Engaged Liberal Learning:
The Plan for Skidmore College, 2005-2015

Goal II – Intercultural and Global Understanding

 
We will challenge every Skidmore student to develop the intercultural understanding and global awareness necessary to thrive in the complex and diverse world of the 21^st Century.


"It has perhaps never been more important for the world’s voices to be heard in America, never more important for the world's ideas and dreams to be known and thought about and discussed, never more important for a global dialogue to be fostered.... The cold war is over, but a stranger war has begun. Alienation has perhaps never been so widespread; all the more reason for getting together and seeing what bridges can be built."

It is arguable that the global situation changed in the 1980's but the United States did not fully wake up to those changes until September 11, 2001. No longer is the world divided into two spheres of superpower influence. Although the United States retains a preponderance of military power in the Post-Cold-War era, multiple sources of economic influence, political power, and cultural energy compete for attention on the world stage and affect every aspect of our students' lives — from the price they will pay for gasoline, cement, and steel to the types of jobs available to them in our economy to the quality of the global environment to the governmental policies that will be necessary to maintain not just their accustomed standard of living and personal freedom but the very possibility of a stable world order. If we want them to emerge as leaders and not just as observers, our students must understand this world and their place in it. Our job is to immerse them in that world. It is their future.

We need to do more to include global perspectives in our curriculum and foster global awareness throughout our community. Specifically, all Skidmore students need to understand that no one's worldview is universal, that other people may have profoundly different perspectives and values, that world systems are interdependent, and that local choices have global impact. To become globally aware, students must study at least one foreign culture and language; understand the dynamics of international conflict, collaboration, and negotiation; learn to differentiate between phenomena that are area-specific and transnational; and develop the skills to identify and analyze complex international problems in their historical, technological, and ethical contexts. We will encourage more of our students to undertake transformative study abroad as part of their undergraduate education — with destinations such as Asia, India, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America becoming as common as Paris or London. For their part, 61% of the students entering in Fall 2003 indicated a desire to study abroad. We must enable them to do so, and we need to affirm these values by supporting our faculty as well, to enhance their own ability to lead such efforts.

This project begins with the composition of our student body itself. We seek to recreate Skidmore as a more diverse, globally conscious community better able to prepare all our students for the world each of them will encounter upon graduation. For any college, each year's applicant pool marks a moment of transition and opportunity. As we look towards the Skidmore student population of the future, we must first of all assert that creative thought knows no boundaries. We want our strongest accepted candidates, whatever their backgrounds, to make Skidmore their first choice. We also need to be clear about our objectives with regard to increases in specific populations, such as students of color, international students, and so on. For example, creating an educational context capable of supporting meaningful discussions about the world situation, requires a student body that includes meaningful numbers of students whose backgrounds place them in direct touch with the perspectives of persons living in other countries. Accordingly, our long-term objectives must include not only a more diverse student body drawn from across the United States but also a substantial increase in the number of international students attending Skidmore. Furthermore, in attending to diversity, we need to think inclusively: considering factors such as socio-economic background, geographical distribution, and national origin, as well as race, gender, ethnicity, cultural heritage, sexual orientation, religious background, and the like.

In the first few years of this planning cycle, we will build upon our existing strengths to make the most significant differences with our foreseeable resources. In 1969 we created the Skidmore Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP).²⁶ This innovative initiative has gained national recognition for enabling students whose backgrounds would not have predicted academic success to gain access to higher education and, indeed, to realize significant achievement. That program later was extended to a broader population as the Academic Opportunity Program (AOP). In Fall 2004, we expanded this program by 40%. We will continue this progress by expanding and enhancing HEOP/AOP, take best advantage of existing relationships with known feeder schools in the United States, and work to extend those relationships to new schools.

As a complement to the preceding efforts, we will work to identify high schools with significant populations of first-generation American and immigrant students who can bring to Skidmore perspectives shaped by first-hand international experiences. We also will make selective use of existing contacts with individuals and schools in other countries and programs such as United World College where, with their help, our recruiting efforts can be most efficient and effective. As we progress over the term of this planning cycle, we will increase our efforts to attract more international students. We must match these efforts to change our student population by continuing to challenge ourselves to enhance the diversity of our faculty and staff. We have begun these efforts, though to date our success has been limited. This is an area in which we must aggressively employ both our own ideas and the best practices of other schools — raising our expectations to see not just increased efforts but increased results.

Though our concern with diversity begins with questions of access, it is ultimately not about numbers of students from specified backgrounds. Rather it is about understanding and achievement. We will succeed only to the extent that our graduates are accomplished at interacting with persons whose backgrounds differ from theirs — seeing difference as a positive feature and knowing how to forge relationships that span what once would have constituted divides within the human community. We must address the complex needs of an increasingly diverse student population, enabling all our students to attain high levels of achievement. We will continue our efforts to understand why the performance of certain student sub-populations fails to meet our expectations and, based on that enhanced understanding, we will increase our efforts to meet their needs more successfully. We need to become more creative in helping all of our students develop the interpersonal skills required to interact successfully not just within an increasingly diverse College population but even more importantly within our increasingly pluralistic world. As one vehicle for fostering such learning, we will develop new ways to engage our students beyond the classroom through collaborative research, service learning, internships, and volunteer activities.

