Chapter 18:

 Internationalizing The Curriculum

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INTRODUCTION

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SFSU strives to be a model of internationalized education—education which affirms the interdependence of our present global society. The university is aware of the need to prepare students to live, work, and participate responsibly in a multi-boundary, interdependent, technologically complex, and ever-changing world. Students need to understand global issues and their local effects and to be able to communicate effectively with people from different parts of the world. As a result, the university continues to develop and support an international curriculum, taking advantage of the rich resources available on campus (including international students, international faculty, visiting scholars, and study-abroad students) and in the local and the world-wide community to create a positive learning environment that will foster the education of global citizens.

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Faculty are central to the process of internationalizing the curriculum. The courses they teach, the perspectives they share, and the experiences they afford students are all very much related to the task of preparing globally competent students. Faculty commitment to this endeavor was evident in 1992, when the university approved African, Asian, European, and Latin American Area Studies Minors designed to further the internationalization of the curriculum.

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SFSU has long been a campus where faculty have been sympathetic to global issues, where there has been discourse among the campus community on such subjects, where a great deal of ethnic and racial diversity has existed among the student and faculty populations, and where a number of courses that incorporate such themes have been offered by various departments.

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STRATEGIC PLAN RECOMMENDATIONS

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The strategic plan recommended that the university establish the goal that, by the year 2005, all baccalaureate-level candidates will enter the university with proficiency in a second language equivalent to at least two years of high-school level or two semesters of college-level training. A further goal should be that the percentage of San Francisco State students graduating with a higher level of language proficiency would increase significantly over the same period. An additional goal should be that various academic disciplines would, with university support, develop courses taught in languages other than English.

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Additionally, to promote multidisciplinary and self-sustaining international programs, the strategic plan recommended that the university facilitate interdepartmental collaborative efforts and the development of multidisciplinary international programs by, for example, establishing a university-wide international education faculty group; encouraging academic programs to identify faculty to facilitate curricular change at the program level; and considering the development of an interdisciplinary M.A. in Global Education.

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OVERVIEW 1992-2000

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The demographics of the faculty as well as the student body at SFSU have for a long time made the SFSU environment hospitable to global perspectives. Budget constraints have at times limited the university's ability to act on these perspectives. However, as was mentioned above, in the academic year 1991-1992 a coordinated effort among several departments produced a set of area studies minors designed to internationalize the curriculum.

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Since 1992, numerous academic programs have continued to engage in internationalizing the curriculum. To date, over three hundred courses with an international perspective are offered in over forty different programs at the undergraduate and graduate level, some as part of the General Education program.

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International Courses and Curricula offered at SFSU

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For many years SFSU has offered many international courses and programs in the various colleges which are intimately related to international education:

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• The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences is home to the Department of International Relations, whose entire curriculum is devoted to international concerns. Offerings such as the Model United Nations provide students an opportunity to engage in international issues, putting into practical application the material they learn in their courses.

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• In the College of Business, the International Business Department offers undergraduate and graduate concentrations, a minor, and a certificate program in international business.

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• In the College of Creative Arts, the BECA Department offers several courses focused on international communication. The department underwrites the Institute of International Media Communication, which serves as a conduit for faculty and students studying international media communication.

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• The College of Ethnic Studies offers language study in Vietnamese and Yoruba.

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• The College of Education offers credential programs in bilingual education with a focus on Spanish and Cantonese.

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• In the College of Humanities, in addition to the Foreign Languages Department (whose programs are discussed below), there are many courses with a global focus in the Classics Department, the English Department (which offers a master's program in teaching English to speakers of other languages), the World and Comparative Literature Department, and the Women Studies Department.

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• The university offers an interdisciplinary Minor in Global Peace, Human Rights, and Justice Studies. Housed in the College of Humanities, the global peace studies minor draws upon the resources of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute in Berkeley and the SFSU Urban Institute.

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• In the College of Health and Human Services and in the College of Science and Engineering, faculty members often serve as hosts for international researchers and are engaged in curricular development and research projects for international organizations, universities, and governments.

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• Data from the Student Pulse Surveys provide one measure of assessment in our endeavors in internationalizing the curriculum. In both 1998 and 2000, about two thirds (65.3% and 63.9% respectively) of the respondents rated their course work as excellent or good in increasing their understanding of global issues beyond U.S. borders. In 2000, 76.7% of the respondents indicated that they would take a portion of their SFSU academic program in another country if circumstances and resources permitted. Virtually all respondents (98.6%) agreed that they liked learning about issues from the point of view of different cultures.

