University initiatives melt borders with Brazil

Prodding for an exact definition of the elusive term ‘internationalisation’ triggered hearty chuckles from a range of educators gathered to provide a report card on recent United States-Brazil higher education initiatives, at the Institute of International Education in New York.

Educators outlined growing partnerships, from bolstering language courses to faculty exchanges, during a lively roundtable held on the eve of this month’s Conference on Best Practices in Internationalising the Campus.

The jocularity ended when the nuts and bolts efforts of a handful of universities, hammering through plans in progress, revealed a growing number of footprints on campuses north and south of the Caribbean Sea.

Brazil’s new US$1.7 billion Science Without Borders programme was launched this semester with the arrival in the United States of the first 600 of about 100,000 Brazilians who will be funded to study abroad.

Half are destined for America, where 104 colleges and universities have already vied to participate over the next four years.

Under the initiative, Brazilian undergraduate students – especially in science, technology, engineering and mathematics – will receive scholarships for one year of study abroad, according to the Institute of International Education. The students will return to Brazil to complete their degrees.

Training people abroad was one important a way of building capacity, explained panellist Denise Neddermeyer, of the Brazilian Ministry of Education’s Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education, CAPES.

The country’s exponential growth in research, production and trade, not to mention advancement of equal rights, could firmly rest on the government’s sharp focus in the last decades on education.

However, besides paperwork, some barriers stretched beyond international borders. Indeed, internationalisation was a challenge in both countries, some panellists said.

“To ‘internationalise’ means changing culture from within, not just sending students out,” said Neddermeyer, adding that the concept was difficult in Brazil, where learning English was a challenge.

Strongly agreeing was Joanna Regulska, vice-president for international and global affairs at Rutgers at the State University of New Jersey. Part of Rutgers’ efforts to move partnerships with Brazilian universities forward included offering intensive Portuguese languages classes and translating English websites to better serve Brazilian students.

“We want to move internationalisation beyond the linchpin of student mobility,” said Erich Dietrich, assistant dean for global and academic affairs for New York University (NYU).

“We want to take it beyond Americans studying in a place, to a place of deep engagement. At NYU, there is evolving recognition that the best education we can give to our students won’t happen in one city.”

NYU has signed on to the Science Without Borders programme and is examining plans to open an academic centre in Brazil.

Among the accomplishments sought by the Illinois Institute of Technology was offering exchange students the school’s philosophy, said Jerry Doyle, vice provost for student, access, success and diversity initiatives.

Attendees peppered panellists with questions, with many reporting on how their institutions were handling Brazilian students who had arrived on their campuses under Science Without Borders.

Neddermeyer summed up the sentiment about internationalising American and Brazilian campuses, and giving students a chance not only to study but to live and possibly do an internship or work abroad through these new initiatives.

“It is brilliant,” she said. “These young people have a chance to change what’s going on. Brazil has a huge responsibility in determining what this new generation will be talking about in the future.”