We have not yet reached consensus within the College about how to achieve these aims or even about their meaning. More specifically, there is no agreed upon articulation of the skills and competencies required by today's graduates — much less a consensus on how to develop them systematically and measure our success in doing so. Important conversations regarding these issues have occurred in the past, and these matters represent one of three primary foci of the current Middle States review. We need to build on this good work and engage a vigorous conversation within our faculty and across our community to clarify our understanding of what our students need to know in this area and how we can best assist them in coming to know it. In short order, this conversation needs to result in action, with departments and programs taking the lead in enhancing courses and curricula to advance this initiative. These concerns also need to be reflected in the shared conversations prompted by visiting speakers, symposia, performances and other such public events that are vital to the life of any academic community.

Priority Initiatives in Support of Goal II

Increase global awareness across the community in order to sensitize all Skidmore students to a complex, diverse, and interdependent world.

• Under the leadership of the President, constitute a College-wide Intercultural and Global Understanding Task Force (replacing the Diversity Committee) co-chaired by the President and a faculty member to provide leadership in achieving the objectives of this Goal. Primary among its responsibilities, the Task Force will be charged to advise the President in leading the College to define specific objectives and develop initiatives to achieve those outcomes in support of this Goal. Fund the Task Force using Presidential Discretionary Funds, enabling the Committee to provide internal grants to individuals and groups on campus who propose creative approaches to advance the objectives of this Goal.
   
• Increase our efforts through mentoring and programmatic changes to enable a higher percentage of our students to study abroad for at least one semester. Our initial goal will be to raise the percentage of Skidmore graduates who have had such experience to 60%.²⁷ Draw on the expertise and professional connections of our faculty to provide additional opportunities for students to study abroad. Find new ways to take advantage of the resources represented by students returning from study away to enrich the campus community.
   
• Provide additional encouragement and assistance to faculty members whose research and teaching have an international focus. Help them develop their expertise and assist their efforts to share their expertise with the larger Skidmore Community. [$]
   
• Support programs (e.g., the International Affairs major), curricula, courses, lectureships, and symposia that enhance global awareness on campus. Consider adding faculty positions in international areas not currently well represented in the curriculum (e.g., the Middle East ). [$]
   
• Develop additional resources to support faculty efforts to create opportunities to take our students abroad for experiences that foster global awareness. [$]
   
• Reduce the obstacles to students going abroad from certain disciplines (e.g., the natural sciences). Allow all majors to offer study-abroad as an option, through more effective mentoring, help students choose relevant courses to prepare them effectively for study abroad.
   
• Increase our institutional capacity to take advantage of the experiences of students returning from study abroad (including London Program first-year students); develop new ways for such students to share their experiences with others (e.g., via web logs, Academic Festival, etc.).

Renew the conversation about diversity both within the Skidmore faculty and broadly across the campus community; building upon the work of the Middle States review and other past efforts, establish clear educational objectives relating to this Goal and develop shared expertise in achieving them.

• Charge the Intercultural and Global Understanding Task Force to initiate and support this conversation.
   
• Provide additional resources to faculty members to meet the pedagogical needs of an increasingly diverse student population and take advantage of the opportunities represented by a more multicultural classroom environment. [$]
   
• Identify individuals who will have leadership and operational responsibility for guiding the implementation of this initiative.²⁸[$]

Enhance the diversity of our student population while providing the resources necessary to support all of our students in meeting our educational objectives.

• Expand and stabilize the resources of our remarkably successful HEOP/AOP programs, ensuring that these will continue regardless of the vicissitudes of external (primarily governmental) funding. We will target some of these new scholarships toward students with strong interest in science and mathematics.²⁹[$]
   
• Support the initiative to increase diversity through improved collaboration between the relevant ODSP programs and Admissions, HEOP/AOP, and relevant departmental programs.
   
• Increase our endowed scholarship funds for students with economic need — paying special attention to students who will contribute most to the goals of educational excellence, rigor, and diversity. [$]
   
• Improve retention and achievement among traditionally under-represented student groups by improving academic support where it is needed.
   
• Strengthen programs that enhance campus climate and promote understanding among cultures, races, religions, and individuals, such as the Intercultural Center. [$]
   
• Increase the number of international students. An important but less immediate focus in the first five years of this planning cycle is to begin with existing contacts and target our admissions efforts to recruit additional foreign students who can afford to study at Skidmore and who — through their presence here — have the potential to attract additional students from their homelands. We also will pay special attention to children of recent immigrants to America. We will make targeted use of our limited need-based financial aid funds to attract students with very high academic potential or who come with assistance from other sources (e.g., United World College). [$]

Enhance the diversity of our faculty, staff, and administration and enhance their skills that relate to achieving this Goal.

• Increase our efforts to recruit and retain faculty members, administrators, and staff members who represent excellence in their field and who also will increase the diversity of our employee population. Where feasible, we will use flexible interdisciplinary faculty positions to increase the diversity of applicant pools. We will send clear signals that we are seeking faculty members with an interest and experience in working with previously under-served student populations.
   
• Using Fulbright and other international grants, bring accomplished international scholars to Skidmore to teach as visiting faculty members, in short-term residencies, etc.

Consistently include programs to enhance the skills that relate to this Goal in the professional development of our faculty, staff, and administrators.

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25. Skidmore was a "founding institution" in this New York State program

26. Once this target is achieved it will be reevaluated to see if it is feasible to increase it.

27. One such position, a Director of International Education, is proposed in the report of the CEPP Subcommittee on Study Abroad and Diversity, Fall 2003.

28. A significant part of our strategy for achieving this objective is increasing our retention rate.

29. Once this target is achieved it will be reevaluated to see if it is feasible to increase it.