Do Community Colleges Need to be More Global?

Plesae scroll down to your SCUP Link, below this notice about SCUP–45.

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

Lots of community college news this week, as the annual gathering of the American Association of Community Colleges(AACC) takes place in Seattle. Note that The Chronicle of Higher Education is doing large-scale reporting from the conference, although most of the reports require subscription or a pass.

One area of special interest is the issue of whether or not community colleges are doing enough for their students, to prepare them for the global marketplace. David Molz of Inside Higher Ed reviews some of what he learned in this area. As well, this slide show by Natalie J. Harder of Patrick Henry Community College (VA) displays the results of a large survey she conducted about community college internationalization efforts. From Molz's report:

A 2006 American Council on Education survey on internationalization in higher education – examining whether institutions offered programs like study abroad or courses with a global focus and other variables – gave community colleges a low score of 0.68 on a 4.0 scale. Harder discovered that when the individual institutions are broken out, rural community colleges fare considerably worse than suburban and urban community colleges. She also found that institutional support from the administration, in terms of both dollars and decision making, was the largest predictor of internationalization of the curriculum.

Harder has been slow to win support for her ideas on her own campus. She explained that faculty and some administrators cannot always see the benefit of making such changes.

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tempe, AZ - Step II and Step III