National Collegiate Honors Council

 

Date of this Version

2020

Document Type

Article

Citation

From Internationalizing Honors, ed. Kim Klein and Mary Kay Mulvaney (Lincoln, NE: National Collegiate Honors Council, 2020)

Comments

Copyright © 2020 National Collegiate Honors Council

Abstract

At a time when many universities are interested both in enrollment growth and the prestige of academic selectivity, international student recruitment and honors education emerge as popular strategic initiatives on college campuses. An influx of international students can enhance campus culture, fill enrollment gaps, and increase tuition revenue. Meanwhile, a selective undergraduate honors community serves as an exemplar of scholarship and distinction, which may attract academically talented students to the institution. On the surface, these trends appear unrelated. Lee notes, however, that international students are often motivated by institutional prestige and reputation when deciding to study in the United States (317), which suggests the seemingly parallel conversations on international student recruitment and honors education may intersect after all. This chapter details potential points of intersection to demonstrate ways in which honors programs and colleges can engage international students at home in sustainable and culturally sensitive ways. In the second half of the chapter, I highlight Saint Louis University’s (SLU) International Partnership Program, which emphasizes sustained conversations between honors and international students as part of a credit-bearing opportunity within the SLU Honors Program. I situate the program in the context of other honors internationalization efforts, discuss the challenges and opportunities this program presents, and provide data from inchoate efforts to assess the program’s effects on students’ intercultural competence and sense of global citizenship.

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