Abstract
What does it take to develop and maintain effective international education partnerships between institutions in the Canada, Mexico, and United States? This was a driving question for the qualitative study funded by a Fulbright-Enders-Garcia grant examining the relationship between North American partnerships and campus internationalization. Administrators, professors, and students at four institutions in Quebec, Canada and two institutions in Mexico shared institutional documents and their perspectives on North American partnerships and campus internationalization to help eluminate this relationship. This article features a Canadian lens on what factors contribute to effective partnership development with institutions in Mexico and the United States. The qualitative case study approach yields data on the facilitative institutional documents, administrative structures, and supporting mechanisms that exists within a given institution. Through probing interviews with diverse stakeholders, this approach also yields the human dimension—that is the factors that facilitate individual efforts to craft and maintain partnerships. The piece features primarily the internal workings at work on one side of the partnership equation—in this case within the Canadian institutions. Internationalization champions who are initiating new North American partnerships or seeking to maximize the effectiveness of existing international partnerships are the intended audience. It draws illustrations from the case studies to substantiate the argument that through the combination of visionary leadership, facilitative mechanisms, and competent internationalization leaders who are intentionally collaborating successful partner relationships are established and sustained. It is clearly critical in this global era for institutions to develop international partnerships that advance individual research agendas and student global learning. The issue at hand is how might leaders articulate their vision and organize their institutional structures so that these partnerships contribute as well as they might to advancing student global learning. Drawing elements of good practice from each case, this piece offers a structural model for maximizing partnership engagement.
Keywords
In this global era, it is increasingly critical for institutions to collaborate with international partners to advance cutting-edge research and enhance student global learning. What is required to develop and maintain effective international education partnerships? How might leaders articulate their vision and organize their institutional structures and practices so that these partnerships contribute as well as they might to addressing globally pressing problems and advancing student global learning?
Drawing upon a qualitative study examining the relationship between international education partnerships and campus internationalization, this piece features a Canadian lens on factors that contribute to effective partnership development with institutions in Mexico and the United States. The case study approach yields data from four Canadian institutions in Quebec on what facilitative institutional documents, administrative structures, and supporting mechanisms exists within the given institutions that facilitate individuals efforts to craft and maintain effective partnerships with their counterparts in Mexico and the United States.
Combining elements from each case, this piece offers a structural model for maximizing partnership engagement.
Theoretical foundation, Context, and Methodology for study
Comprehensive internationalization and strategic partnerships provide the theoretical foundation and primary foci for the larger study that asked the question, What is the relationship between North American partnerships and campus internationalization? The first concept, comprehensive internationalization, is informed by Jane Knight’s process focused definition—that is the process of “integrating international/intercultural content into the teaching, research and service functions of the institution” (Knight, 1994). This process definition contrasts with the activity focused view that features adding partnerships, programs, and courses; increasing the number of students going abroad; or recruiting additional international students. Such an activity-based approach generally entails doing more of the same thing. This piece moves beyond the “activity” approach and advances the perspective of internationalization as a process that pervades the institution; affects a broad spectrum of people, policies, and programs; and propels leaders and practitioners to deeper change.
Comprehensive internationalization is shorthand for the broad, deep, and integrative practice that enables campuses to purposefully internationalize so they can globally engage. Such a process, for most institutions, is an example of a transformational change—requiring strategy, intentionality, active leadership, and time. Many organizations including the American Council on Education (ACE) have worked with U.S. higher education institutions to develop tools to assist senior institutional leaders and teams of faculty and international education administrators with this change process. One such tool is the internationalization review guidelines and process featured in the ACE publications Internationalizing the Campus a User’s Guide (Green & Olson, 2003) and A Guide to Comprehensive Internationalization for Chief Academic Officers (Hill & Green, 2008). These publications advance the importance of developing an overall internationalization strategy that is grounded in an institution’s vision, mission, and values; developed by a task force with broad representation of faculty and staff; and presented in a strategic plan.