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Second Language Proficiency

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In the matter of second language proficiency, SFSU is unique because of the city's multi-lingual population. In our university, 51% percent of our students reported that, in growing up, they usually spoke a language other than English (SNAPS, Spring 1999). In the 2000 Student Pulse Survey, 58.9% of respondents indicated that they communicated fluently in a language other than English. About half (49.7%) felt comfortable communicating in a language other than English in social settings and about one fourth (26.9%) felt comfortable doing so in both social and academic or professional settings.

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Over the past twenty years there has been considerable discussion and even some proposals for a second language graduation requirement—often termed an "exit requirement." The first such proposal came in 1982 from the Chancellor's Task Force on Foreign Language Requirement. Between 1984 and 1986, initiatives for a five-unit foreign language requirement, presented informally by the Chancellor's Task Force to the Statewide Academic Senate, were unsuccessful. In April of 1988, the newly-formed CSU Foreign Language Council proposed to the statewide senate an exit requirement in foreign languages. The proposal languished there. At other CSU campuses, such as San Diego State, second language has been a requirement for many years for liberal arts graduates. In the Fall of 1992, Sacramento State established its own second language requirement. Sacramento's experience has shown that, by allowing students to demonstrate their knowledge either by examination or by course work, the cost of the requirement is not exorbitant. More recently, CSU Monterey Bay and CSU San Marcos have also instituted a second language graduation requirement.

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Here at SFSU the matter of a language requirement did not arise again until the CUSP strategic planning process began in 1995. The language recommendation was one of the most extensively discussed topics throughout the entire process. In addition, extensive research and data gathering from other universities was conducted by the CUSP planning group on internationalizing the university. This group made a number of suggestions regarding different ways in which a language requirement could be met. The final strategic plan recommendation did not sit well with some faculty. They believed (and still believe) they had provided detailed information concerning costs and enrollment shifts, based on information from CSU, Sacramento. They also believed that further study of the impact of an exit requirement would not produce useful information and that the next step should be a university commitment to the concept of an exit requirement in a language other than English.

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Today, as in 1992, the Department of Foreign Languages offers a minor, a major, subject preparation for single subject teaching credentials, and the M.A. in seven languages (French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, German, Italian, and Russian), the only department in the CSU system that offers such a strong program. [Please see www.sfsu.edu/~foreign/.] The severe budget crisis that occurred in the early 90s made it necessary to make drastic reductions in course offerings, forcing the elimination of two-semester sequences in Cantonese and Portuguese and imposing tough programmatic choices on all the language programs.

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For example, the Spanish program, which had routinely offered six sections of first-semester sequences of Spanish every semester, chose to shift its faculty to upper-division and graduate courses in order to retain the minor, major, and graduate degree. Beginning Spanish suffered as a result; during the semesters immediately following the cuts, no more than one or two sections were offered each semester. In 1995-96, the program tried an experimental format for Spanish 101, hoping to meet an extraordinary student demand for entry-level courses. All first semester students met together in a large lecture hall, then broke into smaller groups taught by graduate teaching assistants. The results of the experiment were mixed; at best, it saved a modest amount of money but drew complaints from students who found the large class meetings poorly suited to language instruction. The plan was discarded.

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In terms of enrollments in language study, the department has always consisted of both smaller programs (Chinese, German, Italian, and Russian) and larger ones (French, Japanese, and Spanish). This is an arrangement that permits the university to offer a variety of languages and literatures to students not able to afford expensive courses at other institutions. But this balance of small and large has depended and depends still on larger enrollments in lower-division classes in the larger programs, especially Spanish. Thus, this program's inability to accommodate student demand for lower-division Spanish has not only disappointed students who want to learn the state's second language but has also constrained offerings in the department's smaller programs.

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The department hopes that the corner has been turned on this difficult period. Last year it was able to hire four new tenure-track faculty—one in Spanish, two in Chinese, and one in French. This shows a positive move towards strengthening the language curriculum. (See chart at the end of this webpage illustrating the number of student enrollments in various courses of language study from Fall 1989 to Spring 2000.)

