Global Competence Task Force Report

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Global Competence Task Force Report

Presented to Provost Patrick Farrellby the members of the Global Competence Task Force

August 2008


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The Charge:

Develop a working definition of global competence for UWMadison graduatesDefine appropriate global learning outcomes including any suggested core

competencies for all students

Review learning opportunities available to meet global competence goals andrecommend new areas for developmentIdentify methods of assessmentExplore models for a certification process, such as through portfoliosIdentify any barriers that need to be addressed to accomplish the desired results

Task Force Members:

Marianne Bird Bear, Division of International StudiesWei Dong, Environment, Textiles and Design

Randall Dunham, School of Business (Chair)Rebecca Gilsdorf, undergraduate engineering studentRob Howell, International Academic ProgramsLeslie Kohlberg, L&S/School of Human Ecology Career ServicesTura Patterson, Division of International StudiesMary Regel, Department of CommerceBrett Schilke, undergraduate psychology studentKenneth Shapiro, International Agricultural ProgramsEdwin Sibert, ChemistryAmy Stambach, Educational Policy StudiesJolanda Vanderwal Taylor, GermanGilles Bousquet (ex-officio), Division of International Studies

Summary of Recommendations:

Create a campus-wide student portfolio program to demonstrate, certify, and assessglobal proficiency. A pilot project will begin in fall 2008.Remove barriers for students to study abroad and learn world languages.Provide incentives and recognition to faculty and staff who participate in international

teaching, research, learning, and outreach. Increase faculty and staff involvement ininternationalizing the campus.Align defined global learning outcomes to campus-wide liberal education goals (LEAP).Recommend or require that schools & colleges strategic plans include the importance

of developing citizens and leaders who can solve global problems in the context of their disciplines. Core components of global competence should be adapted by eachdiscipline.Engage and integrate international students on campus.

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Todays great challenges facing society span all fieldsbut they share one characteristic:they are global in scope and require a collaborative response from groups or nations. In order to educate the generation of students who will face the challenges of the 21 st century,universities need to provide students with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes to workeffectively in our increasingly interdependent world. Foremost amongst these globalcompetencies are the abilities to communicate effectively across linguistic and cultural

boundaries, to see and understand the world from a perspective other than ones own, and tounderstand and appreciate the diversity of societies and cultures. Students need to appreciatethe interdependence of nations in a global economy and to know how to adapt their work to avariety of cultures.

What is the universitys role in developing students with these global competencies? Giventhe inherent complexities and breadth of the issues involved, we must recognize thatdeveloping global competency is a life-long process. The universitys role is to makestudents aware that all disciplines have international or cross-cultural implications, andto train them to recognize when they need global or cultural skill sets in order toaddress a given problem. College courses should highlight the global context of all

disciplines and the cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural skills that might be associated withthem.

Training in global competency must become part of the culture of the university, a strategic priority. Naturally, each area of specialization will view global competencies from its ownunique perspective. Units should be encouraged and/or required to develop strategic plansthat include developing citizens and leaders who can solve global problems within thecontext of their disciplines. The university must also establish a central plan wherebygraduating students can demonstrate and showcase the global skills they have acquiredthroughout their academic careers.

Opportunities & New Areas for Development

UWMadison offers a wide variety of undergraduate academic and co-curricular programsand activities that teach students about diverse cultures and global perspectives. Acomprehensive inventory of these opportunities is provided (Appendix A).

Students may encounter one or many of the following types of global-learning opportunities:

Academic majors Certificates in global subjects Language courses Study abroad programs

Work, service learning, fieldwork, and volunteer abroad programs Learning communities Scholar programs Student organizations Co-curricular activities

Study abroad and academic plans (majors and certificates) are the largest contributorsin both scale and impactto global competence. Increasing global learning opportunities is nota matter of increasing the number or types of programs, but entails making these

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opportunities more accessible to more students. Increasing awareness of these internationalopportunities among students, parents, faculty, and staff is critical. Far too few members of the campus community take advantage of the plethora of global learning experiences offered

by UWMadison, both on campus and overseas.