The second focus for this study is international education partnerships—namely, those partnerships that exist between Canadian institutions and higher education institutions in the United States and Mexico. For purposes of this study, partnerships are defined as those between at least one of the targeted institutions and at least one higher education institution in the United States or Mexico where an agreement was negotiated, reviewed, and signed by the appropriate, authorized representatives from each partner. These partnerships may have been initiated at one level with a certain purpose and set of activities and may have evolved to include another purpose, another set of activities, and/or another scale. Or, they may have been negotiated with a certain set of activities in mind that may have materialized. Strategic partnerships are defined as multifaceted relationships with formal agreements that are developed with intentionality, situated in relationship with the missions and goals of the institutions, and presented as a component of the comprehensive internationalization strategy.
North American Context
Partnership between higher education institutions in North America have been prevalent as evidenced by the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada (AUCC) data bases on partnerships. However, the nature of these partnerships has evolved as has the international context for institutional engagement. Partnerships in the 1980s and early 1990s were typically simple one-to-one institutional exchange agreements designed to facilitate faculty international research or deliverance of specialized technical assistance programs and language- /culture-based student exchanges. Contemporary partnerships are comparatively more complex in nature, involving multiple institutions, more diverse modalities (i.e., collaborative curriculum development and instruction; remote instructional delivery; branch campuses) and unique combinations of activities (dual degrees, joint curricular offerings, internships, service learning/community service; business incubators; library exchanges). The infusion of government funding over the past 15 years has been instrumental, as the Institute for International Education (IIE) notes in their reports, for catalyzing innovative partnerships. 1
These government resources have included Canadian, Mexican, and U.S. federal funding targeting North American mobility partnerships (NAMP), research collaborations, awards for scholarship and teaching (i.e., Fulbright-Enders-Garcia), awards for development work (i.e., CIDA and USAID) and awards for advanced study (i.e., CONACYT offered by Mexico). In addition, provincial or state resources have been offered up, most notably by the Quebecois government, in support of international education. Furthermore, private funds have allowed institutions to pilot innovation (i.e., Laval Profile International) and leverage these resources to bring additional provincial or federal funds to the program.
Method
This research included three phases: (a) inventory taking of the North American partnerships that exist at universities in Quebec and Region-Centro Occidente, (b) conduct of case studies at targeted institutions in Quebec, Canada; and (c) conduct of case studies at targeted public institutions in central Mexico. For the inventory, the researcher consulted resources produced by the following organizations: Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC); the Associación Nacional de Universides e Instituciones de Educación Superior (ANUIES); Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC); Institute for International Education (IIE); U.S. Department of Education, Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, North American Mobility Program (FIPSE-NAMP); and Higher Education in Development (HED). Institutional summary tables of existing partners were developed to map the evolving nature of North American partnerships for these two regions and to select institutions for the case studies. The researcher used this information to identify Canadian institutions that appeared to have high levels of engagement with U.S. and Mexican partners.
Université Laval, McGill University, Université de Montréal, and a fourth institution were selected as case studies sites based on their geographic proximity (in Quebec), their diversity in partnerships, their commitment to partnering with the United States and Mexico (as evident in historic or recent activity levels), and their willingness to provide access to institutional documents and people on campus. The fourth institution chose not to participate. A fifth institution, École de Technologie Superior, identified for its recent commitment, accepted to participate.
The research protocol for the case study included (a) interviewing International education administrators/faculty who oversee partnerships and campus internationalization, (b) consulting with advisory faculty and administrators; (c) reviewing institutional documents, reports, and web sites; (d) interviewing senior leaders; (e) interviewing professors who have participated in North American partnerships; (f) conducting focus groups with student participants in North American exchanges or courses that have resulted from North American partnerships. Ultimately, the researcher completed more than 70 interviews with senior leaders in the central administration (CEOs/vice presidents/chief academic officer) and/or college units (deans or vice/associate deans); professors; international education professionals (as appropriate) and students.
