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| Discovering Global Education | ||
 Robert E. Dunker |
Until a couple of years ago, Robert E. Dunker did not
give much thought to global education. "I kind of paid lip service to it as one of those things you
should do, but I never gave it priority," said Dunker, who is president of Western Iowa Technical
Community College (WITCC). WITCC is a community college in
Sioux City, Iowa.
Today, Dunker's college has an active and expanding global education program. And Dunker is increasingly aware of his community's connections to the world. "So many people here are working in a global market." Dunker points out that the Sioux City area hosts several major companies that operate worldwide. They include computer manufacturer Gateway 2000, giant meat packer Iowa Beef Processing, nitrogen fertilizer manufacturer Terra International, hydraulic control producer Prince Manufacturing, and, in nearby Ida Grove, the Gomaco Corporation, one of the world's few concrete paving machine manufacturers. "It's [these companies] and a whole bunch of small companies who are struggling to compete in a global marketplace." |
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Dunker... found a surprising array of resources already on the WITCC campus. |
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Meeting Community Needs
With his new awareness of the region's global connections, Dunker became convinced that his college would not be serving the area well unless it developed a global education program. He found a surprising array of resources already on the WITCC campus. The college did a survey to determine the faculty's international experiences. It showed that 48 faculty members had traveled abroad, 15 had lived abroad for an extended period, and 30 had significant experience with another culture. Among the faculty there are 17 foreign languages spoken. "You're at a technical college in Sioux City, Iowa, which people think is in the middle of nowhere," said Dunker. "Then we find this wide array of international experience. I'm not sure that colleges look closely enough at their internal resources." WITCC now has 20 people on its global education team, overseeing a rapidly growing program. |
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China Connection
The first big initiatives have come in relations with China. This is driven by the fact that Iowa has a Sister State relationship with China's Hebei Province, an area with 68 million people. There are 291 vocational/technical colleges in Hebei Province, and WITCC is developing exchanges with several of them. WITCC offers them much needed engineering, computer, and business skills. In return, WITCC students get the benefit of exposure to the Chinese faculty members who teach them about the people and culture of China. Among the current programs:
And the college's public radio station, KWIT, now airs the area's first Spanish language program and plans to add a program that serves natives of East Asia. |
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Networking
This spring, WITCC hosted a global education conference for representatives of 16 community colleges in the I-29 corridor from Winnipeg to Kansas City. Dunker assigns great importance to networking among the colleges. "There's so much work to be done in this field, and we need to learn from each other. Only if we work together and synergize our resources will we be able to be effective." Dunker credits the Stanley Foundation's initiative on community colleges with promoting the networking and helping him get in tune with the need for global education. "Without the leadership of the Stanley Foundation," Dunker said, "we would all still be talking about global education more than doing it. It really helps to have an outside force come in to move things along." |
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Little Resistance
Dunker said overcoming inertia was probably the biggest obstacle to starting a global education program. Some board members and a few faculty members have expressed doubts about the program. "The board members are elected to serve the region. And the benefits of global education are not immediately apparent." But Dunker said that as board members have seen the programs emerge and succeed, they have been very supportive.
"The business community is solidly behind this," he adds. And most students and faculty see the
benefit to a Midwestern community college reaching out to the world so that it can better prepare
its students for living in a diverse, global environment.
Building the Global Community: The Next Step and Educating for the Global Community: A Framework for Community Colleges (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view these reports.) |
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