A second invaluable resource for domestic international experiences is UWMadisonsinternational student population. Approximately 4,000 international students from more than100 countries study at UWMadison each year. They bring diverse cultures and perspectivesto our campus but are, unfortunately, often marginalized from the domestic student

population. We recommend a campus initiative to better engage and integrate internationalstudents on campus.

Current data shows that seventeen percent of UWMadison students will have studied abroad before they graduate. While this percentage has grown consistently over the years and iscomparable to or better than our peer institutions, we propose a campuswide effort toincrease participation in study abroad programs. This effort must remove the financial,academic, and perceptual barriers to study abroad. First, a large-scale funding campaign is

essential if we are to provide scholarships to students who would otherwise be unable tostudy abroad. Second, curricular adjustments may be inescapable in order to facilitate studyabroad in some academic programs. Third, specialized marketing that targets students beforethey participate in SOAR is critically important to encourage students who might otherwiseassume they are unable to study abroad; early commitment to and planning for study abroadremoves many of the road blocks that can make studying abroad a difficult decision, process,or experience.

In addition to increasing the number of students who participate in study abroad programs,we recommend increasing the number of opportunities for international internships andoverseas employment. To succeed in a global marketplace, it is no longer enough for students to live and study overseas. Graduates must have the skills, knowledge, and attitudesthat will allow them to navigate in work environments that contend with globalization,outsourcing, and emerging technologies. Graduates with these skills will help the State of Wisconsin thrive in these changing times.

Because global expertise hinges on acquiring languages other than English, UWMadisonmust maintain its tradition of excellence and breadth in language instruction. Strengtheningour students competence in languages does not require layering additional requirements ontoexisting programs. Instead we recommend that the university remove barriers to languagestudy and provide incentives for students to attain advanced levels of proficiency in one or,

preferably, multiple languages. What is more, we need to think creatively about the waylanguage instruction is delivered and about how language learning will look in the next

century.

We recommend that the university reexamine the traditional model of language courses.Reorganizing instructional times and/or introducing different types of instruction might

provide greater access to language instruction to a broader range of students. We see potential for increasing access to language study by combining traditional languageinstruction with short-term immersion programs, which could take place on the Madisoncampus, abroad, or with online instruction. In all these formats, emerging technologies

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promise new ways of enabling a wide variety of linguistic interaction. New technologies also provide students with culturally appropriate, pragmatic use of languages.

Although the universitys entrance requirements and certain language requirements like thatin the College of Letters and Science acknowledge the importance of language study, morecould be done to allow students to integrate language study into undergraduate and graduate

programs. The fact that language courses are not recognized either as humanities or socialscience credits in the universitys breadth requirement contradicts the universitys mission of internationalization. Additionally, even when a college requires language study, thatrequirement presently can be waived if a pre-established number of years of language studyhave been completed at the high school level.

To increase language acquisition in our students, the task force recommends that:

1) Up to two semesters of language study be recognized as humanities or social sciencecredits in undergraduate breadth requirements

2) At least one semester of language study be completed at the university level, regardless of the number of language courses taken in high school

We also believe that students should have the opportunity to certify proficiency in languagesstudied. This certification would then be part of students portfolios that demonstrate globalcompetence.

Every UWMadison school, college, and division has active faculty, staff, and graduate andundergraduate students who gain and contribute to international and global experiencesthrough education, research, and service, and through formal and informal instruction, social,and organizational activities. However, we have learned that faculty and staff areincreasingly anxious to contribute to and even lead further internationalization efforts.Increasing the number of campus internationalization champions can occur only withincentives or rewards as well as removal of barriers. In a 2005 survey (Appendix B),seventy-five percent of CALS faculty said that international collaboration was important totheir work, and eighty-one percent said they would like to do more international researchunder the right circumstances. When asked to suggest potential incentives, faculty cited thefollowing:

1) Funding for travel, pilot projects, tuition waivers, conferences, etc., as well as collegialcoverage or release time

2) Administrative support for international scholarship and activities, for example support in

identifying funding sources, visas, logistics, Homeland Security issues, and so forth

3) Giving international activities professional recognition in merit and promotion reviews

Addressing these suggestions and recognizing facultys important contributions to theinternationalization of our campus will increase the number of champions and will result inincreased international activity.

