Founded in 1915 and based in St. Louis, Missouri, Webster University is a private, comprehensive, educational network of 72 campuses in sixteen U.S. states, Vienna, London, Leiden, Geneva, Bermuda, and Shanghai. A campus offering comprehensive undergraduate and graduate education in Thailand began operations in the fall of 1999. The University is actively working to establish Latin American campuses and is currently considering possible sites in Mexico and Costa Rica. This network provides undergraduate and graduate programs and is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools to award degrees in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Webster's St. Louis campus enrolls more than 5,465 students, 2830 of whom are undergraduates, and has 147 full-time faculty members. Worldwide enrollment approaches 15,000 students. Internationalism is central to Webster University’s identity and mission. Webster University is an international university and is committed to developing and enhancing international programs to prepare its students to succeed in an interconnected and changing world.

Colleges and universities across the United States are internationalizing their curriculums and campuses in an effort to prepare students to live and work in a global context. Professional organizations such as the American Council on Education (Pickert and Turlington, 1992) and the American Association of Colleges (Johnston and Edelstein, 1993) challenge institutions of higher education to find creative and effective ways to internationalize. Infusion of international content into disciplinary courses, development of international studies programs, creation of specialized majors, study abroad opportunities, and foreign language across the curriculum are some of the current approaches to internationalization (Ellingboe, 1997).

Despite the many international opportunities for Webster University students, many have not been able to take advantage of existing programs. Webster’s student base is nontraditional, in that 56% of undergraduate students are 25 years of age or older, 38% are part-time students, and only 15% live on campus. Students with multiple life responsibilities find it difficult to participate in many traditional international programs and activities. Many students work full or part-time and have families to support. Multiple responsibilities of nontraditional students and the university’s central mid-western location contribute to the limited number of students who have traveled abroad, studied a foreign language, or experienced other cultures. It has been important to design new international education programs with these students in mind. Outside of courses in traditional international majors, such as international relations, other courses contained little international content. For students who cannot study abroad, there were few opportunities for significant international curricular exposure.

Webster University received a two year Title VI-A grant from the U.S. Department of Education for the 1995-1996 and 1996-1997 academic years. The project’s goals included infusion of an international perspective across academic disciplines; integration of foreign languages into the curriculum; and development of faculty skills, knowledge, and appreciation for international perspectives in education, including foreign languages and their role in today’s world. The courses revised or created under the Title VI-A project are the foundation of Webster’s Certificate in International Studies.

The International Studies Certificate is popular with students and enrollments have grown steadily since its inception. The International Studies Certificate requires students to demonstrate intermediate proficiency in a foreign language and engage in a study abroad experience or a domestic practicum with international focus. Certificate students select from over 44 international courses across 15 different academic departments and 5 colleges and schools. The University has received a second Title VI-A grant to develop an International Studies Major that will provide students the opportunity for in-depth study in international studies that a growing number of students desire. The International Studies Major is a relatively new major and is growing in popularity across the U.S. Its curriculum is interdisciplinary and it generally includes foreign language study and an international experience component.

Behavioral and social science courses are among core courses in the International Studies Major in many universities. The RAND Institute research project Global Preparedness and Human Resources: College and Corporate Perspectives, (Bikson and Law, 1994), found that both corporate and college participants identified the ability to utilize knowledge about other cultures as necessary for people to live and work productively. Webster’s major includes Cultural Anthropology and Culture and Communication as options in the core. Internationalized psychology courses will be included in the proposed Psychology International Studies Major. Several psychology courses including Multicultural Psychology, Abnormal Psychology (infused with international content) and Psychology of Prejudice are among offerings in the International Studies Certificate. Psychology courses may be internationalized by including relevant cultural and developmental comparisons or case studies. A number of anthropology courses including Cultural Anthropology, Kinship and Family, and Genocide are among offerings in the International Studies Certificate.

The two Title VI-A grants that Webster University received have been extremely helpful in developing significant internationalized curricular offerings. The grants fund faculty development activities that directly support revision and creation of international courses across the curriculum. Some universities undertake ambitious international curricular revision with only internal resources, but for many institutions this is not a viable option due to limited resources and competing fiscal priorities. Possible funding sources include U.S. Department of Education Title VI-A for International Studies and Foreign Language, Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad, Fund for Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE), and a number of other government and private agencies and foundations.

