In a report earlier this month to the Board of Trustees, Gilbert Merkx, vice provost for international affairs, concluded that Duke has made significant progress enhancing its global perspective over the past 10 years, but that the International Affairs Committee will come up with a new strategic plan for remaining goals.
The standing committee, headed by Merkx, will respond to six challenges outlined in his report to the Trustees: consolidating Duke's gains, developing a University policy for strategic international partnerships, maximizing fundraising, providing national leadership and adding "international" to both the University's reputation and a Duke education.
"Now that I'm here, two things stick out," said Merkx, who arrived in July 2001 from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, where he was the longtime head of New Mexico's Latin American and Iberian Institute. "One, how well Duke has done at internationalizing itself and two, what an interesting time it is [given so many international issues].... My sense of Duke, coming here from another university, is that already, Duke is way ahead of the curve."
IAC members said the group met last Wednesday and discussed broad ideas about internationalization but have not yet begun the more specific task of strategic planning.
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of the committee's eventual plan will be developing a policy and standards for the University's many strategic partnerships. Such partnerships range across disciplines and include the law school's joint transnational law effort with the University of Geneva, the Divinity School's partnership with John Wesley College's seminary in South Africa for racial reconciliation issues and two recent agreements between the Fuqua School of Business with Peking University and with Seoul National University.
For many IAC members, the key is striking a balance between allowing a climate of innovation among individual departments, while having the resources to know when synergy is possible--such as through a centralized list of international partnerships across the University.
"From the law [school] perspective, I think we've appreciated the ability to come up with and implement our plans for internationalization, but from the law perspective, we'd like to know what's going on in other parts of the University," said Jennifer Maher, assistant dean for international studies at the law school.
Merkx said he hoped at the least, the strategic plan would include a more centralized method to let the University's international players know what else is happening across all disciplines.
"Right now we don't have a study abroad program in Brazil," said Margaret Riley, assistant dean of Trinity College and director of the Office of Study Abroad. "Right now it makes sense for us to be in touch with Fuqua [School of Business] and the med school and the law school... to see, 'what do you have going on in Brazil and are there ways to work within what you're doing?'"
Provost Peter Lange, who served in the early 1990s as the University's first vice provost for international affairs, said many partnerships stem from individual relationships with visiting foreign professors, but that there might be ways to take fuller advantage of existing and future partnerships.
"[When I first took over,] I said Duke was like a huge ocean liner and that it's hard to change," Lange said. "[President Keohane] said, 'No, no, no. It's like a flotilla. You've got to get all the different ships to be moving toward the same direction.'"
Even as the committee progresses toward a balance on how to approach partnerships, Merkx said the University is taking a step forward in providing national leadership, including a conference planned for late January on global issues in higher education.
He added that another top concern will be to improve fundraising--specifically targeting alumni living abroad, foreign students who now live and work in the United States and donors with specific interests in internationalization.
Merkx also hoped that because Duke is now offering financial aid to foreign students, the University would attract not only more students, but those who have a greater variety of backgrounds.
Carlisle Harvard, director of the International House, said her main concern over the next year would be maximizing the experience of foreign students. "They're here to enrich themselves, but also to help us see other ways of looking at problems that we wouldn't think of," she said. "It doesn't make the education for U.S. students international if the students from Turkey spend all their time with other students from Turkey or other international students."
Merkx's report primarily served to update the Trustees on Duke's progress in internationalization.
Ten years ago, Lange outlined a series of goals to enhance Duke's global reach. Since then, Merkx noted that the number of federal-funded international, foreign language and area studies centers has increased from four to eight-the highest in the nation.
"Basically, area studies up to the 1990s used to be conceived by area-bound work. In the 1990s, a new idea emerged, area-based," said Alberto Moreiras, Bass professor of Romance Studies and director of the Center for European Studies. "I think Duke has been a pioneer in area-based [comparative area studies centers]."
Study abroad participation has increased from about 600 to 750 students per year, the proportion of international undergraduates has increased from 1.4 to 4.6 percent and international graduate students have increased from 20 to 32 percent. Likewise, Curriculum 2000 codified a foreign language requirement and a cross-cultural requirement, which Merkx said has made the undergraduate curriculum more internationally-aware.
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