Effective Practices for Academic Leaders: Intercultural Competency–Preparing Students to Be Global Citizens the Baldwin-Wallace Experience

Executive Summary This briefing argues that it is time to look at internationalization and multicultural education with an integrated approach that incorporates them more directly into the student learning experience. Drawing on recent proposals from national educational associations like the American Council on Education (ACE) and the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), it contends that it is time to mainstream common elements of both internationalization and multicultural education, not as add-ons but as integral components that enhance liberal education as it is currently being offered both within and outside the classroom. Like most changes in higher education, how relevant these suggestions are will be determined by administrators, faculty, and staff in the context of their own institutions.

The issues discussed here are illustrated by looking more closely at a case study of Baldwin-Wallace College (B-W), a medium-size comprehensive college with a liberal arts focus located in Berea, Ohio. It describes the effective practices taken by this institution as it wrestles with these issues as part of a larger discussion surrounding the adoption of a new mission statement and revised core curriculum. It follows the process of curricular revision and related changes in institutional structure at B-W since the development of a new mission in 2000 and shows (a) how multicultural and international education developed separately at first as part of the larger process of institutional change and (b) how their common elements were then reconceptualized by faculty to help students understand how they relate to others domestically and globally. The briefing highlights the College’s ongoing efforts to infuse intercultural competence campuswide.