HALE International Engagement

Recognizing that we are entering into a world of borderless higher education, where transnational knowledge flows are commonplace and necessary, HALE faculty are actively engaging their students in the pursuit of worldwide education for the purpose of producing the next generation of world class scholars. Whether undertaking international research, sharing expertise with international peers, intentionally diversifying the HALE community with international scholars and students, leading educational experiences for MSU students in diverse international contexts, or serving the needs of educators, administrators, and policy makers worldwide, the HALE faculty is carrying out the call to live up to the world-grant ideal within the land-grant tradition.

Faculty International Engagement

Among the top-ranked higher administration programs in the U.S., few faculties have more international focus and experience than HALE. The HALE teaching team has long inquired into and been vested in the development of higher education around the globe. The international reach of HALE’s faculty is impressive in both depth and breadth. Below is a taste of HALE’s engagement.

Marilyn Amey, Ph.D.
Marilyn Amey has devoted her recent research to the question of international higher education partnerships. Her research has resulted in a joint publication with P. L. Eddy on Leading Strategic Partnerships (forthcoming, 2012). In addition, Dr. Amey also involved with colleagues in Finland in examining evolving systems of higher education and multidisciplinary collaboration across national borders.

Ann Austin, Ph.D.
Dr. Austin is active in several regions of the world. She co-leads with Dr. Matt Wawrzynski the semi-annual HALE Professional Development Experience in South Africa which this past year took ten HALE students for comparative study and interaction with colleagues in the South African higher education system. She also is currently involved with colleagues from the University of Minnesota in a collaborative study on academic work in the United Arab Emirates, from which two papers will be presented at the upcoming ASHE conference. Dr. Austin recently completed her participation in the “Higher Education in Dynamic Asia” project sponsored by the Asian Development Bank. The project analyzed the higher education issues in this important region of the world. Out of the project Dr. Austin also produced a monograph on “Internal Efficiency in Higher Education in Asia.” In July, she presented the keynote address at the Annual Meeting of the Higher Education and Development Association of Australasia (HERDA), entitled “The Changing Professoriate: On the Edge of Peril or Possibility?” While in Australia, she presented talks at the Australian National University in Canberra, The University of Technology in Sydney; and Southern Cross University.

Roger Baldwin, Ph.D.
Long in demand around the world on the topic of faculty development, Dr. Baldwin has most recently been active in university development in Mali and India. Earlier this year he consulted together with the Azim Premji Foundation in Bangalore, India, on the establishment of a new university to prepare a new generation of educational reformers for India.

Brendan Cantwell, Ph.D.
Brendan Cantwell is actively engaged in international research on faculty transnational mobility and the international student experience in U.S. universities. This past summer he shared some of the results of his research with the Consortium for Higher Education Researchers (CHER) in Reykjavik, Iceland.

James Fairweather, Ph.D.
James Fairweather serves on the board of the Higher Education Ph.D. combined program for the Universities of Helsinki and Tampere, Finland. He has recently been guest lecturer at Peking University and Beijing Normal University, China. As Director for the Center of Higher and Adult Education, he has been an advocate of international student policy experience through the Center internship program.

Reitu Mabokela, Ph.D.
Dr. Mabokela has long been active in African higher education. In her new role as coordinator of the HALE program she will have opportunity to bring her international expertise to the task of promoting effective internationalization within the program. Her current interests and commitments include serving as external examiner for the evaluation of the University of Pretoria (South Africa) as well as serving as a faculty mentor for the University of South Africa (UNISA).

Kris Renn, Ph.D.
Although long acknowledged as one of the world’s leading authorities on student affairs, an expertise that took Dr. Renn to China University of Geoscience, Center for the Study of Higher Education, the Harbin Institute of Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Peking University, China, in 2007, to the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy and Tsuda College, Tokyo, Japan, in 2010, as well as Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India, in 2011, it is her emerging work on women’s colleges worldwide that has recently drawn her attention and is attracting the attention of scholars around the globe. On this subject Dr. Renn has done presentations in Kiriri Women’s University of Science and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya. in 2009 and Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi, India earlier this year. Dr. Renn is quickly becoming one of the world’s leading scholars on this subject as well. Combined with her international research interests and distinguished writing and publishing career, we can expect to hear a great deal more from Dr. Renn on this subject in the near future.

