This dissertation focuses on the relationship between the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on symbols of economic and military power in the United States and the internationalization agenda of colleges and universities. The construct, “post-9/11 syndrome,” is used metaphorically to delineate the apparent state of panic and disequilibrium that followed the incident. Three research questions were investigated, with two universities in the Miami-area of South Florida, one private and the other public, as qualitative case studies. The questions are: (a) How are international student advisors and administrators across two institutional types dealing with the “post-9/11 syndrome?” (b) What, if any, are the differences in international education after 9/11? (c) What have been the institutional priorities in relation to international education before and after 9/11? Data-gathering methods included interviews with international student/study abroad advisors and administrators with at least 8 years of experience in the international education function at their institutions, review of relevant documents, and analysis of each institution’s international student and study abroad data bases. The interviews were based on the three-part scheme developed by Schuman (1982): context of experience, details of experience and reflection on the meaning of experiences. Data collection and analysis for each institution were conducted simultaneously. Taped interviews, researcher insights, and member checks of transcripts were preserved as an audit trail to provide support for the integrity and consistency of my findings. Key findings include a progressive decline in fall to fall enrollment at the University of Miami by 13.05% in the 5 years after 9/11, and by 6.15% at FIU in the 7 post-9/11 years. In both institutions, there was an upsurge in interest in study abroad during the same period, with heavy concentration in Europe but less than 5% of enrolled students ventured abroad annually. I summarized the themes associated with the post-9/11 environment of international education as perceived by my participants at both institutions as 3Ms, 3Ts, and 1D: Menace of Anxiety and Fear; Menace of Insularity and Insecurity; Menace of Over-regulation and Bigotry; Trajectory of Opportunity; Trajectory of Contradictions; Trajectory of Illusion, Fatalism and Futility; and Dominance of Technology. Based on these findings, I recommended an integrated Internationalization At Home Plus Collaborative Outreach (IAHPCO) approach to internationalization, predicated on a post-9/11 recalibration of national security and international education as complementary rather than diametrically opposed concepts.

The goal of this study was to investigate the interaction between professional development and professional capital within international schools in Asia. The researcher employed a multi-site case study to inform the research goals. A conceptual framework based on Hargreaves and Fullan’s (2012) professional capital theory was used to guide the study’s methods and data collection. The data were collected in two phases. The first phase consisted of a digital survey that was distributed to ten international schools associated with the East Asia Regional Council of Schools (EARCOS) and the Office of Overseas Schools (OSS). The survey was analyzed to identify the experiences and perceptions of professional development within international schools. The second phase was comprised of semi-structured interview data from twelve international educators to explore the relationship between professional development and professional capital. The findings of this study helped outline themes of how a professional development fosters professional capital within the international schools. Specifically, international educators use professional development to increase human capital through their experiences to improve personal practice, while developing, retaining, and attracting educators to the international schools. Social capital is impacted through the amount of time international educators allocate to collaborative and networking experiences with other international educators within their field through professional development. By increasing decisional capital, international educators develop expertise with effective professional development guided through the support of mentors by increasing decisional capital. The findings suggest professional development within the international schools studied is connected to an increase in professional capital. The findings also suggest international educators need to maintain a level of autonomy in regard to decision making to continue to increase professional capital within international schools. Suggestions for a refinement of the theory of professional capital leadership include a balanced approach to professional development where teachers use their human capital and school leaders use their social capital collectively to make professional development decisions.