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Other than the increase in course sections mentioned above, the university has not moved significantly either in the implementation of the strategic plan recommendation or in the consideration of a second language exit requirement. The plan's recommendation is still, however, on the table for action (see the plans and priorities section below).

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The Fulbright Program

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In 1992, a Fulbright program for faculty studying abroad was managed by the Office of Faculty Affairs. In 1994, a presidential scholarship became available for faculty who received a Fulbright in a non-sabbatical year. This scholarship was intended to make up the difference in pay and signal the university's support for faculty receiving this distinguished award. In 1997, the Office of International Programs assumed responsibility of the Fulbright program at SFSU. The services provided by Faculty Affairs were expanded by OIP. They now include offering a workshop for faculty applying for Fulbrights, reviewing faculty applications as a means of strengthening the proposals, placing ads in campus-wide publications announcing the availability of the awards, and featuring faculty members who had recently participated in Fulbright activities in the International Review, OIP's publication to faculty, staff, and international alumni. Between 1991 and 1999 there were fifteen SFSU faculty members who received Fulbright awards. These professors teach in areas such as anthropology, music, art, English, business, computer science, history, political science, and nursing. Faculty returning to the campus have contributed to internationalizing the curriculum through new courses, lectures, co-curricular colloquia, dialogues, and projects.

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An excellent example showing the contribution of a Fulbright faculty member to internationalizing the curriculum is the global learning project developed by Professor Gary Selnow. Dr. Selnow, a professor of business analysis and computing systems, has created SFSU's Global Learning Center after spending 1997-1998 as a Fulbright professor at Zagreb University in Croatia. This center has brought together students and teachers from the Balkans and from San Francisco focusing on the use of computers and the Internet as tools to reduce isolation, advance civic life, and diffuse ethnic tensions in a long-troubled area of the world. (See CSU, STATELINE, February, 2000, p. 6, or www.calstate.edu/Tier3/PubAffairs/stateline/stateline 16.html.)

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In 1997, OIP sponsored two important events which gave greater visibility to the Fulbright program at SFSU. It hosted the Western Regional Fulbright Workshop sponsored by the Council on the International Exchange of Scholars. Later that year, OIP sponsored a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Fulbright program.

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SFSU is highly supportive of the Fulbright experience and housed [from Fall 1998 to Summer 2000] the presidency of the Fulbright Alumni Association, Northern California Chapter. The university supports the association with funds and staffing, recognizing that the Fulbright opportunity for professional development is an important way of helping faculty acquire new cross-cultural perspectives, and in turn, infuse these perspectives into the curriculum.

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New Initiatives

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Since 1995, most of the initiatives having to do with faculty development with an international focus have occurred subsequent to the restructuring of OIP (see Chapters 16 and 17). All of the initiatives ultimately relate in a very direct way to the internationalization of the curriculum. Initiatives have included:

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• Collaborating with faculty to submit grant proposals for international training and development such as the Presidential Management Training Initiative and the Collaborative Scholar Management Training Project.

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• Collaborating with faculty to secure the Presidential Management Training Initiative grant which started in 1997 and may last five years. This is a grant with the U.S. State Department in which, every year, two to three groups of ten management trainees in business from Russia come to SFSU for a period of five weeks. They are assigned to different field placement internships related to their work in Russia.

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• Establishing a partnership with the SFSU College of Extended Learning and Guangdong Province in China. This is a Collaborative Scholar Management Training Project. Ten scholars from Guangdong who are university and public administrators attend SFSU for a period of twelve months, taking courses and working with mentors who are SFSU professors from different disciplines.

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• Collaborating with faculty and academic departments to establish new international linkages and relationships. These have led, since 1994, to new bilateral exchange programs with the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom (Departments of Cinema and Broadcast Electronic Communications Arts); the University of Pavia, Italy (Department of Foreign Languages); the Aarhus School of Journalism, Denmark (Department of Journalism); the Arnhem School of Business, Netherlands (Department of International Business); the Utrecht School of Journalism, Netherlands (Department of Journalism); and Chung Yuan Chistian University, Taiwan (Department of Design and Industry).

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• Collaborating with faculty and academic departments to revitalize existing exchange relationships, leading, in some cases, to the exchange and visits of faculty for teaching and research; e.g., University of Amsterdam, University of Pavia, Chung Yuan Christian University, Brunel University.