Questions for the interviews, inspired by the ACE internationalization review guidelines, addressed the following dimensions: internationalization goals; organizational structure and institutional strategy; resources; campus culture; faculty careers; curriculum and cocurriculum; student mobility; student academic careers. Focus groups were conducted with students to learn about their perspectives on internationally oriented opportunities, their participation in North American partnership activities, and their understanding on how these experiences impacted their educational and career goals.
Institutional documentation review yielded data on each institutional context, articulated commitment, and the products of North American partnership activity. Institutional strategic documents, internationalization strategic documents, and internationalization reports were analyzed. While the intended unit of analysis was the institution, due to the decentralized nature of the faculty units at three of the four Canadian sites, faculty strategic documents were also reviewed. Web sites and presentations by the international offices provided additional data.
The interviews were transcribed in most instances by research assistants who were native speakers of each language. The institutional documents and interviews were coded using Atlas TI. A template institutional narrative was developed to advance the cross-case analysis. Preliminary observations consisting of SWAT analysis of internationalization and emerging findings on partnerships and their impact on campus internationalization were delivered to liaisons at the three of the four case sites. 2
Findings
Senior Leadership and Planning
At all four Canadian sites, senior leaders had exercised forward-looking leadership in support of international education partnerships. This leadership manifested itself in different ways—both in terms of institutional documentation and leadership articulation of their commitment. The three francophone Université Laval, Université de Montréal, and Ecole Technologie Superior, had specific institutional planning documents developed to communicate the institutions’ internationalization goals and the contribution of international partnerships. In the case of Université Laval, for example, planning documents for campus internationalization dated back to a visionary document, “La politique,” drafted in 1996 and were followed up with Commission studies issued over the interim decade focused on a dimension of campus internationalization (international students, internationalization at home). McGill University was the exception; no institutional documents were dedicated to internationalization nor was internationalization, as defined for this study, an articulated priority for the institution. Rather in its planning documents McGill references its nature as a world class institution with a global reach.
Senior leaders dedicated to advancing internationalization was another feature at all four cases, but again this leadership manifested itself differently. At both Université Laval and Université de Montréal there were assistant vice rectors and vice rectors dedicated to keeping internationalization issues present in the senior leadership conversations. At Ecole Technologie Superior, the chief executive officer himself was a champion for international affairs. Again McGill proved to be an exception. As one administrator articulated,
Although, we do have a VP Research in International Relations who takes responsibility largely for the research side of that dossier, there is not a single person at McGill who has the entire portfolio. There are different aspects. Quite a bit falls under the VP RIR, the deans are also . . . engaged in international activities. It’s a distributed model.
Conversations with deans corroborated the point that deans at McGill University are engaged internationally and invested in advancing the institution’s position in the global arena.
Visions for North American partnerships
While it was clear that leaders from all of the cases were motivated to engage internationally, there was less consistency in their articulated motivations for building and sustaining North American partnerships in particular. There was a notable contrast in views among the senior leaders about the role of partnerships with U.S. institutions and those with Mexican institutions. This contrast was the most pronounced at McGill where conversations with senior leaders reflected the twin drivers of competitive global positioning through collaboration with strong peer institutions and the advancement of faculty research agendas by building on U.S. connections. McGill leaders were invested in developing strategic research-centered partnerships with peer institutions in the United States, particularly in California and the U.S. Northeast, but expressed reservations about strategic partnerships with institutions in Mexico. McGill’s institutional documents feature McGill having a global impact. However, having an impact through knowledge transfer and the development of Mexican systems was less evident as a driver in conversations with McGill senior leaders than with McGill professors. McGill professors were motivated to sustain connections with visiting scholars from Mexico (most notably UNAM) and develop Mexican educational, legal, and political systems.
The senior leaders at the Francophone institutions were drawing upon their historical positioning of their institutions as windows to the Francophone world and their cultural affinity with Latin America to develop their North American partnerships. The Laval senior leader for internationalization spoke about selecting a limited number of existing program-centered connections with institutions in the United States, Mexico, and beyond and investing resources into developing these partnerships into multifaceted institutional partnerships.