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Increased efforts in internationalization, in turn, promise benefits to the campus as a whole.An optimally internationalized campus attracts a more diverse and talented student body andfaculty base. It also ensures UWMadisons status in international academic rankings such asthe Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which are increasingly noted (presently, Madison ranksseventeenth among research universities worldwide). Of course, educating a globallycompetent pool of graduates also ensures that UWMadison fulfills its commitment toengage in and shape world affairs.

Global Learning Outcomes

Several groups at UWMadison have adopted the essential learning outcomes developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) as a conceptualframework to improve communication about the goals and outcomes of higher education.The LEAP (Liberal Education and Americas Promise: Excellence for Everyone as a NationGoes to College) initiative recognizes liberal education for the 21 st century as acomprehensive set of aims and outcomes that are essential for all students because they areimportant to all disciplines. These aims and outcomes are grouped into four categories: 1.

Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World; 2. Intellectual andPractical Skills; 3. Personal and Social Responsibility; and 4. Integrative Learning.Important tenets of this approach are also that higher education needs to help students

become intentional learners and that it needs to prepare them to be lifelong learners.

The core components of global competence may be viewed as a reformulation of theessential learning outcomes as they apply to global competence. They, in turn, find more-detailed characterization in the attached grid (Appendix C) which shows that/howindividual global competence-related learning outcomes extend along several dimensions: thecognitive , the skills , and the affective dimension. The document also indicates somedevelopmental learning experiences; as units identify the global competence learningoutcomes that they wish to adopt, it will be important to match to these appropriate kinds of assessment.

There is an emergent, powerful understanding on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Appendix D) that learning takes place not just in the traditional classroom butthrough a range of experiences which include such high-impact and integrative experiencesas study abroad, internships abroad, service-learning, student activism, participation inlearning communities and small group experiences. As we encourage students to beintentional learners, it is appropriate to create a space in which learning outcomes gleanedfrom a range of experiences may be recognized, evaluated and captured. As we seek todocument and assess student achievement in global competence we are aware that certainelements of global competence require not just knowledge and skill, but also the kind of

personal development that results from integrative learning experiences. Thus, it is importantto create and recognize not just opportunities for learning experiences appropriate to suchoutcomes, but to create a space for intentionality and reflection, and to offer appropriateopportunities for documenting them.

In the most recent employer surveys reported by AAC&U (Appendix E), business leadersurge colleges and universities to place strong(er) emphasis on certain learning outcomesassociated with global competence. The findings also reveal the clear support of businessleaders for more qualitative forms of assessment and rejection of multiple-choice testing at

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the undergraduate level. Both these points are consistent with the recommendations found inthis report.

Portfolio Program

The UW System Growth Agenda Action Steps calls for the development of a StudentEngagement Portfolio:

2. Create the UW Dual TranscriptThe UW Systems commitment to student success will be evidenced not only in thecontent of classroom instruction and the traditional academic transcript, but also in anew UW personal development transcript that captures the out-of-classroom learningthat is such an important part of student development on all our campuses.

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents April 11 meeting minutesreflect the commitment of the System to move forward with this initiative and revisedthe language to incorporate the term portfolio.

(Associate Vice President Rebecca) Martin announced that she and Reilly wouldsoon appoint a task force to explore models and propose pilot projects for the StudentEngagement Portfolio, an initiative formally known as the UW Dual Transcript. Thetask force would supplement the plans underway or in place at UW-Green Bay, UW-La Crosse, UWMadison, and UW-Platteville.

Consistent with this call for action, the task force recommends the creation andimplementation of a two-part student portfolio program designed to document and certify theachievement of global competencies. This portfolio provides each unit with the essential toolto certify students with its own standards of global competence.