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• Providing grants to faculty for international curricular and program development. These grants support faculty in internationalizing the courses they teach, creating new courses that are internationalized, and developing new international education opportunities for students. Eighteen SFSU faculty members have received $500 each since the inception of this program in Spring 1998.

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• Jointly sponsoring an International Community Service Learning grant with the Office of Community Service Learning (OCSL). This grant supports faculty in creating community service experiences for students and combining these experiences with an academic experience overseas. Each of the eight recipients of the award has received up to $3,000. Funding for the grants comes from OIP, OCSL, and the Provost's Office. [Please see http://thecity.sfsu.edu/~ocsl/internationalcsl.htm.]

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• Cooperating with the All-University Committee on International Programs. This is an Academic Senate committee composed of one representative from each college, one from student services, and the director of international programs. This committee supports and advises the director of OIP on a range of international education issues. Presently the members are focusing on English language programs for international students. They are also helping in making an assessment of the faculty grants awarded by OIP between 1998 and 2000. [Please see www.sfsu.edu/~senate/committees.htm# INTERNATIONALcharge.]

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• Establishing an International Brown Bag Series on campus at which visiting scholars are invited to address international and domestic issues of importance.

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• Publishing the OIP International Review newsletter each academic semester. This 16-page newsletter features international education activity in which SFSU faculty are engaged. It also features international alumni and gives information on funding opportunities in international education. The International Review is distributed to SFSU faculty, staff, and international alumni, as well as to various international educators in the CSU system and around the country.

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• Initiating an orientation program for new faculty regarding international education endeavors, services, and professional development opportunities. Topics include the CSU Overseas Resident Director Program, Senior Fulbright Scholar Program, SFSU Presidential Scholar Grant Program, procedures for the sponsorship of visiting international scholars, and procedures for establishing new bilateral exchange programs and relationships with overseas institutions of higher education. This orientation program, initiated in Fall 1999, was highly successful and has now been integrated into the regular orientation for new faculty which is coordinated by the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching.

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Faculty Initiatives with Other Institutions

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SFSU faculty, departments, and colleges for many years have taken the initiative to start programs with universities in different parts of the world. Currently, the number of academic departments and faculty that are interested in pursuing linkages with colleagues and/or institutions overseas, or exploring new international initiatives as proposed by overseas institutions of higher education, is growing. The university, through OIP, supports these faculty and academic units by assisting with the design and approval of agreements, advising on various matters relating to the implementation of these agreements, and monitoring conditions on an on-going basis. Examples of such initiatives include the aforementioned bilateral exchange programs. Other examples include a community public health initiative in Vietnam, sponsored by the Health Education Department; the annual study tour to Zimbabwe, sponsored by Black Studies; study tours to Cuba, sponsored by Raza Studies; and a special training program for students from Bunkyo University in Japan, offered through Hospitality Management.

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Plans and Priorities for the Future

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The next few years hold some promise for establishing second-language proficiency as one of the competencies expected of all SFSU graduates. A major issue is the convergence of requirements between the CSU and the UC. Beginning in 2003, entrance-level breadth requirements will be identical. A logical next step would be to have the same core graduation requirements. One in foreign languages already exists for UC, and it is a requirement that students can complete without taking a single post-secondary course.

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It would also be appropriate for SFSU to take the lead in revisiting the transfer loophole issue. In 1996, the CSU Foreign Language Council passed a resolution requesting the CSU to require that transfer students from California community colleges meet the same two-year second language requirement as first-time freshmen. Although the CSU Admissions Advisory Committee rejected that request, this is an issue ripe for reconsideration.

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In a letter to CSU presidents dated September 1, 1999, CSU Executive Vice Chancellor David Spence described the establishment of the CSU Strategic Language Initiative (SLI). This initiative has as its goal the expansion of student access to less frequently taught languages such as Russian, Japanese, and Chinese; the promotion of effective second language programs; the sharing of knowledge of technical advances in computer instruction; and the collaboration with other institutions to link technology with language teaching.

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San Francisco State's Foreign Languages Department is in position to benefit greatly from the CSU's attention to the proposed SLI. SFSU participates in a "Partnership for Excellence" program with City College of San Francisco, which allows M.A. students to receive training to teach second languages in community colleges. In addition, an outreach program to develop a pilot articulation project for second languages is now being developed in which teacher credential candidates in second languages will work with local public schools. The department is also working with colleague departments in the CSU to develop ways for CSU campuses to share resources in order to maintain language programs and encourage more second language study, particularly for some of the lesser-taught languages or any languages which are in danger of being eliminated from the system due to low enrollments.