The leadership of ETS had a compelling vision for Latin American engagement and institutional capacity building. ETS’s partnerships with Latin America—most developed in Brazil and Mexico—couples bringing faculty from these countries to complete their terminal degrees at ETS with institutional development of research laboratories. The goal is to produce newly minted PhDs who will sustain their research collaborations with ETS researchers upon return to their countries and will nurture future generations of research collaborations. The extent to which this vision can be fully implemented and become institutionalized both at ETS and at their partner institutions is the question at hand. This brings us to the second of the critical facilitating factors present in the literature and confirmed through this study—the importance of administrative infrastructure and mechanisms to realize articulated visions.
Facilitative Mechanisms—Administrative Structures and Support
The administrative structures in place to support partnership activity evolve over time out of the historical and cultural context of a given institution. While it so happens that the three Francophone institutions have centralized administrative structures in place to guide their internationalization efforts and the Anglophone institution, McGill University, has a distributed model for its internationalization efforts, it would be a mistake to simply attribute these distinctions to the linguistic and cultural heritages of these institutions. Much rich information about how each of these institutions has been working within their given structural framework to strike a healthy balance between centralized structures and decentralized initiatives would be lost. This section reviews the facilitative mechanisms in place at the cases for establishing and sustaining partnerships and how leaders grapple with maintaining a productive balance.
Case 1: Université Laval—Bureau International and the Profil International
Recognizing that additional administrative structure could assist Université Laval in achieving the vision articulated in its “Politique . . . 1996,” the Bureau International at the Université Laval was created in 1999 under the direction of the vice rector of research. Its mandate was to pursue
the mission of developing and providing services related to international co-operation and the internationalization of education. Specifically, the Bureau international undertakes actions pertaining to student mobility, international development and international relations through institutional agreements. It supports the Bureau du recruitment (Recruitment office) on the international aspects of promoting Université Laval. (Making a sustainable mark on the world; Université Laval takes action)
Of the strategies enumerated in support of each of the objectives in the Politique, the Bureau International (BI) has demonstrated, through the impressive development of exchange agreements (573 agreements in 65 countries) and the percentage of graduates who have taken advantage of a mobility program (more than 13% in 2007), that it was particularly well positioned to advance those strategies that involved the negotiation and development of student mobility programs. 3
Over the years, the modality of the student mobility programs developed by Laval has evolved as has the reporting structure and staffing for the BI. What has remained consistent is the intention of the BI to support professors in the negotiation and administration of these mobility efforts. Université Laval distinguishes itself from other institutions with its structural mechanism for such support (the “Profil International”) and a network of professors at the program level with whom the BI staff collaborate in negotiating partnerships agreements and administering student mobility opportunities.
Laval has also been engaged in international research and cooperative development work, but the Profil International has been the centerpiece of its internationalization strategies over the past 10 years. Students who participate in a bilateral exchange program arranged and administered as part of the “Profil International” earn a diploma with this designation. This mention on the diploma certifies that the graduate has participated in a minimum of 12 credits of study recognized by their academic program in another country and that they master a minimum of two languages. While there are also several other student mobility experiences that are listed on web sites, several sources for this research supported the prominence of the Profil International in delivering program-rooted student mobility experiences.
This mechanism works well because it engages academic directors from the programs. They are provided with travel support so that they can travel to visit an academic site and develop a bilateral student exchange relationship that is relevant for their academic programs. Through such engagement of academic directors, issues of course credit transfer are addressed up front and faculty champions are created who in turn encourage students to take advantage of these initiatives. Not only is it an effective institutional mechanism for facilitating mobility by addressing the thorny issues of credit transfer and finances but it also creates a culture of internationalization through its engagement of academic directors from across the institution. Faculty academic directors noted how it has contributed to both academic units’ development of internationalization as well as to their units’ responses to other institutional priorities such as the advancement of research.