Riyad Shahjahan, Ph.D.
HALE’s newest faculty member brings with him a wealth of international experience. His recent interests and publications have focused on the role of international organizations in global higher education policy, equity and social justice in higher education, and the role of anti-/post-colonial theory in higher education.

Matt Wawrzynski, Ph.D.
Dr. Wawrzynski has been co-leader, with Dr. Ann Austin, of the HALE Professional Development Experience in South Africa. Every other summer, in conjunction with Nelson Mandela University, this for credit course takes a small group of HALE students to South Africa for study of higher education in an international comparative context. Students are given opportunity to observe, learn, as well as make presentations to colleagues in South Africa on topics of importance to international higher education today.

The HALE International Student Experience

In an effort to internationalize its classrooms, the HALE program not only sends its students across borders for diverse scholarly and professional experience, it also admits a cadre of high-performing international students into the program in order to enrich the knowledge base, provide a global perspective on higher education issues, give students opportuntity to interact across difference, and to extend the reach of the HALE program around the world. HALE takes pride in its international students and alumni who as representatives of their respective government ministries and international agencies have made and are making important contributions in educational systems around the world. This page documents the foreign student experience.

HALE International Experiences

Convinced of the importance of global knowledge and experience, the College of Education at Michigan State maintains an active international travel program for its graduate students.
Click here for more information.

HALE International Students

The HALE programs actively seeks the participation of students from around the world. The presence of international students in the HALE program enriches the diversity of perspectives and enhances global understanding. Here are just a few of the international students currently studying in HALE.

Name: Mark Chung Kwan Fan
Country of origin: Mauritius
Program and year 2nd year SAA Master’s
Research interests: Intersectionality, international students, queer studies, and critical race theory among others

Name: Leanne Perry
Country of origin: Canada
Program and year: 4th year, HALE PhD
Research interests: research collaborations, department chairs

Name: Trieu Le Country of origin: Viet Nam Program and year: second year HALE MA Research interests: Developing

Name: Stefan Fletcher
Country of origin: England
Program and year: 2nd year HALE PhD
Research interests: The roles, responsibilities and training of Public Research University Presidents & Governance Boards

Name: Ngoc Lan Thi Dang
Country of origin: Viet Nam
Program and year: 6th year HALE Ph.D.
Research interests: Women and leadership in higher education

Name: Clayton McCourt
Country of Origin: Canada
Program and year: 1st year SAA Master’s
Research Interests: Developing

The HALE Cross-border Student Experience

Believing that the future of our educational systems lies in an increasingly interwoven international nexus of institutions and scholars, HALE is strongly committed to preparing its educational professional for the globalized educational world. By integrating classroom learning with broad scholarly and professional cross-border experiences, HALE prepares its students to be fluent in the language and culture of higher education worldwide. HALE offers a range of international opportunities that range from short term study tours, to study abroad programs, to international internships. This page chronicles the wide array of international experiences for HALE students.

Summer 2013 International Travel

This summer, four master and six doctoral students will be joining Dr. Matthew Wawrzynski and Dr. Ann Austin on the Professional Collaborative Experience in South Africa in May 2013. Furthermore, two of the first year doctoral students will be traveling to China to engage with fellow scholars from Southwest University (SWU) in Chongqing, China in May 2013. Finally, two first year doctoral students will travel to Indonesia to explore ways diversity and cultural contexts shape education in present-day Indonesia. This trip will be from May to June.

We look forward to learning about these students’ travels and what they learned from their experiences.

