ITF - UTSA Provost Home - The University of Texas at San Antonio

ITF Evaluation Study, 2010 22RECOMMENDATIONS/ACTION PLANBackgroundCurrently, the UTSA is engaged in international activities and offerings across many programs and Colleges; however, thisstudy found that there is no systematic way to capture these events and experiences within the existing context. Although manyprograms offer courses that have a global perspective or focus, there is not a straightforward way for students or administration toidentify them in the catalog. Similarly, there are research and service projects and faculty who are involved in projectsinternationally, but there is no mechanism for the University community to identify what, where, or how these are beingundertaken. Consequently, cross-disciplinary collaborations are hindered and duplication of efforts can and have occurred.International students and scholars are present on campus, yet due to limited resources and staff, oftentimes adequate supportcannot be offered to this population. Additionally, they are not well-integrated into the greater UTSA population. Further, we haverich opportunities through our internationally-focused Institutes and Centers, but often the activities and events are not wellattended. Finally, a very small percentage of UTSA students currently participate in study abroad.The recommendations/action plan is driven by the findings from our evaluation study data and our understandings of theUTSA context with respect to systematic internationalization. The findings suggest a model for internationalization that provides ameeting space for collaborations across Colleges and disciplines, providing services, professional development, and informationgathering and dissemination to enhance the UTSA experience. This model also includes an intentional focus on internationalizationwithin each College and relevant Office (i.e., The Office of the Vice President for Research, The Office of the Vice Provost forAccountability) that sustains faculty, student, and administration/staff ownership of the international UTSA experience. Strategiesare provided below, which are categorized into five themes. The first theme operationalizes our recommended model forinternationalization support for a new institutional context: International UTSA. The four additional themes provide strategies forinternational curricula, international/global research, international scholars and students, and study abroad. Space has beenprovided for future actions/performance measures to be established.Each strategy given will have the following annotation to indicate from which data source the strategy derives:1 Literature Review2 Consensus Building3 Site Visits4 GPI