The Profil International was developed with the support of external foundation funding. Over the years, this mechanism was institutionalized, with Université Laval leveraging institutional resources to develop the exchange relationships and drawing upon Quebecois government to fund student participation. This Profil International model offers an illustration of how an institutional administrative structure can serve as a central support in developing, resourcing, and operationalizing a decentralized initiative. It has provided the means for the Université Laval to strike a productive balance between centralization of services and decentralization of initiatives.
Case 2: Université de Montreal—Multiple Structures
Université de Montreal offers another illustration of how a large decentralized institution with a well articulated commitment to internationalization is working to strike this delicate balance. At Université de Montréal, rather than one centralized structure there are several structures with different reporting lines and limited mechanisms for close collaboration. These structures include “Bureau d’étudiants internationaux” with a mandate to welcome and assist international students with their integration into the life of the Université de Montréal and a “Maison International” with a mandate to promote exchanges through direct interaction and preparation of students. There is also a “Direction des relations internationals (DRI)” with a reporting line to the vice rector and a mandate of informing professors about existing programs and supporting them in their mobility projects. This office includes a director and counselors assigned to diverse regions of the world. The staff maintains an elaborate web site and administers incentive grants for which professors can apply to advance international partnership activities or to internationalize the Université de Montréal curriculum.
In addition to these administrative offices, there are also institutional committees that include administrators and professors from across the institution. The director of the DRI works with an advisory committee consisting of liaisons from diverse faculty to help guide and connect their work with efforts underway at the faculty level. At the time of data collection, the vice rector was overseeing several cross-institutional committees that were examining diverse dimensions of internationalization of the institution and charged with providing recommendations in how to improve their mechanisms for advancing internationalization. The institution was clearly in a moment of transition. While it had articulated its commitment to internationalization in diverse strategic documents, the leadership understood the need to reexamine the mechanisms in place to achieve its stated internationalization goals.
The interviews conducted with professors and students for this study suggested that this self-examination was an important undertaking. Several of those interviewed offered comments that pointed to disconnects between the central administration and the professors engaged in international partnership work. There was a contrast, for example, between the perspective of administrators and that of the professors concerning the existing support services. Several professors noted that the staff of the DRI were responsive when they had questions, but in the final analysis the hard work of establishing and sustaining partnerships fell squarely upon them. The structures and mechanisms in place were not sufficiently supporting professors, they noted, in their efforts to sustain their partnerships.
In the case of Université de Montréal, there were several facilitative components for advancing partnerships in place: visionary documents, administrative structures, and funding mechanisms. However, there appeared to be disequilibrium between central administrative efforts and decentralized initiatives.
Case 3: Structure in Development—Bureau de Relations International BRIRE (ETS)
ETS had a centralized office dedicated to institutional recruitment and international relations (BRIRE) with a mandate to operationalize the internationalization plans for ETS. The director of this office sits on the leadership coordinating committee providing him access to the senior leadership and an avenue for seeking the support of their respective units in advancing the internationalization agenda for the institution. The BRIRE has convened a committee of faculty to review student scholarship applications for mobility.
There were contrasting perspectives concerning the extent to which the BRIRE was appropriately facilitating the full range of internationalization opportunities available to the institution. On the one hand there was a general consensus that BRIRE facilitates well the administrative issues pertaining to student mobility. Faculty perceive BRIRE to be visibly and centrally located and appreciate that they can refer students on to BRIRE for assistance in dealing with the technical and resource concerns pertaining to their mobility programs. The BRIRE office as structured has clearly served part of its original mandate—that is facilitating student mobility. ETS leadership, professors, and international students alike welcome the opportunities that the ETS’s recognition by CONACYT, for example, has afforded the institution. This recognition offers ETS more general recognition in Latin American countries beyond Mexico as well. The rewards of this facilitative connection are evident, for example, in graduate students being able to come from Mexico and be part of graduate research teams at ETS. ETS undergraduate students also expressed gratitude for the services offered by BRIRE. Yet several students also praised the level of services offered to them while in the United States. These accolades implicitly suggest that the services offered through ETS could be enhanced.
