Studies Summer Research Lab.  As most community college faculty members know, community college educators suffer from several serious challenges related to campus internationalization programs.  One of these challenges is that community college educators often have little time to do the kind of sustained critical thinking that makes for good academic programming.  Teaching five or more classes each semester, full-time community college faculty members can sometimes find it difficult to conduct systematic research before implementing a new course or academic program.  Teaching at multiple campuses for lower wages, community College adjunct faculty members may find it almost impossible to methodically examine existing scholarship in a given subject area before implanting course reform.  The University of Illinois’ grant-funded Global Studies Research Lab is an inspired attempt to ameliorate the situation by offering community college faculty and staff across the country the opportunity to earn short-term fellowships to support a wide range of global education initiatives. 

Applying for the fellowship in the spring, I received an acceptance letter in late April, and began a week in residence on the University of Illinois’ beautiful campus in July.  My project centered on the creation of an enhanced comprehensive campus internationalization plan at my community college near Chicago, Illinois, but other fellows in the program intend to create new international courses, new research bibliographies, or new study abroad programs.

The Global Studies Research Lab affords fellows access to one of the country’s premier research libraries.  The grant covers the cost of the dorm for up to six days, as well as travel expenses to and from Urbana-Champaign.  It also offers fellows a small honorarium for the delivered product, with the opportunity to receive some modest additional funding for the implementation of the product in the months to come.

For me, the highlight of the week was the opportunity to meet with scholars whose work touches on themes related to campus internationalization.  In my case, I had the chance to meet with Dr.Antoinette Burton, historian of empire and author of dozens of extremely influential books and articles on subjects related to globalization.  Dr. Burton’s work has influenced my thinking on globalization, and global history in particular, for quite some time, so it was an honor to meet with her.  Her book, A Primer for Teaching World History: Ten Design Principles (Duke University), has been particularly helpful to me over the past couple of years. While the book acknowledges many of the challenges of teaching global history effectively, it nevertheless offers historians (and perhaps faculty in many other related fields) very practical strategies for tackling this enormously important task. 

To conclude, the Global Studies Research Lab is a wonderful opportunity for community college faculty members to spend some time connecting theory to practice in the field of international education.  I can only hope that this form of dialogue between our nation’s senior and junior institutions finds many analogues in the coming years.

Community College Corner: The NAFSA Academy

The following is a guest post by Derek Shouba, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Morton College.  Derek will contribute to IHEC Blog on a regular basis and will provide his perspective on a variety of international education topics in the 'Community College Corner' posts!

Many thanks to David Comp for soliciting my participation in International Higher Education Consulting Blog.  Over the past couple of years, Dr. Comp and I have had many conversations about the extent to which the principles of international educational, as they have been construed by competitive, four-year institutions, can be applied to America’s open-access community colleges.  America’s community colleges are of course a vital component of any plan to help Americans gain international competencies in the coming decades.  According to the American Association of Community Colleges, approximately half of America’s undergraduate college students are enrolled at a community college at any given time.

As a community college dean, I’m been obsessed with the following question for quite some time: what can a relatively small institution do to promote international competencies among its students, especially when these students are, more often than not, economically disadvantaged?  In the coming year, my goal will be to explore a number of practical and relatively inexpensive approaches to the broad subject of international education, especially in the community college context.

Today, I’ll merely mention one simple tool that I’ve personally employed this past year to enter more fully into the modern discourse of international education, and that is the NAFSA Academy.   While admittedly geared toward relatively new participants in the field of international education, the NAFSA Academy helped me to quickly and painlessly integrate into the wider NAFSA community.  For a reasonable fee, selected participants are paired with approximately five other international educators, and an experienced Academy mentor, for a yearlong introduction to the elements of international education.  The fee includes registration at a special spring training which covers international student advising issues, U.S. international admissions, advocacy in international education, education abroad and comprehensive campus internationalization.  The fee also includes your registration in a regional NAFSA conference and the national NAFSA conference.

The NAFSA Academy is most appropriate for folks who are relatively new to international education, but even more seasoned professionals will discover that the Academy can help you to create a solid network of like-minded professionals.  All Academy participants also get consistent feedback about at least one action project related to international education.  In my own case, I worked on a formal campus international plan.

While the NAFSA Academy is dominated by participants and mentors from four-year institutions, I was matched with a wonderful mentor from a larger community college and still enjoyed the opportunity to share stories and swap ideas with professionals from M.I.T., Northwestern University, and many other research universities.   I can also imagine that an institution would do well to use the NAFSA Academy as an on-boarding process for new employees in areas related to international education, especially if their institution, like mine, isn’t large enough to offer more systematic methods of learning content in each major category of international education employment.
I’ll close by saying that my NAFSA Academy cohort collaborated together on several projects, including an international roundtable at my school’s Teaching and Learning Center, and on a Region V presentation that will happen this week.  Hope to see you there.

See http://www.nafsa.org/Attend_Events/Training/Academy_For_International_Education/ for more information.

Derek Shouba is the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Morton College, a comprehensive community college located on in Cicero, Illinois.  Derek also serves on the Executive Board of the Illinois Consortium of International Studies and Programs (ICISP).  Derek, a Fulbright alum, is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and holds graduate degrees from McGill University, North Park University, and Roosevelt University.