Community Colleges Pursue Many Paths to Create International Campuses

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By KARIN FISCHER

For community colleges, global is the new local. Long attuned to turning out graduates whose skills are calibrated to the needs of nearby companies, two-year colleges are now striving to meet the demands of multinational businesses seeking workers who can succeed in a worldwide marketplace.

Community-college leaders want to ensure that their institutions produce students who can collaborate with co-workers from other countries and cultures, who have an understanding of global economics, and who, perhaps, even speak a foreign language.

Despite the obstacles, two-year institutions across the United States are pursuing a variety of strategies to give their students an international edge. Some go for greater numbers of international students, while others are after stronger ties with immigrant groups or multinational firms in their region to provide students with globally relevant volunteer experiences or internships. Still others have developed certificate programs for students who complete several courses with an international perspective.

"There's definitely a recognition of the importance that community-college studies have a global component, that our students need to be more globally educated," says Judith Irwin, director of international programs and services at the American Association of Community Colleges. "You have to think like that in the 21st century."

Objections have been raised, she concedes, including by trustees who don't see the value of such skills to students who plan to work in a neighboring county, not another country, and by professors who question the relevance to the disciplines they teach. Community colleges also face resource challenges: Tight budgets leave them with little money for new courses or for personnel dedicated to those efforts. And their students, who frequently juggle jobs and families, have limited time to devote to traditional international programming, such as study abroad.

For some institutions, faculty expertise has been the route to internationalization. Kapiolani Community College in Hawaii, for example, sends faculty members from in-demand disciplines around the world to work as consultants to universities, private businesses, and government agencies, says Joseph L. Overton, chair of the college's Honda International Center. Kapiolani faculty members have instructed nurses in Japan, prepared English-language teachers in Vietnam, and helped develop a hospitality program at a Moroccan university. The college also offers short-term training courses in areas such as the culinary arts and health care.

Daytona State College (which changed its name from Daytona Beach Community College this year after opening a baccalaureate program) has offered import-export seminars for more than 15 years to local companies interested in international trade. It received a federal grant to add a global perspective to its business curriculum, says Donald R. Matthews, associate vice president for global education and affairs.

More recently, Daytona State faculty and staff members also have received grants, of $1.7-million and $1.3-million, from the Inter-American Development Bank, which finances projects in Latin America, to help create a community college in the Dominican Republic and adapt a community-college curriculum for the Bahamas. Daytona's international efforts have gone over well, says Mr. Matthews, in part because they are self-supporting.

Other community colleges provide small stipends to help faculty members attend international conferences or conduct research abroad. Parkland College, in Illinois, encourages professors to take advantage of two-week exchange programs, during which they stay in the homes of academics in Finland and the Netherlands, among other countries, says Seamus Reilly, vice president for institutional advancement. When they return, Parkland's faculty members are invited to give informal lectures and presentations to colleagues.

Such efforts help "plant seeds," Mr. Reilly says. He tells the story of one professor of computer science who had never left Illinois but became a champion for international education after teaching in China through an agreement between the college and the Beijing Vocational College of Agriculture.

It is crucial that faculty members' international experience is carried into the classroom, Daytona's Mr. Matthews says. Community colleges are teaching institutions, "so if it doesn't benefit the students, we don't do it."

At Parkland, one result of an increased emphasis on internationalization is the establishment of a global-studies program. Such programs, which are offered by a growing number of community colleges, typically recognize a student's completion of several courses with internationally focused content, along with study abroad or a globally oriented service-learning experience, such as working with a local refugee group.

Parkland offers several short-term overseas-study courses, which are created by faculty members. Professors in agriculture and Spanish, for example, worked together to develop an international-agriculture course in Costa Rica. Another program looks at cultural and sociopolitical issues in Senegal. Nursing students can participate in a service-learning program in Ecuador.

The Parkland programs cater to students who are going directly into the workplace, not on to a four-year institution, where study-abroad options are more plentiful. The community-college courses' brevity, relatively low cost, and scheduling during academic breaks appeal to students who are parents and working adults, Mr. Reilly says.

Georgia Perimeter College, in suburban Atlanta, is developing "homegrown" overseas-study programs, says Debra Denzer, director of the Center for International Education there. This past summer, 52 students traveled abroad on programs to China, Peru, and several other countries.

The challenge, Ms. Denzer says, is balancing such programs with professors' heavy teaching loads. "Faculty are really the ones who shape the programs," she says, "but they need more support."

Georgia Perimeter, which is part of the University System of Georgia, also sends students — 15 last summer — on study-abroad programs offered systemwide.

Some community colleges have grappled with their limited capacity to develop and administer overseas study by turning to outside providers, federal programs, or multi-institution groups. "Few colleges are big enough, with enough resources, to do legitimate, sustainable homegrown study abroad," says Linda Korbel, dean of languages, humanities, and the arts at Oakton Community College, outside Chicago. "But community-college students need international exposure as much as anyone else."

Oakton, along with about 40 other two-year colleges in the state, sends students to destinations including Austria, Costa Rica, and France through the two-decades-old Illinois Consortium for International Studies and Programs.

Daytona State College, meanwhile, has used grants from the Program for North American Mobility in Higher Education, administered by the U.S. Department of Education, to send 17 students in engineering, computer science, hospitality, and tourism to partner universities in Canada and Mexico since 2003, says Daytona's Mr. Matthews.

During the same time period, the mobility grant program has brought more than 20 Canadian and Mexican students to Daytona State.

Indeed, many two-year colleges have focused on drawing international students to their campuses, even though stricter U.S. visa requirements since the September 2001 terrorist attacks have complicated those efforts. In fact, international-student enrollments at American community colleges rose by 6.7 percent in 2006, according to the most recent figures compiled by the Institute of International Education. (Such enrollments increased by 3.2 percent for U.S. higher education as a whole.)

One institution that has been especially successful at recruiting foreign students is Bunker Hill Community College, in Boston. This academic year, the college, which has a full-time student body of 5,194, enrolled 680 international students from 95 different countries.

Vilma M. Tafawa, director of Bunker Hill's international center, says the college makes annual visits to recruitment fairs overseas. The trips allow her to speak directly with prospective students and their parents and to explain the mission of an American community college, says Ms. Tafawa. She defends the cost of such travel by noting that the tuition and fees paid by just one international student recoup the expense.

The best recruiters, she adds, are international students themselves. When one of them succeeds at Bunker Hill, others "hear it through the grapevine."

Bringing foreign students to American college campuses is important, Ms. Tafawa and other international educators argue, because they "enrich the education" of all students.

Many community colleges encourage their students to take advantage of the international perspectives of members of the local community as well as of students on the campus. Both Georgia Perimeter and Oakton offer their students opportunities to volunteer with local immigrant or refugee groups, tutoring students in English or helping older immigrants with their citizenship forms. Georgia Perimeter counts such work toward its international certificate.

"Community colleges have a lot of international resources right at home," says Ms. Korbel, of Oakton. "Local really is global in many cases."