HALE International Travel Opportunities

Comparative and International Approaches to Higher and Adult Education
The Department of Educational Administration is pleased to offer three international study experiences with the support of the Center for Higher and Adult Education. In each experience, students have the opportunity to develop knowledge of comparative approaches to the study of higher education and gain professional experiences in the international context. These international study experiences are offered on alternating summer sessions between England, South Africa, and Finland.

Great Britain and the United States
The University of Plymouth and Michigan State University exchange program provides students with opportunities for comparative study of higher and adult education in Great Britain and the United States. During the exchange program, graduate students from the University of Plymouth spend a week in the summer at MSU. In turn, graduate students from HALE travel to England in the summer on a twelve-day study tour visiting various educational institutions within Southwest England, Oxford, and Cambridge. In preparation for and during the exchange, students engage in face-to-face seminars at MSU, online collaborative study, and self-directed study. In addition, the experiential component involves cultural visits that represent both the tradition and the nature of change within the country.

Finland and the United States: A Comparison of Decentralized and Ministry-Based Higher Education Systems
The purpose of the Finnish experience is to allow graduate students the opportunity to study a ministry-based higher education system which is vastly different from the American higher education system. The ministry-based model is common in many countries throughout the world and is undergoing dramatic changes in the roles of the ministry and the universities. Students learn about the substantial implications of these changes for Finnish universities.

College of Education Fellowships to Enhance Global Understanding
Graduate students in their first three years of doctoral study in any of the College of Education’s doctoral programs, including Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education, may apply for a spot on one of four College sponsored international study tours (currently trips take place in Botswana, China, Cyprus, and Vietnam). The trips immerse students in cultures very different from their own and provide unique opportunities to learn about aspects of the host nation’s educational system including teaching practices and curriculum and policies from teachers and administrators. Students often engage in discussions relevant to their own interests with faculty and graduate students at a partnering university.

Currently the college covers the costs of travel and housing for each qualified, full-time doctoral candidate to participate in one trip. Additional expenses may also be covered. Unlike the other international experiences open to HALE students, the Fellowships to Enhance Global Understanding are not offered for course credit.

International Research by HALE Students

Stacy Clause, Japan
HALE Ph.D.
While working in Japan as an English language instructor, Stacy Clause took up the sport of Japanese archery. This activity formed her interest in adult learning, particularly in the setting of community or sports centers, as opposed to colleges or universities. The larger context of her work is the concept of lifelong learning worldwide, particularly informal and non-formal learning, and how those ideas are represented in practice around the world.

Ngoc Lan Thi Dang, Vietnam
HALE Ph.D.
Ms. Dang was a full-time international relations officer and a part-time English teacher at Can Tho University in the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam for more than twelve years before coming to MSU in the fall of 2007 to pursue her Ph.D. In the summer of 2009, she spent six weeks in the Mekong Delta to do a pilot study on the experiences of women in higher education as they advanced into key leadership positions. She met with fifteen potential participants, two deans, one vice dean, and three directors of support departments at two public universities and one community college. Ms. Dang came back to the Mekong Delta for seven weeks in 2010. This time she developed two comprehensive interview protocols, one for the women leaders and the other for the gatekeepers, the rectors, vice rectors, and top leaders of the Communist Party standing committees at these women’s institutions who played the pivotal role in recommending, reviewing, and appointing these women to their existing leadership positions. By the end of her trip, she had added seven more mid-level women leaders to her research sample, who were deans, vice deans, chairs of specialized departments, directors, and deputy directors of support departments and services centers, and two gatekeepers. The purpose of the interviews was to learn about these women’s career advancement experiences from their own perspectives and the perspectives of their male superiors. Finally, in January 2011, Ms. Dang traveled back to the Mekong Delta to conduct field research for her dissertation.