In order to prepare students to succeed in today’s interdependent world, universities have recognized that faculty members from a variety of disciplines need to have the ability to deliver international content in disciplinary courses. Faculty development opportunities designed to promote cross-cultural competency and basic foreign language proficiency are a wise investment for universities committed to expanding international offerings.

Similar to our students, it is difficult for many Webster University faculty to spend an entire term at one of the international campuses. For faculty members who are able to take advantage of this opportunity, it is a rich and rewarding development option. Teaching at an international campus allows one to examine pedagogical issues as well as course content from a cross-cultural perspective. The authors of this paper have been able to teach at two of Webster’s international campuses.

Teaching courses in psychology at two of Webster University’s overseas campuses seemed like a golden opportunity to travel to new destinations, increase our own cross-cultural awareness, and provide students with new perspectives on the social sciences. Through this adventure we explored parts of the world we had not yet visited and in the process became acutely aware of cultural differences. We were able to expose students to information about psychology of which they were unaware. We discovered pluses and minuses of teaching social sciences to a largely non-American audience.

Before discussing one particular course as a case example, we need to explain the composition of the international campuses. While its home campus is in St. Louis (where we are full-time faculty members), it maintains satellite campuses throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. The international campuses provide an American university experience to students located in those cities. All classes are taught in English on the American model, and attract students from a variety of backgrounds and nationalities who wish to attain a degree from an American institution. Classes are taught by part-time faculty located in the area and periodically by faculty from St. Louis who wish to spend a term abroad. Occasionally faculty from the European campuses teach in St. Louis. The second author arranged to spend the Spring term of 1994 at the campus in Leiden, The Netherlands, and more recently, the Spring term of 1999 at the campus in Vienna, Austria. The first author taught at the Leiden campus in the Spring term of 1995 and at the Vienna campus in the Fall term of 1998.

As an example of teaching at an international campus, we will discuss one of the classes Monica taught at both campuses. "Nonverbal Behavior" was a lower-level topics course that met once a week for four hours for an eight-week term. Students were expected to do extensive work outside the class in this accelerated format. At each campus, because of the restricted number of offerings in the social sciences, the course was full, with twenty-two students in Leiden in 1994 and twenty-five students in Vienna last year. Almost all of the students were traditional age and they came from all over the world, including students from Scandinavia, the Middle East, The Netherlands, Great Britain, and the U.S., in Leiden. In Vienna, there was an even more eclectic group with students from India, Asia, Eastern Europe, South America, and Vienna in addition to those countries previously listed. In Leiden, Monica had one student from the St. Louis campus. Although a few student in each class were social science majors due to the fact that we offer a psychology program at both campuses, most students were either business or international relations majors because these are the biggest programs at our European sites. Each week was devoted to a different issue (e.g., the nonverbal messages of dress and appearance, gestures and facial expression, touch, the use of space and the environment), The instructor integrated lecture, video, discussion, and student presentations into each four-hour meeting. For example, for the week focusing on gender differences in nonverbal behavior, Monica gave a lecture on nonverbal courtship as that is her area of expertise. She showed part of the movie Tootsie, during which students were to work in teams to find examples of differences and similarities in nonverbal behavior depending on whether the character was male, female, or male playing at being female. This exercise was followed by a lively discussion. Course requirements for the students included two written exams, one project pertinent to nonverbal communication, one presentation, and class attendance and participation in in-class projects.

The biggest and most immediate problem we confronted was that, unlike our courses in St. Louis, we were not talking to people who are as psychologically aware as are many Americans. Many of the students at the European campuses could not call upon a body of knowledge about human behavior that they had built up from both the professional and popular press. This dearth of information had advantages and disadvantages. First of all, we had to do a lot more explaining of basic concepts in psychology, which cut into time for discussion of the preselected topics on our subject matter. A more varied student population meant that those students who were more knowledgeable (certainly the minority) had to wait for the instructor to explain rudimentary psychological information to those individual who were uninformed. On the other hand, students did not have as many preconceived and inaccurate notions, nor were they accustomed to analyzing their own or others’ behavior. They seemed to relish attaining new information and applying it to their interpersonal relationships. They were constantly asking questions about psychological topics and seemed hungry to hear about a range of topics such as sleep and dreaming, aggression, and psychological disorders, in addition to those listed on the syllabus. It was not uncommon for a few students to linger after class to keep talking about matters raised during the lecture or discussion. Perhaps because of this inquisitiveness, we did not see a difference in student grades when comparing the European students to those in the U.S. We gave about the same number of A’s, B’s, C’s, and failing grades there as here.

