Letters from Kay Kohl

Delivering International Learning Experiences

(UCEA InFocus, March 2006)
Kay Kohl, UCEA Executive Director and CEO

Without fanfare and perhaps little intentionality, providers of university continuing and professional education are internationalizing their portfolios. They are welcoming international students and mid-career professionals to their campus programs, creating global affairs master's degrees, expanding their foreign language offerings, moving across national borders to offer programs in collaboration with universities abroad, and enrolling growing numbers of international students in their online education programs.

Extension divisions' cutting-edge professional certificate programs have always attracted adult learners from abroad. The students come on a short-term basis to pursue studies that are not easily obtainable at institutions in their home countries. For example, two notable alumni of extension programs are Gavin Hood, the 2006 Academy Award-winning filmmaker from South Africa and creator of "Tsotsi", who earned a certificate in Film, Television and Digital media from UCLA Extension's Entertainment Studies and Performing Arts Department in 1992; and Alvaro Uribe, the current president of Colombia, who earned a Management Certificate from Harvard Extension.

Also, many CE units have a long history of successfully marketing their English-as-a- Second Language programs and summer session courses to international students. Now, these units are discovering a growing interest among their American students and faculty in having a summer immersion foreign language experience abroad. Some of this interest in foreign language study is a function of the federal government's retargeting of resources towards critical need foreign languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Spanish, Hindi and Farsi- languages considered especially critical to national security and foreign diplomacy.

As businesses expand their global reach, they place a premium on employees who have the cross cultural skills needed to work effectively trans-nationally. For instance, Howard County Community College is providing Chinese classes to executives from Black & Decker Company in Maryland so that they can communicate directly with their employees at a plant in Soochow, China. The tool manufacturer initiated the language training after its employees realized that even using translators, key messages were lost in translation.

Additional evidence of the increasing value that Americans attach to international education is to be found in the results of a survey of more than 1000 U.S. adults conducted in December 2005 for NAFSA. More than three-quarters of the adults polled were found to "value educational experiences in which time is spent abroad in other cultures." Moreover, 92 percent of those polled agreed that knowing foreign languages would enhance future generations' job competitiveness.

It's time for university CE units to explore how to create new learning experiences that will bring more adult learners from this country together with their counterparts from abroad. To start, CE units might build upon their existing collaborations with international universities or possibly take advantage of the UCEA's alliances with counterpart associations in North America, Europe and Asia to identify new partners. Learning can happen in multiple formats. With blended learning, geography is not the same constraint that it once was. Surveys also suggest, however, that formats other than courses, such as short-term international internships or residencies, would appeal to many adults. There's much to be worked out. But what does seem apparent is that there is a growing hunger for serious international learning experiences and that a number of CE units are well-positioned to address this need.