Innovations Fund Summary Sheet
Title: Hope College International Audit
Abstract:
Our Innovations Fund proposal for Spring-Summer 2016 is to conduct an institutional
international audit. This audit would help the College create a global strategy to guide decisions
for future Crossroads funding opportunities, and provide direction for long-term
internationalization of the curricular and co-curricular programs across the institution. The audit
will include the gathering of some internal institutional data, a faculty inventory, a staff
inventory and a study student. In addition assessment instruments for cultural competency and
international program evaluation will be created. This data will be compiled in an International
Audit Self Study which will be made available to two external reviewers who will conduct a site
visit, Summer 2016. The audit is clearly aligned with the objectives of our recent 2025 Strategic
Plan, and the need for the audit is clear as Hope College has never conducted a comprehensive
institutional international audit. The results of this audit and external reviewer report will be
used to develop a Global Strategy that will guide our subsequent Global Crossroads projects.
Keywords: International Audit, External Review, Faculty Inventory, Self Study, Global Strategy
Total Budget Request: $9,200
1 Hope College International Audit
Project Narrative for Global Crossroads Innovation Fund
February, 2016
I.
Internationalization
Our Innovations Fund proposal for Spring-Summer 2016 is to conduct an institutional
international audit. This audit would help the College create a global strategy to
guide decisions for future Crossroads funding opportunities, and provide direction for
long-term internationalization of the curricular and co-curricular programs across the
institution. In addition, the audit is clearly aligned with the objectives of our recent
2025 Strategic Plan. Hope College has never conducted a comprehensive
institutional international audit.
Identification of Audit Need. A “Global Crossroads Innovations Team,” consisting of
the College’s four deans, VP of Admissions, VP of Advancement, Director of
Sponsored Research, Faculty Global Learning Director, International Education
Director, a representative from Student Development, Assistant to the President, and
two advancement directors involved in international and international alumni work,
has been engaged in the planning process. In response to the Global Crossroads
opportunities, this group met Fall 2015 to develop ideas for submitting a proposal for
the Innovations Fund. The meetings through the fall semester revealed the need, as
well as the institutional commitment to conduct an international audit. The group
reviewed existing audit programs from external agencies, as well as institutional
reports of the goals, objectives and outcomes of international audits conducted by
other colleges and universities. The group explored the ACE CIGE model for
comprehensive internationalization, among others, and determined that while
providing useful information for developing our own audit process, the timing of the
ACE CIGE program (a year-long commitment) and the expense (GVSU estimates
their expense at $40,000), did not align with our goals. The CIGE model did,
however, help us to focus on what we already know and what we need to know:
articulated institutional commitment and administrative leadership structure and
staffing are in place. We need to gather more information in the areas CIGE outlines
under: 1) curriculum, co-curriculum and learning outcomes; 2) faculty policies and
practices; 3) student mobility; and 4: collaboration and partnerships. We are
confident that we are able to design an ‘inventory,’ for faculty, students and staff,
customized and focused to assess the specific information we seek to gather, at a
lower cost than the one provided through CIGE. The fall task group engaged in rich
and cross-divisional perspectives on what we need to know to move forward with
plans to internationalize the curricular and co-curricular experience, as well as
possible processes for conducting an international audit. The group report was
2 presented by the Global Crossroads Director and the Dean for Multicultural and
International Education to the Provost and President in early January. The proposed
audit was enthusiastically supported. A timeline and cost-sharing commitments were
discussed
Two conclusions came out of the meeting with the president and provost: 1) we wish
to conduct the audit spring and summer 2016 so that we might have data upon which
to base our future Crossroads proposals; 2) we don’t want to allocate too much of our
potential share of the Crossroads Innovation Fund to the audit process as we want to
reserve resources from this fund for high impact campus programming across the four
years of the Global Crossroads project.
Proposed Audit Process. Very similar to the ACE CIGE process, we propose to
conduct an ‘international self-study’ primarily focusing on the academic program,
which will involve gathering some existing institutional data, as well as conducting
faculty and staff inventories assessing international expertise, interest, and existing
partnerships or programs, and a student survey assessing international interests and
experiences. Individual program areas and faculty within the College have
international expertise, connections and programs, but there is no centralized
repository for this information that is accessible to other programs and faculty.
