Educators Discuss Canada's Gains in Internationalizing Campuses

[Harold F. Schiffman]

 http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/11/822n.htm
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Educators Discuss Canada's Gains in Internationalizing Campuses and Ways
of Extending That Trend
By KAREN BIRCHARD


Ottawa


Internationalization is now the norm on Canadian campuses, with the vast
majority of universities and colleges including a commitment to
international education in their mission statements, Web-site statements,
and strategic planning, the author of a national report said here on
Tuesday at the annual conference of the Canadian Bureau for International
Education.

That emphasis has meant increases in foreign students, faculty members
teaching overseas or visiting from other countries, study-abroad programs,
and international partnerships over the past six years, along with
curriculum changes. But there is still room for improvement, the author,
Tom Tunney, said during a panel discussion of a recent survey of
internationalization efforts on campuses.

Mr. Tunney is a senior analyst with the Association of Universities and
Colleges of Canada, which conducted the survey. Mr. Tunney's report on
some of the findings of the survey, which was conducted in 2006, were
released this fall (The Chronicle, September 14), and the final part of
that report will be available early next year. The 2006 survey updates
data from an earlier survey on internationalization, taken in 2000.

"While we see an increase since the previous survey in 2000 in the number
of Canadian students studying abroad, up from 1 percent to 2.2 percent,"
he said, "we heard Germany say at this conference that it wants to have 50
percent of its students study abroad. So clearly there's a long way for us
to go."

Mr. Tunney said he was also concerned over a decline in the number of
institutions that include a foreign-language component in their degree
requirements, which fell from 16 percent in the earlier survey to 9
percent in 2006.

A comparison of the two surveys shows a rapid growth in foreign students
on campuses, both full time and part time, Mr. Tunney said, but
administrators want more. "A number of universities said they had target
numbers in their strategic planning, and two-thirds said they had not yet
met the target," he said.

Sixty percent of the universities now use faculty workshops to
internationalize their curricula, the latest survey found. Another panel
member, Sabine Lehr of the University of Victoria, in British Columbia,
described how such workshops at that institution help faculty members make
"world-mindedness" part of their teaching.

"The term 'internationalization' might put some off," said Ms. Lehr, who
is assistant director of the university's international office, "so we
tell them to come up with their own terminology but make the world the
point of reference for everything they do in the classroom."

The session also heard from Nipissing University, a small institution in
Ontario that didn't have an international office until 2003 and had
virtually no international activity six years ago. It went from three
foreign students to 50 this year and intends to keep on growing, said
Karen Strang, Nipissing's international director.

She described how "thinking outside the box" helps Nipissing foster
internationalization efforts on a budget. One strategy involves arranging
student exchanges with partner institutions overseas.

"It can be very expensive to go abroad," Ms. Strang said. "So we let a
student from a less wealthy country pay the residence fee at his or her
home university, and our student pays the residence fee at Nipissing, and
the two students switch countries and rooms."

Meanwhile, a few blocks from the conference, the president of the
Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, Claire Morris, was
appearing before the Finance Committee of the Canadian Parliament's House
of Commons. Ms. Morris urged the politicians to provide more support for
graduate education, saying the money was needed to attract top foreign
students to Canada and keep the nation's own talented students in Canada.

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