Although our students must demonstrate language competency, it was still the case that, when lecturing, it was necessary to repeat material several times for students to translate. It was also important to define words periodically. It helped to start each class period with a detailed outline printed on the board and to put complex material on overheads. When students worked in groups, it worked well to have them report in a written fashion, on the blackboard, rather than rely on verbal group reports as is typically done at home. We were always careful to watch the faces of students closely to see if they seemed confused. Students asked to use dictionaries while taking exams, and we allowed them to do so.

The third comparison we would like to make deals with the selection of student projects or paper topics. One instructor had taught the nonverbal communication course to students at the St. Louis campus several times. She has had mostly psychology and sociology majors in the class and other semesters the course has attracted a great many media students. Regardless of class composition, she has found the U.S. students much less innovative than the European students, particularly the Vienna students, in their selection of class projects. We are not sure what to attribute this exceptional level of creativity to on the part of the European students. One hypothesis we have had is that living in many different parts of the world with people of all different types has freed them to try out new things with fewer fears of being seen as "different" or "silly." Whereas some students selected a project off of the suggestions sheet, many more came up with their own highly imaginative ideas.

Although the European students were quite creative in the selection of their projects, they were more traditional than many American students on liberal arts campuses in that some were not comfortable with discussion. Many students had previously attended large European universities where classes were lecture driven. Therefore, some were reluctant to contribute to class discussion. Making it clear that class participation was part of their grade when reviewing the syllabus at the beginning of the term and creating small group exercises seemed to lessen the inhibitions of these students.

An interesting issue arose at the Vienna campus while each of us was there. Cheating became a small, but significant, problem. There may be a couple of issues at work in this regard. First, all of our international campuses are small. The community is quite close-knit. Indeed, many of the students in Vienna live in dorms that are next to the academic building. In addition, our student affairs program promotes interaction with extracurricular activities, including weekend trips. This familiarity means that students regularly pass on information to one another. In addition, some students came from cultural backgrounds where what we may call cheating was viewed, instead, as sharing or helping. Indeed, some instructors said that "cheating" was taken for granted by many students who came from cultures where getting around the system was a norm. Therefore, it was important for all instructors to state clearly their policies on plagiarism and other types of cheating. Webster University has a uniform cheating policy and there was support from the administration if a faculty member needed arbitration with a particular student. Obviously, it was mandatory that instructors maintain close control over test materials and, in this case as well, the University was supportive in giving professors access to computers when students were not around and in ensuring that all copied materials were locked in secure file cabinets.

The dominant emotional milieu at Webster University in St. Louis is one of helpfulness and friendliness. This climate extends to our domestic and international site, in our experience. What this means is that students express an avid curiosity about their instructors, in addition to a genuine wish that all is well in the teacher’s life. Students may ask questions or make comments that might seem intrusive in the U.S. One instructor was quite aware, for example, that when her husband visited for a couple of weeks, the students checked him out. There were numerous questions about our backgrounds, other family including children, and home in the U.S. Students not only asked questions, but were also free with advice, particularly about places to visit. This, despite the fact that a field trip in that instructor’s class revealed that many of the students were quite unfamiliar with common tourist sites in Vienna. On the other hand, some students were more reserved than we are used to. We requested that students call us by our first names, as is common in St. Louis. A few students, especially those of Austrian or German background, never managed to do so and it was clear that they were more comfortable with the use of a more formal title.

We hope to have the opportunity to teach more classes in the social sciences to students in other cities. We are considering stints at our London or Thailand campuses in the near future. We believe reflections upon classes taught so far will help in preparation for teaching in new venues. We hope that those of you who are contemplating an international teaching venture will benefit from hearing about these experiences.

Bikson, T. K. & Law, A. (1994). Global Preparedness and Human Resources: College and Corporate Perspectives. Santa Monica: The RAND Institute

Ellingboe, B.J. (1997). The Most Frequently Asked Questions About Internationalization. Prepared for Semester Conversion and International Education Committees, University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus.

Johnston, J.S. Jr. & Edelstein, R.J. (1993). Beyond Borders: Profiles in International Education. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges

Pickert, S. & Turlington, B. (1992). Internationalizing the Undergraduate Curiculum: A Handbook for Campus Leaders. Washington, DC: American Council on Education.