Cierra Gillison
SAA M.A.
Through an alumni association tour co-sponsored by The Ohio State University, Ms. Gillison traveled to eleven different European countries to explore European higher education. Her research primarily focused on the historical and political foundations shared between American and European higher education, and the campus culture of the London, Austrian, and Switzerland institutions. She delved further into a discussion of the United Kingdom’s admissions process and researched two Cambridge institutions. Ms. Gillison compared European higher education’s learning philosophy alignment with foundational student affairs documents, such as Learning Reconsidered 2 and Good Practices in Student Affairs, to develop recommendations for practice within the European higher education system.

Imam Wahyudi Karimullah, Indonesia
HALE M.A.
Imam Wahyudi Karimullah is currently doing an independent study on the Nature of Graduate Education and the Role of Master’s Theses. His personal experience on observing graduate higher education practice outside the Unites States at an Indonesian postsecondary education institution (the State Islamic University of Malang, Indonesia) has driven him to conduct a study on comparative education. Specifically, why do all M.A. students at UIN Malang have to write a master’s thesis to complete their degree, while at HALE M.A. program, students are not required to do so?

John Mendendorp, China
HALE Ph.D.
In 2011, Mr. Mendendorp spent six weeks conducting pilot interviews at Beijing Normal University in cooperation with the faculty of education. While there he studied scholar recruitment policies implemented by the Chinese government in order to return expatriate Chinese scholars to Chinese institutions. The concept of “brain drain” has been shown negatively to effect the socio-economic development of emerging economies. As studies have shown, higher education is known to be a key factor in economic development. Attracting foreign-trained scholars back to home institutions is, therefore, important. Mr. Mendendorp is currently working on a year-long Fulbright proposal to return to China to further his research at Beijing Normal University and to expand the study to Peking and Tsinghua Universities.

Siti Fazriah Raja Mohamed, Malaysia
HALE Ph.D.
Ms. Raja Mohamed spent the summer in Malaysia developing a baseline study with two objectives: first to understand the Malaysian graduates’ generic skills, and second to construct the literature review of generic skills. She attended three seminars and one National Congress that helped her enhance knowledge and assessment of generic skills and the needs of the nation for a quality graduates. She also conducted interviews with four stakeholders in the process of understanding the concepts of generic skills amongst Malaysian graduates. The interviewees were two officers from both private and public sectors that deal with hiring Malaysian graduates for their organizations, and two well-known professors in curriculum development and assessment of generic skills. Ms. Raja Mohamed also conducted two interviews with officers from the Student Development Department, Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia.

Saadia Panni, Pakistan
HALE Ph.D.
Ms. Panni is exploring the role of student organizations in developing student leadership in the universities of Rawalpindi/Islamabad in Pakistan. She specifically sought to shed light on student involvement in student organizations, unions and committees for their leadership development. For this purpose, the study was aimed at drawing upon the contextual nature of student leadership development in Pakistani universities, and providing insights into role of higher education institutes in Pakistan in developing global student leaders. A mixed-methods research was designed to study how college students develop leadership skills; how student organizations develop leadership skills among students, and what role student organizations play in developing student leadership. Survey method, interviews and observational study were employed on randomly selected administrators, teachers and students, who had an experience of working in student organizations at the university level. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from a sample of eight public and semi-public universities, which will be analyzed in the next summer semester. The results and recommendations will be published to inform the higher education institutions policies and practices for developing student leadership as well as to augment further research in the field to help fill the gaps in Pakistan’s context.

Hoa Pham, Vietnam
HALE Ph.D.
In summer 2010, Ms. Pham spent five weeks in Vietnam to work on the project “The role of administrators in policy making and implementation”. She had an opportunity to work with administrators at different levels, including senior officers at the Ministry of Education and Training, deans of different faculties and departments, and vice-rectors at Nha Trang University and University of Danang. Ms. Pham learned that administrators at department and university levels were more open to discussion about this topic and they were critical about the way to collaborate between the Ministry and universities in making decisions related to regulations and policies and how to implement them. However, people at the Ministry were very sensitive to discussions on the same issues.