Following the Self-Study, we propose to identify and invite two external reviewers
for an on-campus review (Summer, 2016). The International Audit Self-Study and
External Review Report will be available by the beginning of the 2016-17 academic
year for use in developing our subsequent Global Crossroads fund proposals.
Assessment of Cultural Competencies and Global Partnerships. The need for
assessment of: a) student outcomes related to the development of existing global
learning competencies, and b) criteria for assessing the relative value of existing and
potential global partnerships, is identified as an institutional need. We have adopted
Global Learning Goals for the curriculum, we have a process to evaluate courses in
meeting these goals, and we have a Global Learning Director that oversees this
process. We do not, however, have a good tool that assesses student outcomes related
to these specific goals. We have used existing nationally-normed measures through
NSSE and Global Perspectives Inventory, but find these measures are inadequately
connected to our learning objectives. As self-reports of cultural competencies, these
existing assessments are limited in their behavioral validity. In addition, we have
numerous international institutional partnerships as well as informal relationships,
and opportunities for new international partnerships and relationships. We have no
formalized criteria for assessing the relative value of these relationships so that we
can develop an intentional global strategy for developing partnerships in critical areas
3 around the world, and evaluating redundancies of multiple partnerships we have in
other areas of the world. Development of assessment instruments for student
outcomes and global partnerships will be developed in parallel with the International
Audit Self Study and Review, recognizing that the testing and implementation of
these assessments will extend into the 2016-17 academic year, (beyond the
completion of the International Audit Self Study and Review, Summer 2016).
Alignment of Proposal with College 2025 Strategic Plan. Hope College completed a
strategic planning process in May 2015 in which internationalizing the college is
recognized as a high priority. The six strategic goals of our 2025 Hope College
Strategic Plan were approved by the Board of Trustees, Fall 2014. The third goal,
Global Engagement, includes three objectives: 1) for students, faculty and staff to
engage in cross-cultural encounters that promote global understanding and develop
cultural proficiency; 2) to advance cross-cultural learning and global engagement as a
shared responsibility of all divisions and departments; and 3) to advance crosscultural and global learning student outcomes through curricular and co-curricular
learning opportunities for every student. There are ten KPIs subsidiary to these three
objectives, eight of which are directly related to our Innovation Fund proposal for
2016: a) faculty development of cross-cultural perspectives and proficiencies; b) staff
and faculty sensitivity and understanding in their interactions with people of differing
cultural backgrounds; c) increase on NSSE responses for “discussion with diverse
others”; d) increased student cognitive knowledge and interpersonal social interaction
reported on the Global Perspectives Inventory; e) formalize protocols for establishing
and assessing global partnerships deemed critical to institutional and student success;
f) every department, office and division will develop and report strategies to support
these global partnerships; g) develop personal, immersive or experiential approaches
to promote global learning goals; and h) to increase student participation in offcampus international programs.
To accomplish these goals, and to best capitalize upon opportunities afforded by the
Global Crossroads program, we need a better understanding of our existing
international expertise, interests, relationships and programs. Understandably, to date
international program development has been largely determined by faculty/staff
interest. This has led to Hope’s absence in some important developing areas of the
world, and duplication of programming in other areas of the world. The audit would
move us to the next stage of development of our international programming by
providing data to develop a global strategy for internationalizing the curriculum.
Anticipated Outcomes of Audit:
4 •
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To develop a plan for assessment of cultural competencies of faculty, staff and
students (KPI’s ‘a’-‘d’ above)
To identify and evaluate what areas of the world we are currently overinvested in, insufficiently invested in, or lacking any investment in (KPI ‘e’
and ‘h’ above)
To identify and leverage faculty and staff expertise, interests and contacts in
various areas of the world we identify for potential connection (KPI ‘f’, ‘g’
and ‘h’ above)
To identify departments, offices and divisions that have existing strategies and
programs to support global partnerships, and to identify departments, offices
and divisions that need direction and support to promote global connections
(KPI ‘f’ and ‘h’ above)
To identify needs for faculty and staff development in global learning (KPI
‘a’-‘d’ above)
To seek recommendations from reviewers for building upon existing
experiential and immersive experiences, as well as to identify opportunities
for developing new innovative experiential and immersive experiences (KPI
‘g’ and ‘h’ above)
To provide baseline data at the beginning of the Global Crossroads program
that can be used to assess the impact of the Global Crossroads initiative (as
well as other campus initiatives) when the inventory ‘surveys’ are readministered in 2020.