Both sections of the portfolio will be certified. UWMadison will certify part one, whichlists the activities, courses, and experiences completed by the student. The unit will certify

part two, which consists of the documentation of how the competencies are achieved. Thissecond part will include students reflections on coursework and study abroad, papers, blogs,

podcasts, presentations, etc.

Implementing a global competence portfolio program involves running a pilot program on alimited basis. Following a successful pilot program, implementation would also require a full

program proposal specifying all the human resources, materials, facilities, and organizationalarrangements needed to launch a program. We believe that many of these resources arealready available on the UWMadison campus. It is our hope that the portfolio be required

for all UWMadison undergraduates but that individual units have the authority to determinethe standards and the process.

Employer Feedback on Global Competence

"...companies need a much more sophisticated approach to choosing themanagers or management teams to lead their global operations thestakes are just too high to be so culturally unaligned. Success today

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depends on the awareness, understanding, and ability to navigate variouscustoms and cultural differences, economic and political climates, work force conditions and expectations, unions and laws, customers, andcompetitionin essence, a global mindset."

This excerpt, from a fall 2007 article in Thunderbird Magazine titled, Is a Global Mindset inYour DNA? (Appendix F) is particularly relevant to our research about industry's needs andexpectations as well as the "risk" of "doing nothing."

Our process addressed the value to industry of hiring globally competent employees througha survey questionnaire (Appendix G) and informal interviews with global companies both

based in Wisconsin and internationally . The responses were generally strongly supportive of the need for globally competent employees, however, there was some question as to whether this could be verified and accomplished through a university education alone.

According to a recent National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) survey,employers pointed out that they hire for core skill sets including integrity, teamwork,

communications, work ethic, interpersonal skills, analytical skills, motivation, andflexibility/adaptability. They also specified work-related skills that would typically beacquired through on-the-job training and experience.

These core skill sets included the ability to think critically and to analyze and synthesize vastamounts of information. Other qualities included intercultural communication skills and anability to listen and effectively engage others. Most employers responded that this type of experience and these attitudes can only be developed through firsthand experience interactingwith people and organizations of diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Language training,study abroad, and intercultural education can effectively enhance these qualities beforestudents enter the workforce.

The university can contribute to these core learning outcomes by removing barriers tointernational experience, by increasing awareness of international education opportunities,and by encouraging a process of life-long, practical, and experiential learning.

Additionally, the competitive issues inherent in a global economy raise the question: whatis the risk if we do nothing? We could be left behind and become irrelevant as a university,a state, and nation if we do not take a proactive approach to developing global talent. This

point was highlighted in a recent UWMadison report on Global Talent (Appendix H) thatidentified a general pattern in the fields most closely associated with a rising demand for global talent. These fields included various forms of engineering, information technology,chemistry and biology, and management. With economic trends reflecting a dramatic rise in

the amount of human capital in countries outside of the U.S., many countries are devotingconsiderable resources to developing their knowledge economies and global talent base.

The report illustrates that outsourcing continues to be an effective means for internationalcompanies to access the highest quality and widest range of global talent:

outsourcing is, in fact, significantly more expensive than bringing the workers here; but corporations eager to access the widest possible pool of talentskill is valued far

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more highly than location or nationality are willing to make the financial decisionsneeded to remain globally competitive.

The report further emphasizes:

The European Union, China, and India have all gained significant ground on theU.S. in recent years by embracing the international aspects of business and nurturingeducation and innovation as the foundation for scientific, technical, and personaladvancement. Increasing the participation of women in these fieldswomen areviewed by many in international business as vastly underrepresented; and as thegreatest untapped human resource in the global economyhas also been a priorityfor many national programs.

A conference sponsored by the Levin Institute, The Evolving Global Talent Pool, held in New York in 2005, identified five key areas of interest for institutions operating on a globalscale:

1. Supply of global talent : which areas of the world are producing global talent,and how

2. Demand for global talent : what entities (governments, business, etc.) arelooking and what skills are most valued

3. Role of government : how educational and management priorities are set andenforced

4. Building a global organizational structure: horizontal organization across political and cultural lines

5. Managing the dislocations and marginalizations in wages and lifestyle thathave only grown wider

Clearly, the role of a global university is impacted by many of these issues as industrysexpectations will continue to focus on the quality and availability of global talent.