Andrea Sell, United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg
SAA M.A.
With the globalization of curriculum, services, students, and faculty, Ms. Sell found the exploration of international university systems and practices paramount to understanding the future of student affairs and the increasingly transient Higher Education sector. She enrolled in Miami University and Bowling Green State University’s collaborative United Kingdom and European Union course for student affairs graduate students offered by faculty members Dr. Judy Rogers and Dr. Michael Coomes. Forty students, representing approximately ten student affairs programs, traveled to England, Belgium, and Luxembourg, with Dr. Rogers and Dr. Coomes visiting local and branch institutions as well as the European Commission. The group met with student services practitioners and their students, administration from the UK’s Universities Colleges Admissions Service, and concluded the three week experience with an international trans-dialogue conference in Luxembourg City. The three week course was an investigation of the differing roles of student affairs/services in the European context. Ms. Sell learned about the common student application system in the UK, the heightened role of students’ unions, the wave of international student enrollment, the experience of domestic/international students abroad, and the tuition/funding changes and their effects in the UK.

Leslie Jo Shelton, Canada
HALE Ph.D.
While living in Canada for two months over the summer, Ms. Shelton had the opportunity to network with leading international higher education scholars while completing an independent study research project and a paper for a workshop held at her host institution. The independent study research project examined how Canadian human rights policies impact campus climate for queer-identified students at a public institution in British Columbia. Ms. Shelton had the opportunity to meet with local stakeholders who work to refine and implement university policy regarding issues of access and equity for students, faculty, and staff. For the second project, she completed a paper that was accepted to a master class in the Liu Institute for Global Issues. This work focused on intersecting marginalized identities and policy impacting campus climate for queer-identified students of color. These experiences were each a piece of a larger puzzle that shed light on the current state of policy as it impacts higher education and campus climate for diverse student populations in an international context.

Pamela Roy, South Africa
HALE Ph.D.
In 2010, Pamela Roy conducted an independent research study at the University of KwaZulu-Natal to examine how one group of historically disadvantaged academic women, Indian South Africans in Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM) fields, defined their identities and experienced success in post-apartheid South African higher education. In-depth, qualitative, individual interviews were conducted with 24 academic women over the course of seven weeks while she lived in Durban, South Africa. Additionally, Ms. Roy had the opportunity to visit several South African universities, engage in informal dialogue with academics, administrators, students, and community members which ultimately increased her knowledge and awareness of local issues, higher education policies and practices, and the socio-cultural-historical-geographical landscape of the nation. Informal conversations with representatives from the National Research Foundation, Human Science Research Council, and South African Women in Science and Engineering Organization also informed her thinking about the research topic. The opportunity significantly influenced scholarly and professional growth as well served as the catalyst for Ms. Roy’s dissertation, which focuses on the career development of academic Women of Color at research-oriented universities in South Africa.

Zachary Tobin, Qatar and North Korea
SAA M.A.
Following Mr. Tobin’s participation in the South Africa collaborative experience with the HALE program he engaged several weeks of independent travel including a tour of the campus of Education City in Doha, Qatar. Mr. Tobin then took part in an educational non-profit delegation trip to North Korea through the Pyongyang Project. Prior to entering North Korea, the delegation (consisting of both graduate and undergraduate students) met with Chinese faculty and students from Peking University to discuss and gain further insight into the geopolitical realities present in northeast Asia. Once in North Korea, the delegation aimed to positively engage with as many North Korean citizens as possible. Mr. Tobin had the chance to visit two universities in North Korea: Kim Il Sung University and Wonsan Agricultural College. During these visits, he was able to further explore the nature of access and quality of higher education by speaking with both staff and students. While rewarding to positively interact with a population who is isolated by their government, the limitations faced in both the scope and nature of questions he could ask was challenging from an academic perspective.

K-12 International Engagement

Dr. Muhammad Khalifa is working with and training principals and school administrators in Somaliland.