Current International Activities

Like many other campuses, our faculty and students already have strong international contacts. Students from ~ 80 countries are represented on our campus. In many cases there is only one student from one country. They are primarily graduate students (like the rest of the nation) or are present on campus for a relatively short period of time and are not enrolled for a four year degree program. We have a disparate set of international programs without campus-wide coordination. The efforts of individual faculty, such as Professors John Pottenger (International Programs) and David Johnson (Global Studies Program), must be acknowledged for their success despite limited funding.

Action items:

Coordinate our international programs and set stretch goals for their success for the number of international students that visit our campus and the number of UAH degrees awarded to both undergraduate and graduate students.

Develop a marketing plan for these programs.

Many faculty members are already involved in international education through partnerships or through their own students. Multiple, brief and relatively uncoordinated study-abroad programs exist in various colleges. They offer selective UAHuntsville students the chance for a short (less than a full semester) international experience. Such programs are in short supply compared with other universities that we compete with. For example, we have no coordinated junior-year or semester-abroad programs. We do not coordinate with many of the well-established international programs offered by many other universities that our students should be able to transfer credits with no loss of time to degree.

Currently we have formal MOUs/partnerships with fourteen international universities. Most of these are courtesy arrangements that do not bring students or faculty here or provide study abroad programs for our students and faculty. In many cases the faculty/staff who originated the arrangement are no longer at UAHuntsville.

Action items:

Market all current international programs to our current and prospective students along with our International and Global Studies Programs. The provost should be responsible for monitoring this.

Coordinate and develop coherent semester and junior-year abroad programs and set stretch goals for their success. The provost and deans should be responsible for this.

Establish a goal within Academic Affairs that a specific percentage of our students should have the opportunity to study abroad with no loss of time to degree.

Examine current MOUs, to see if they are effective. Cancel MOUs that have no time limit or allow those that have time limits to expire. New MOUs/partnerships should be established with a clear statement of the goals and mission of the arrangement and with an individual responsible for these goals. Formal partnerships with international universities should have the approval of the provost and the president.

Some faculty members have international partnerships in their research and scholarly activities. These should continue to be encouraged and funding sought through appropriate federal agencies.

Action item:

Gather data on all ongoing international research collaborations. Identify them on our web site so that students can seek out professors as their graduate advisors if they are interested in graduate research abroad. The Vice President for Research should be aware of all such arrangements and monitor them annually to ascertain their progress.