II.
Collaboration
The ‘International Audit’ does not involve collaboration with GLCA and GLAA in its
initial implementation. However, the audit will be the foundation for developing
future intentional partnerships with GLCA and GLAA institutions. We believe
intentional partnerships in service to defined goals for the development of the
internationalization of the institution are more likely to yield long-term sustainable
partnerships. We wish, for example, to assess our global distribution of programs;
from this data we can make more strategic partnerships with GLAA institutions in
areas of the world in which we have little presence. The audit will yield information
on faculty interests and expertise which can help us make international connections
for conjoined courses and global scholarship. In addition, the audit process we
develop could be a resource for other GLAA or GLCA institutions interested in
conducting their own audit.
III.
Evaluation
The staff, student and faculty inventories will be re-administered in four years to
assess progress and to update the Global Hope information database (see
5 Dissemination). In addition, part of this proposal is the development of a formal
assessment of staff, faculty and student cultural competencies which would be
administered on an on-going basis (frequency and protocol yet to be determined), and
could be used to assess impact of future Global Crossroads programs.
IV.
Dissemination
An interactive online global map which highlights areas of the globe in which we
have Hope College programs or contacts is the ultimate dissemination goal of the
faculty/staff/student inventories. Maptive.com is a program used by other institutions
of higher education (e.g., Notre Dame Alumni Office) to map their global presence.
The program allows the user to filter results by topic area: e.g., internships, study
abroad, research projects, alumni, corporate partners, partner global institutions,
conjoined courses, conjoined programs, etc. The globe will light up for ‘Global
Partner Universities,’ for example, and as the user scrolls over an area of the globe
map, a pop-up with information about that specific connection emerges. The
possibilities are extensive; Notre Dame, for example, has a filter for expertise area so
that you can search for alumni across the globe doing work in the area of ‘peace
studies’ or ‘human rights.’ The audit process (spring and summer 2016) is the first
step in gathering data to populate this program and provide a global mapping that
could be accessed by students, staff, and faculty looking for campus expertise as well
as global contacts for course and program development. Part of our audit process will
involve ways to regularly update the inventories and how to use self-generating data
from existing annual report processes. This is obviously a long-term vision that will
develop over time with the assistance of Hope’s IT department.
Maptive runs about $1,250.00/year, with a possible 30% educational discount.
Maptive is not included in the current budget. This is a longer-range decision and
commitment that will be explored by the College following completion of the Audit.
The International Self-Study and External Reviewer Report will be made available on
an internal webpage for reference by anyone in the campus community. Our
experience with the maptive.com program may be of interest to other GLCA and
GLAA institutions.
6 V.
Project Budget
Innovations Hope CostGrant
Share
$2,200.00
$2,000.00
Development, implementation and
report of staff and faculty international
inventories and student survey data, and
gathering of internal institutional data
for International Audit Self Study by
the Hope Frost Center for Social Science
Research*
External Reviewers travel,
$5,000.00
accommodations, meals, and $1200
stipend for 1-day review
6-week Summer stipend at $600/week
for faculty member with expertise in
intercultural assessment to research and
develop cultural competency assessment
tool and international partnership criteria
rubric
Piloting and implementation of cultural
competency assessment (AY 2016-17)
by Frost Center for Social Science
Research
Innovation Fund Director to oversee
$ 900.00
progress of audit and assessment
development, work with Frost Center on
reports and Self Study, and make
arrangements for External Reviewers
(60 hours@$600/week)
Candy bags for 300 faculty/staff for
$1,100.00
inventory completion @ $3.00/ea.; $200
for 8 $25 student gift certificates for
student survey incentives -- prizes
randomly drawn from pool of those
completing survey
TOTAL
$9,200.00
$3,600.00
$2,200.00
$7,800.00
*The Hope Frost Center for Social Science Research has a staff of 5 and conducts
institutional research as well as projects for external clients.
7 Project Timeline
Faculty Inventory,
Staff Inventory,
Student Survey
External
Reviewers
Assessment
March 2016
Inventory/survey
design and data
collection
Identified &
Scheduled
April 2016
Data analysis and
Self Study Report
Compilation
Summer 2016
On-Site Visit
Cultural
Competency
Instrument
Developed/
International
Program
Evaluation Criteria
and Rubric
Developed
8