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Another project in second language education is being developed by the chair of the Foreign Languages Department and the university's K–12 educational outreach coordinator. They have developed a working group on articulation for foreign languages, with teachers participating from a middle school and a high school in Daly City, as well as from City College of San Francisco and our campus. The group has been meeting once a month to discuss ways in which it can better articulate the language programs among the different levels so that the students will be able to move ahead in their language studies as they progress from middle school to high school to community college to university. Group members have compared courses, learning outcomes, and final examinations to determine better placement among the levels, and are now looking at ways to encourage students from high schools to continue with their language study at the university.

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An OIP collaboration with the College of Business and with a Japanese entity, the Nevada-California International Consortium of Universities and Colleges (NIC), is slated to result in the offering of the college’s MBA program in Japan. The program, to begin in May 2001, will offer classes on weekends via two-way audio-video, allowing professors and students to interact in real time between San Francisco and Tokyo. In addition, faculty members from SFSU and other CSU campuses will go to Japan to offer on-site classes for some of the courses.

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Regarding the strategic plan recommendation that the university consider developing an M.A. in Global Education, up to the present time not much has been done to deal with this recommendation. It has been suggested that a university-wide committee be established to study the feasibility/desirability of such a degree. Currently, there is an undergraduate interdisciplinary Minor in Global Peace, Human Rights, and Justice Studies. A number of faculty and students involved in this minor have expressed interest in the development of the M.A. degree. In addition, there are many courses taught in the various colleges that are related to global issues and concerns. Movement toward a master's degree would be a logical next step, with OIP taking the leadership role in coordinating this and other cross-campus efforts to internationalize the curriculum. Additionally, OIP should serve as a clearinghouse of information and continue to provide assistance to the faculty and academic departments in establishing new international relationships and international exchange programs, as well as in monitoring the existing ones.

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OIP should also serve as the central point for new curricular projects, such as the establishment of joint academic programs with other institutions domestically and internationally. For example, OIP should bring together a working committee of faculty currently teaching and doing research in the field of globalization. OIP should continue and expand its function as the center for study abroad efforts; for recruiting, advising, and counseling of international students; and as the link between international students residing on campus with students and faculty who have interests in international issues.

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Number of student enrollments in various courses of language study from Fall 1989 to Spring 2000

COURSE

FALL 1989

SP 1990

FALL 1990

SP 1991

FALL 1991

SP 1992

FALL 1992

SP 1993

FALL 1993

SP 1994

FALL 1994

SP 1995

FALL 1995

SP 1996

FALL 1996

SP 1997

FALL 1997

SP 1998

FALL 1998

SP 1999

FALL 1999

SP 2000

Chinese

234

250

258

272

302

309

286

255

240

251

283

335

333

339

329

284

250

288

248

241

233

246

Filipino

-

-

-

30

24

27

33

16

31

18

32

13

34

19

32

32

33

25

38

22

32

19

French

481

505

508

406

442

398

360

385

307

315

311

288

291

261

336

312

279

232

258

265

228

177

German

207

220

210

194

178

184

183

168

145

161

135

129

124

170

151

152

148

137

121

129

89

112

Italian

160

166

178

187

154

160

155

148

132

133

126

119

126

142

143

155

143

157

158

159

147

168

Japanese

332

421

403

419

391

386

385

376

404

371

386

422

449

410

401

382

391

342

346

413

356

397

Russian

132

156

139

118

148

155

113

105

105

99

116

99

101

91

103

83

77

94

71

86

71

58

Spanish

531

596

558

600

492

520

490

451

361

352

359

388

394

363

367

383

402

503

360

421

355

437

TOTAL

2,077

2,314

2,254

2,226

2,131

2,139

2,005

1,904

1,725

1,700

1,748

1,793

1,852

1,795

1,862

1,783

1,723

1,778

1,600

1,736

1,511

1,614

% CHANGE

100.0%

111.4%

108.5%

107.2%

102.6%

103.0%

96.5%

91.7%

83.1%

81.8%

84.2%

86.3%

89.2%

86.4%

89.6%

85.8%

83.0%

85.6%

77.0%

83.6%

72.7%

77.7%