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With the balance of wealth shifting overseas — and with more colleges and universities increasing their international enrollment — international fundraising is likely to play an increasingly larger role in development at North American institutions. And by cultivating your international students and alumni as lifelong ambassadors for your institution, you not only strengthen and diversify your institution’s donor pool, you also create a network that can serve as a key resource in helping your school keep its curriculum global and current and connect with new students and new partners abroad. To learn how institutions can get started in such an effort, we interviewed Gretchen Dobson, the senior associate director for alumni relations at Tufts University and the principal and founder of Gretchen Dobson Go Global, a consulting firm focused on helping educational institutions, nonprofit member organizations, and consulate/embassy education officers facilitate alumni engagement and advance international programs. Dobson has also authored the book Being Global: Making the Case for International Alumni Relations (CASE, 2011). Inviting Students into a Lifetime Relationship Dobson notes that international alumni are “hard enough just to find”; if you are serious about cultivating lifetime relationships with this growing body of alumni, the key is to begin […]

A survey conducted in 2011 by three researchers from different institutions confirmed that while most international students feel welcomed and at home on their college campuses, many have a low sense of belonging in the US generally and face challenges in making the transition to American culture. These same students voice concern over the lack of support from the institution in making that transition. One student remarked about the international student services available, “The office helped in all administrative matters, but nothing more. Please, do not get me wrong: they were very helpful, but they did not help in my transition from Mexican to American culture.” Other students cited feelings of isolation and culture shock, as well as difficulties adjusting to the social expectations of the American classroom. The survey results, though taken from a small sample, raise the question: as colleges and universities enroll more international students, what steps can they take to ensure that their growing population of international students have the peer support and services needed to aid them in acculturation and academic success? While international students often come to your institution with an impressive student record, they face significant obstacles in the transition: Differing cultural expectations […]

Unless you are already enrolling high numbers of international students, it’s likely that stepping up recruiting efforts will require significant work in revisiting your admissions communications and processes. Many processes that are “tried and true” in the US may throw unintended obstacles in the way of international applicants, and simply translating your current communications and documents may leave international prospects and parents at a loss to find the information they need most. To gather some expert advice, we reached out to Bob Johnson, president of Bob Johnson Consulting, LLC; Marjorie Smith, associate dean and director of international student admission at the University of Denver; and Kevin Spensley, director of international marketing, recruitment, and enrollment at Saint Michael’s College. Your Website and the International Student Web marketing guru Bob Johnson notes that your website is the first introduction many international students will have to your institution; if you have designed your site with only US students in mind, you will miss many of your best opportunities to interest students from other nations. Johnson offers these tips to get your website “recruitment-ready for visits from potential international students”: Offer a landing page for international students and ensure that the most critical, “can’t-miss” […]

“Too often, integration of international students into the institution is not viewed systemically. The institution may be recruiting international students to increase diversity, to increase revenue, or for some other goal … but you rarely see the globalization of the campus conceived of as a systemic effort.” Gayle Woodruff, University of Minnesota Recruiting international students without ensuring that the curriculum itself is internationalized is an unsustainable effort. Providing international students with an education that will equip them for success whether in the US or in their countries (and simultaneously providing domestic students with a truly global education) entails the integration of international content and perspectives across the curriculum, as well as a careful look at biases in pedagogical design and delivery that may make the learning experience less accessible to all students. To learn more, we interviewed Gayle Woodruff, who directs a system-wide curriculum and campus internationalization initiative at the University of Minnesota, one that she has modeled closely on successful examples from universities in Australia that have conducted extensive research on internationalization, such as the University of Melbourne and the University of South Australia. Woodruff advises that institutions enrolling high numbers of international students take steps to: Focus on […]

Higher education marketing professionals are under increased pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness of their marketing and branding initiatives. To ensure funding, marketing offices must measure the return on investment of their strategies and communicate their success in tangible ways. We turned this week to Elizabeth Scarborough, CEO of SimpsonScarborough, to ask where institutions may be misdirecting their attention when it comes to measuring marketing ROI. She indicated three “myths” or challenges that hold many institutions back. Myth 1: That it’s impossible. “There is a common misperception, both within and outside of university marketing departments,” Scarborough notes, “that it’s ultimately impossible to measure the impact of your marketing efforts. But you can gather metrics that allow you to assess the impact of your work in specific terms. The problem is that often, presidents and board members will in fact ask unanswerable questions, such as ‘How many students do we enroll because of that billboard we put up on the interstate?’ That’s an unanswerable question. Most colleges are investing more in marketing than they ever have in the past, and leadership has every right to ask what they are getting for their investment. But they may not know which questions to ask.” […]