Potential Challenges & Suggested Solutions

The task force has identified broad areas of challenges, listed below. It has also set forth potential ways to surmount these hurdles. Each of these challenges and solutions is linked tothe others: perception of value among state legislators, for example, directly impacts our ability to meet costs; meeting costs allows us to establish a solid infrastructure in support of international research and education, and so on.

Perception of value

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, university and government leaders and the citizens of Wisconsin are more aware than ever before about the need for an increased globalorientation.

In fact, recent federal legislation, such as the Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad FoundationAct and the U.S. Department of States 2006 National Security Language Initiative illustrate

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the extent to which national support for augmenting the global competence of Americancitizens is gaining momentum.

Our task is to connect this national movement to the state level. Through positive media andoutreach campaigns we can illustrate to Wisconsin residents the need for global talent andunderstanding. In turn , state legislators will support the perspectives of their constituents.Conversely, forging relationships with supporters in state government who recognize UW Madison as a resource when it comes to executing trade missions, developing a globallycompetent workforce, and researching ways to adapt to an increasingly interdependent worldcan do much to convince those in their districts of this need.

Our sense is that faculty and staff across campus are generally receptive to institutional andcurricular changes that will better prepare our graduates for a changing world. Providingthem with the incentives, solutions, and support to execute these changes would besufficiently persuasive.

Student motivation

From the humanities to the professional schools, UWMadisons students understand theneed for increased global competence upon graduation. Incoming student surveys indicatethey are hungry for international experience, education, exposure, and expertise.

Students who are enrolled in tightly organized majors such as engineering may believe thatadding international coursework and/or experiences to their academic program will delay

progress towards completion of their degree . However, an expanded menu of opportunities removes this perceived barrier to study abroad and provides students with the global trainingthey desire without sacrificing the structured degree programs that they need.

Cost

Study abroad programs such as those offered through International Academic Programs(IAP) operate on a cost recovery basis, which is in effect revenue-neutral for both theuniversity and student participants.

We are fortunate to have a vast and sophisticated body of alumni who easily grasp theimportance of todays graduates to gain international experience. Recent gifts through theUW Foundation and WAA reveal that alumni and corporate sponsors are compelled tocontribute to scholarships and other funds that directly impact a students internationaleducation. Examples of recent gifts include Chicago Alumni Association Chapter studyabroad donation and Promegas international internship funds.

Infrastructure

Enhancing our students global competency is not only a matter of cost, however.Reorganizing how we administer international opportunities will result in a leaner, moreefficient operation overall. For example, collaborating with those in career services canrelieve much of the administrative burdens on staff and faculty who presently runinternational service learning and academic internship programs. Among faculty and staff,reward systems such as a high-profile award for exemplary service to international

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education can create an effective momentum with a relatively small investment. Recognizingfacultys important international work in faculty review processes ( tenure evaluation , post-tenure review, and merit review) will motivate faculty to become increasingly invested inenhancing the global competence of their students. Implementing change on an institutionallevel is challenging. Showcasing and supporting central administrations commitment tointernational education and research, as illustrated in its new strategic plan, is essential for this process to succeed.

Conclusion

All of our graduates need the global skills, attitudes, and knowledge essential to succeedingin an increasingly interconnected world. As a great global public research university, UW Madison is uniquely positioned to address the complexities that accompany this phase of globalization and is equipped to provide the essential components required to developglobally competent students. We have the motivation and the capability to increase

participation in study abroad, to implement new programs that document studentachievement, and to adjust curriculum and infrastructure so that our students, faculty, and

staff can serve as global citizens and leaders in the 21st

century. Achieving this vision callsfor commitment from the leaders of our campus, strategic action from an engaged anddiverse campus community, and the endorsement and recognition of value from the State of Wisconsin.


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Global Competence Task Force Report

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