Strategic Planning: Advancing International Studies

Advancing International Studies: Strategic Plan

II. Assessment

We have a historic opportunity and mission to raise the international profile of Notre Dame. Do we have in place the edifice to build the world's leading Catholic University? There are no easy measures of excellence in international studies. A frank assessment of our current standing would paint a mixed picture. On the one hand, we have made great progress in these last ten years in internationalizing the university. We have added several new study abroad programs, and today, no major research university sends a larger percentage of its students to study abroad than Notre Dame. Two of these programs - in London and Dublin - are now based in Notre Dame-owned buildings, thus adding a visible, physical extension of the Notre Dame campus abroad. We have raised the number of international undergraduate and graduate students. We have also created two major European research institutes and raised the endowment of our existing International Studies institutes, which in turn have permitted the expansion of our teaching and research capacity in international affairs. It is hard to overstate the strategic advantage that the generous endowments of these institutes provides us vis-à-vis many of our peer institutions in recruiting distinguished faculty, students, and visitors. These institutes, which have become flagships for the university as a whole, have raised Notre Dame's research profile, and made contributions to understanding problems of great importance to contemporary humanity. The Development Office, moreover, has increased its international contacts, and particularly through the international trips of Fr. Malloy and others, the image of Notre Dame abroad has been enhanced. Finally, as the world's leading Catholic University, we are poised to draw upon the connections that form part of a dense international network organized by the Roman Catholic Church.

But we also have far to go. We are a relatively small private university, without a particular advantage or reputation in technology, the natural sciences, and other areas that might attract foreign students. Other weaknesses diminish our ability to capture federal and private grants. Apart from our colleges of law and business, we have few professional schools. With the exception of the master's programs offered by the Kroc Institute and the Center for Civil and Human Rights, we offer no graduate certificates in international studies. We do not have significant resources for international research in the humanities. We have few Ph.D. programs in international history, and no graduate degrees in Anthropology (a discipline still focused on international and area studies). Moreover, our foreign language enrollments are not robust, and we offer only eleven modern languages plus ancient Classics (by contrast, Harvard University offers 60). Finally, for a faculty of our size, we have relatively few members who work on international issues, especially outside of Europe and Latin America, and in particular, we have little strength in Asian, African, and Middle-Eastern Studies.

Perhaps most disturbing is a sense that even the sanguine developments and advances in international studies in the past ten years have been ad hoc and uncoordinated, and as a result, the vast potential of the university in this area has hardly begun to be fully tapped. Our aspirations, our vision, our mission, and our present advantages as a Catholic university strongly suggest that we should remain focused on an ambitious plan, in spite of the challenges posed by the immediate constraints of our present situation. Accordingly, we strongly advocate that the development of international studies be designated a top priority in university planning over the next decade, with the ultimate goal being the emergence of Notre Dame as one of the world's leading centers of international research and teaching in selected areas related to the broader mission of the University.

We envision internationalization as a theme, focus and, where appropriate, an organizing principle cutting across several departments and units. It is less accurate, from our perspective, to view internationalization as a priority that competes directly with other critical needs of space, infrastructure, or the building of premier science and engineering departments and professional schools. As an organizing principle internationalization provides an overarching framework within which top-notch academic departments and world class research institutes combine forces to achieve academic excellence.

In order to achieve this ambitious goal, we must proceed in a deliberate and coordinated manner. Strategic investments in faculty, research, and program development on the Notre Dame campus would deepen and consolidate the gains of the past decade.

Since the achievement or further deepening of academic excellence will not occur overnight, we propose that the next five years be devoted to the steady growth of the academic foundations needed to meet our longer-term goals. Our strategies for this five-year period are detailed below. They include the further internationalization of the student body, strategic new faculty appointments (moderate in number but decisive in impact), the development of instruction and training in foreign language study, and the continuing improvement of the academic content of our international studies programs.

We also believe that internationalization requires a more ambitious response than the ad hoc, if sanguine, recent advances in international studies. It is time that the university work toward a coordinated and coherent strategy that will bring together our faculty and research strengths, the broad reach of our international programs, our efforts at recruiting international students for our undergraduate and graduate programs, and our international development and public relations efforts. First, the University Committee on International Studies, mandated by the Academic Articles (Article IV, Section 3.h), should play a role in this coordination. Second, the Directors of our International Institutes with the Assistant Provost for International Studies constitute a very important group which should contribute to an integrated international strategy. Finally, we should seek an appropriate vehicle for coordination among the offices of the Associate Provost for International Studies, the Vice President for University Relations, the Assistant Provost for Admissions and others who play a role in international initiatives.

During the first five years of this plan, we must continue to plan for ways in which the university will take its place as a leader in research in the increasingly globalized world of the twenty-first century. In the second five years of this plan, we would expect to sustain the momentum toward internationalization in ways even bolder and more ambitious than can be easily imagined today.

Strategies & Plans