Conversations with the ETS leadership and the director of BRIRE revealed that there is a general recognition that the current BRIRE structure and reporting lines merit review. The director general was contemplating restructuring this office to report directly to him so that it could focus more strategically on an institutional international relations mandate. Should the leadership move forward with the international relations model, it will be interesting to see how the facilitating functions for student mobility—to date a focus of BRIRE operations—will be handled. The complexity of student services issues pertaining to inbound and outbound student mobility is all too frequently not fully understood. Hopefully, those elements that have served the institution well in facilitating student mobility will continue to be handled by professional international education staff associated with the emergent structure.
The ETS case is notably different from the other institutions, due to its size, scope, and mission. The data yielded from this case might be more appropriately compared to the data from a faculty at one of the other cases in the study. This case offers a triangulated perspective with balanced input from senior leaders, professors, and students. This picture highlights the importance of viewing structures as dynamic and the need to continuously review these structures and the mechanisms that are in place to facilitate partnerships in order to ensure they remain as effective as possible.
Case 4: McGill University—Distributed Approach
McGill has struck its own unique balance between central and faculty units responsible for initiating and sustaining international partnerships. This balancing act, characterized by senior leaders as a distributed approach, results in the inclusion of responsibilities for partnerships in the regular portfolios of select individuals in the central administration and in diverse academic units.
Central administrative structures and supports
Central responsibility for internationalization, as defined for this study, is distributed between two senior administrators and administrative offices at McGill: the Office of Research and International Relations and the Office of the Vice Deputy for Student Life and Learning. The first office has the mandate to support international research, grants, and collaboration and to develop a strategic approach to McGill’s internationalization, or more precisely McGill University’s international relations. This office does not concern itself with MOUs with other universities and exchange of students but rather the broader strategic positioning of the institution.
The office for the vice deputy for student life and learning does concern itself with the dimensions of internationalization that are the foci of this study. This office has nominal responsibility over the office of international education, oversight over bilateral exchange agreements, and responsibility for enrollment management including international student recruitment. This office negotiates institutional international exchange agreements and ensures that bilateral partnerships are appropriately drafted and approved by the appropriate senate academic policy committee. However, as one administrator noted, it is only recently that people are realizing that this central office support function exists.
McGill is an exceptional case because it does not have chief international officer. However, McGill does have central administrators charged with working on international education and a cross-cutting team. An administrator reports to the registrar and runs the student exchange and study abroad office and there is also an office for international students. In response to general concerns about student life issues at McGill and more specific concerns about serving their large international student population, the administration launched the McGill International Education Network (MIEN). This network brings together midlevel administrators from the central administration and from across the faculties to share good practice in international education. What is particularly noteworthy are the number of individuals who make up this group. This provides more evidence of the international nature of McGill and alludes to how the distributed approach has resulted in the development of international interest in diverse corners of the institution. MIEN members value the cross-institutional sharing of good practices, but they are also aware and concerned about the limitations of this group. Those interviewed spoke about the need to have academic leaders/decision makers more regularly present in the group to assist in implementing those solutions that require the attention and resources beyond what is available to the MIEN administrators.
Cross-cutting institutional teams
At each of the universities in this study, cross-cutting internationalization teams have been in place at critical moments in their institutions’ evolution as an internationalizing institution. At Laval, such a team created their historic “Politique” in 1996. At Université de Montréal several were reviewing their mechanisms. And now, even at McGill, with a proud tradition of decentralization such a team is in place. Such cross-cutting structures emerge as a critical structure, in times of transition, for helping institutions to negotiate that fruitful balance between central and decentralizing forces.
