Global Education Starts with Faculty
Rollins received national recognition in 2008 in The Chronicle of Higher Education for its efforts to internationalize its faculty. The President’s Internationalization Initiative enables every faculty member to have an international experience at least once every three years.
Since its launch in 2005, more than 75 percent of the eligible faculty and teaching staff have used the $3,500 grants to conduct individual research projects or to travel internationally with faculty-led groups to destinations including China, Ecuador and Tanzania.
Additionally, 14 international grants of up to $2,000 were awarded in 2008-09 for other activities that advance internationalization, including researching locations for field studies, setting up exchange agreements, and hosting speakers on campus.
Destinations for the 21st century
Trips in 2009-10 include Antarctica, Bali, South Africa and the Balkans. “Unless there’s a scholarly reason to travel to Western Europe, we’re emphasizing international travel that enables us to become better teachers for the 21st century, not the 18th,” said President Lewis Duncan. Many faculty report “transformative” effects on their research and their lives. Those lessons in the world’s classroom are brought home in many ways when professors across different disciplines collaborate together on projects or new courses to “connect the dots” for students, showing, for example, how physicists, artists and musicians can work together to solve problems. Or through the many and varied community service projects benefiting residents in communities around the world or in our very own Central Florida neighborhoods.
“You can’t understand yourself as an American unless you look at America from the perspective of another culture,” said McKean Professor of Philosophy Hoyt Edge, who has led field studies to Indonesia and Australia. “You don’t know yourself until you have that mirror and begin to understand your own assumptions and your own context in the world. It gives you a perspective you can’t get any other way.”
A recent international experience — a 15-day trip to China in the summer of 2009 — was designed to help faculty members have a cross-disciplinary discourse on China, a rapidly rising power in the 21st century. Structured to enhance participants’ teaching, scholarship and international perspectives, the group visited Shanghai, Urumuqi, Turpan, Jiayu Fort, Xi’an and Beijing.
As guests at Shanghai University and East China University of Science and Technology, which have exchange partnerships with Rollins, the faculty joined in discussions with Chinese faculty on a variety of topics. Chinese students also took part in group conversations with Rollins faculty.
The China Center at Rollins College
Here at home, the China Center at Rollins College is engaged in teaching, research and outreach programs that have contributed to Rollins’ internationalization efforts in China and beyond.
Founded in 2003, the China Center was established by a group of faculty members with an interest in promoting Chinese culture. Today, the China Center on campus is part of a select network of organizations that promote cross-cultural learning.
Through the China Center, professors have taken undergraduate students, graduate students and alumni to China. In the summer of 2007, Ilan Alon, Cornell Professor of International Business and executive director of Rollins China Center, took a group of Saturday MBA students to Hong Kong. Thomas Lairson, Gelbman Professor of International Business and professor of political science, accompanied a group of undergraduate students from Rollins to Shanghai for the fall 2008 semester. In 2008, the first cohort of students finished three years of Chinese language education taught by Li Wei, lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.
“We live in a global society and operate in a global economy,” Alon said. “We cannot teach business—or any discipline—in isolation from the world in which we live. Asia is taking center stage in world globalization and China is a force to educate people about the changing landscape
of the world.”
The China Center has hosted scholars from Harvard University, University of Southern California, Copenhagen Business School, Renmin University, East China University for Science and Technology, and Zhejian University. In 2007, the China Center launched an inaugural international conference with more than 70 people attending, presenting and interacting on the role of China in the 21st century. In October 2009, Rollins hosted the American Association for Chinese Studies 51st Annual Conference, where more than 100 scholars from China and around the world came together to discuss a variety of topics including “Social Change in China” and “China’s Rise and its Implications.”
An increase in student travel, too
Internationalization has also impacted students in many ways, including a 53 percent increase Internationalization has also affected students in many ways, including a 53 percent increase in the number of students who study abroad. In Spring 2009, more than 200 Rollins students traveled to 15 countries from Australia to Ecuador to Spain to the United Kingdom and some students even spent a semester at sea. Verano Español is currently celebrating its 60th anniversary, making it one of the oldest summer programs of its kind in the nation. Based on participation, Rollins ranks among the top 25 colleges and universities in its category for its study abroad program, according to the Open Doors Report published by the Institute of International Education.