American universities have been internationalizing for decades, and their leaders often contend they must engage globally to stay relevant and prepare students adequately for a rapidly changing work environment. Faculty members, as keepers of the curricula and pivotal university actors, are critical to global engagement efforts on their campuses. However, many university leaders have yet to engage individual professors in ways that have resulted in securing their sustainable support for comprehensive internationalization (CI). A similar weakness of CI related research to date has been its failure to include a broad group of voices when investigating faculty engagement in internationalization. Following Childress’ framework (2010), this study explored the meaning-making, motivations, and perceptions attached to CI through individual interviews with a sample from all ranks of U.S. civil and environmental engineering faculty members from three Land Grant universities. Interviewees highlighted a variety of barriers and motivations linked to internationalization including, historical constructs, personal and professional values, and perceptions of potential outcomes of CI engagement. The analysis highlights and explores these factors and their connections to the international outlook ranking for interviewees’ institutions. / Ph.D. / American universities have been addressing global concerns and challenges for decades. Their faculties have for just as long sought palliatives and solutions to those issues. One element of that work is efforts to prepare students to work in an internationally connected world. University professors who design classes for students and conduct research are critical to all of these initiatives. However, university leaders have not been able to find ways to involve a sufficient and sustainable group of professors to make globally focused research and teaching efforts a central priority. Past studies investigating faculty involvement in internationalization have not yet researched a full range of professorial perceptions of such efforts. This study sought to understand what a sample of civil and environmental engineering faculty members at three American Land Grant universities perceived concerning internationalization initiatives at their institutions. I chose this group for study because their views have not been examined systematically and because there are more students studying engineering and in this one field within engineering than ever before. Those I interviewed included faculty members of all ranks and they also exhibited a wide range of levels of engagement in globally focused research and teaching. Interviewee responses highlighted a diverse array of motivations for international engagement and as many disincentives for faculty to do so. Professors’ work histories, values, and personal and professional perspectives all mediate their involvement in globally relevant issues. This analysis identified a list of concerns that university leaders can address to encourage their faculties to pursue internationalization. It also examined the connection between university reputations and faculty engagement with international concerns.

Thesis advisor: Hans de Wit / Thesis advisor: Rebecca C. Schendel / CUValles has no intentional, integrated institutional pathway to comprehensive internationalization. Consequently, the primary purpose of this transformative inquiry is to analyze how comprehensive internationalization might be achieved at CUValles: a constituent of a decentralized, multi-campus University Network. Interviews with 12 key informants and official document analysis were the means of data collection. Findings indicate the disarticulated presence of all comprehensive internationalization as characterized by ACE, (2017). Comprehensive internationalization might be achieved at CUValles through a context savvy application of de Wit’s Internationalization Cycle (2002), integrated from an “Inter-Campus Research Institute for International Higher Education”. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Thesis advisor: Rebecca Schendel / Thesis advisor: Geraldo R. Blanco / Internationalization, understood as the strategic integration of intercultural and international aspects into the function and process of higher education, has been of interest to nations and higher learning institutions worldwide for the past two decades. One area of particular focus within such efforts is regionalization, as exemplified by the European Bologna Process. However, regionalization is not simply a part of internationalization. There are significant differences between regionalization and internationalization in terms of objective, approach, and implications. These differences are arguably particularly salient in post-colonial contexts, yet few studies have examined the two phenomena within any African system of higher education. To address this gap, this thesis examined the factors affecting the internationalization and regionalization initiatives adopted by universities in Rwanda, paying particular attention to how the two phenomena intersect and how stakeholders perceive the potential benefits. The findings reveal that institutional representatives strongly recognize the benefits of both approaches but also experience tensions between the two. The study also highlights a number of challenges affecting the ability of Rwanda universities to adequately take advantage of the potential benefits of regionalization. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.