Faculty administrative structures
Faculty administrative structures emerged at two of the universities as critical complements to the centralized structures in place for sustaining effective partnerships. This was particularly evident at McGill University where the distributed approach resulted in faculty administrators having a critical role to play with regard to student engagement in international mobility. Whether there was an administrator within the dean
A closer examination of the administrative structures in place within faculty units at McGill University illustrates these points. While all of the deans spoke to their commitment to advancing McGill’s status as a world class institution, there were varying expressions of personal engagement in the internationalization of their faculty and its academic programs and varying expressions of the strategic importance that internationalization had for a given faculty. Those deans most visibly committed to these efforts have empowered members of their staff—associate and/or assistant deans—to engage in establishing and sustaining international partnerships as part of their responsibilities for the faculty. Such associate deans or assistant deans were in place in arts and letters, law and management.
The faculty of management had three associate deans: associate dean of research and international relations, associate dean of academic affairs, and an associate dean for student affairs. The associate dean of research and international relations is charged with exploring
different kinds of international programmatic opportunities that we might have. For example, we are in the midst of starting a new program in India with one of the IIMs that is a masters in . . . and we’re doing the program jointly between McGill and CIM in Lucknow. They’ll get a dual degree in this case.
The associate dean of academic affairs is also empowered to develop international education exchange agreements and actively works on advising students to take advantage of the opportunities for exchange available to them. The associate dean consults with a working group of faculty of management professors that assist her in determining where in the world they want to have agreements:
The International Work Group consists of 3 faculty members, 1 student, and two staff. They take into consideration student demand, the economic important of the region, where they are lacking in the world. For example, say we have too much presence in Europe, but do not sufficient presence in Africa. They want to offer exchange opportunities for students around the world. Within a region they go for the top school of Management in the region. So this is likely to be the rationale for the selection of Monterrey Tech in Mexico.
The associate dean also has two advisors who work with her. While they have other duties, advising students about international opportunities is a prominent part of their portfolio.
The School of Architecture within the Faculty of Engineering offers another illustration of how academic advisors are critical to the establishment, implementation, and sustainment of partnership activity. Several members of the school including the former director, the current associate director, other senior professors, and the current Academic advisor have been engaged in North American international partnerships and student mobility. Through their 30 years of engagement, they have experimented with establishing partnerships and have learned how to factor in the constraints and particularities of their academic programs. Student participation has been facilitated by the expertise and attentiveness of the academic advisor to helping students to see how they can infuse such an exchange experience into their programs.
Ethos of internationalization
The faculty of law at McGill offers an illustration of how a constellation of champions, structures, and academic work can come together to create an ethos of internationalization and a rich foundation for global engagement. This is striking, in part, because faculties of law are not the first place one might think to look for internationalization. Members of the McGill Faculty of Law contrast their international nature of their academic programs with others in North America:
There are a series of areas of strategic emphasis that have colleagues working in different ways, directors of centers, institutes, which have self-consciously international vocations. We have an institute of Air and Space law which is an internationalized unit. We have, I mentioned, the Institute of for Comparative Law. We have a center for private and comparative law, and a center for intellectual property law, a center for human rights and legal pluralism, all of those have at the core of their missions an international theme. That means that each one of their leaders, directors of each one of those units, research directors, as a matter of course in their work, undertake not just international research but outreach that moves them into partnership relationships with other universities.
The very nature of their academic programs, thus, pushes faculty and students to be connected internationally. The Faculty of Law does not have a special international working group, like the Faculty of Business, rather any gathering would organically address the international dimensions of their work. The portfolios of the dean, associate dean, and assistant deans do, nonetheless, intentionally include oversight of new faculty alliances, development of exchanges, and management of the logistics of exchanges. It would be interesting to explore in more depth how this faculty evolved to its current status and what it might mean for it to evolve to the next level with its internationalization efforts. Those consulted found the question of how the faculty might reach out beyond its connections to date (largely with France) and more intentionally connect to the United States and Latin America not only intriguing but also challenging. Where in the United States and Latin America might faculty and students find well developed and vigorous traditions of comparative international law, they pondered.
