Bringing the Big World to a Small Campus: A Study of the Internationalization Process at Edgewood College
Abstract
Internationalization has become an important effort on many college and university campuses around the country. Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin is one of these institutions. It desires to remain competitive with other schools and has become part of the internationalization dialogue with the establishment of the William H. Young Center for Global Education. The Center was created to set forth an agenda and lead the College as it undertook the process to internationalize its curriculum, students and faculty. This paper examines that process and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the Center as it strives to fulfill its mission.
This study draws from the people who are involved in helping to implement the internationalization process and uses materials and documents written by the Global Perspectives committee, interviews with key people in the internationalization process, and on-site observations of meetings, projects and interactions. The data has been broken down into three different sections based on the three initiatives of the Center: promoting study abroad, creating an international community and internationalizing the curriculum. In addition, this breakdown is employed in the analysis of the data.
The success of the internationalization process at Edgewood is directly related to the Center’s ability to lead that process. The Center has achieved some successes and faced considerable challenges in its first year of existence. Throughout this paper the successes and challenges are laid out for review and analyzed for the purposes of making recommendations for improvement. The paper concludes with a list of policy initiatives and action items that could contribute to the success of the Center for Global Education in its mission to lead the internationalization efforts at the College.
Disciplines
International and Comparative Education
Recommended Citation
Stengle, Deborah, "Bringing the Big World to a Small Campus: A Study of the Internationalization Process at Edgewood College" (2005). Capstone Collection. 827.
https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/capstones/827