Evolving academic traditions and structures
Colleges of education have historically been problematic to internationalize comprehensively. Were it not for the presence of a former dean and faculty prominently engaged in international comparative higher education, this may have been the case at McGill as well. Interviews conducted with professors suggest there is considerable interest in sustained engagement with the United States and Mexico but limited central administrative support for partnerships in Mexico and limited faculty administrative structures for sustaining faculty and student international work generally. Students can find their way to professors who might make international opportunities available to them or students might be driven to do an international practicum, but there are not visible academic pathways and administrative support in place to facilitate these experiences. Administrators acknowledge more may be needed. As the faculty develops its strategic plan in alignment with the broader McGill institutional goals, how students are supported with such experiences may be among the items they address.
Balancing responsibilities
This sampling of illustrations reveal how McGill is balancing responsibility for international partnership development and maintenance between central and faculty units. In several instances, the distributed approach has resulted in the Faculty units taking up the mantle and creating administrative infrastructure to support these endeavors. When developed, these administrative structures were conducive to advancing the model for engagement that aligned best with the priorities of the faculty, the interests of the professors, and the needs of their disciplines.
There are, however, a few clear drawbacks to the distributed approach. In the event where a given faculty unit may not have in place supportive administrative structures, professors are left to their own resources to develop partnerships and the mechanisms for sustaining them. Given a particular profile, these professors may have well found their way and created productive partnerships that they were able to sustain over time. Alternatively, the professors may have spent considerable time and effort in creating a partnership and then found it difficult to sustain. Before the advent of central networks like MIEN, those faculty units that had not established a dedicated administrator to work on exchange issues, struggled to support the industrious, internally driven students in creating their own pathways. This raises questions about replication of services and efficiencies and about all of the other students who may have given up because they were so overwhelmed by the numerous bureaucratic hurdles they had to overcome to participate.
Conclusion—The Hybrid Ideal
When considering the four cases together, a hybrid administrative structure featuring the centralization of services and decentralization of initiatives emerges as the ideal. This model might be characterized as follows:
Centralized office or well integrated centralized offices overseen by a senior internationalization leader and staffed by professional international educators that
Convene committee(s) of professors to establish priorities and policies Provide institutional mechanisms (models and resources) Engage collaboratively with faculty to support partnerships Provide support services for students
Distributed initiatives with deans and professors that
Convene Faculty council/working group(s) to advise on partnership development Create or acquire and implement faculty mechanisms (models and resources) Customize partnership activities appropriate for their fields and students.
Academic directors and/or academic advisors who
Participate in networks for sharing good practice Craft customized pathways to facilitate student learning opportunities Provide support services for students
This model features structures and mechanisms at three levels of the institution: at the central administrative level, the faculty administrative level, and the academic program level. Each level includes individuals with internationalization in their portfolio; mechanisms in support of partnerships (models and resources); and the provision of support to faculty and to student. Senior leaders establish institutional priorities, policies, strategies, and supportive mechanisms that are maintained through a combination of central and faculty offices. Deans and professorial working groups develop aligned-priorities and ensure appropriate staff is in place to implement practices that sustain the partnership. The responsibility for establishing partnerships is shared by the international education professionals in the central office and professors in the faculties. The responsibility for sustaining the partnerships is shared at all three levels.
Critical to success in balancing between centralizing and decentralizing forces and developing strong partnerships are mechanisms like the “Profil International at University Laval,” which offer bridges between central administrative units and academic programs. Such mechanisms are most effective when they foster collaboration between administrators who have broad understanding of the institution and professors who have the deep understanding of the academic programs and services most suited to their research and students. This makes for a powerful combination as partnerships are being developed. Then as the partnership gets underway, another level of collaboration is equally critical for campus internationalization—that is collaboration at the academic program level between those individuals who are advising students and the professors who continue to engage in the research and teaching the partnerships has engendered. Effectively maximizing the potential of partnerships requires mechanisms that foster internal collaboration and competent internationalization leaders at multiple levels in the institution.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author received a North American Studies Fulbright-Enders-Garcia award from the U.S, Canadian, and Mexican federal governments which supported the case study phase of this research. The American Council on Education also provided support through a paid sabbatical.