Globalization Hits Home on Campuses Across Alberta

Find out more about satellite campuses and Albertan post-secondary investments in education abroad

Apr 1, 2011

by Jane Harris-Zsovan

Illustration by Anthony Tremmaglia

Blair Stark, a fourth-year management student at the University of Lethbridge, has some fond memories of the semester he spent in Malaysia last summer. “It’s a pretty cool experience when the monkeys hanging in the trees come down and hiss at you,” he says.

Like a lot of Calgary kids, Stark grew up hearing little about career opportunities in Southeast Asia, but taking a University of Lethbridge field studies course changed his perspective. “It opened my eyes to the possibilities. I learned a lot about the Malaysian culture and I saw the good relations that could be made with Commonwealth countries,” says Stark, who began his semester working in a Malaysian oil and gas company before finding his niche in an online auto classified company in Kuala Lumpur.

“I was given lots of responsibility and was able to use a lot of my education,” he says. “Now, I’m looking at a second degree in marketing. I want to be involved in international business, perhaps working overseas in a more tropical country, creating more ties with Canada.”

George Marlatte, senior vice-president (Prairie region) for Scotiabank, believes that the value in experiences like Stark’s goes beyond the pleasures of a semester spent abroad. “As an international bank based in Canada,” he says, “supporting business students in their studies abroad reflects the importance we attach to Canadians gaining a broader understanding of different cultures.” Ensuring that Alberta students like Stark have a firsthand understanding of how the rest of the world does business makes sense for potential employers, says Marlatte. “The target markets of many organizations are increasingly global. To succeed in the coming years, Canadian businesses will need to have workforces that reflect and understand the diverse and multinational customers and communities they serve, both abroad and here in Canada.”

Post-secondary institutions across Alberta are responding to the growing demand for graduates with some international experience, and they’re going beyond traditional exchange programs to do it. Lorna Smith, director of international education at Mount Royal University, says the school’s international education program partners with 72 universities and non-governmental organizations, allowing students to gain an international perspective on fields as diverse as ecotourism, nursing and business. “For the business community, the opportunity to hire graduates who do have some kind of international experience is definitely an advantage, even in North America,” says Smith.

The University of Calgary is a leader of Alberta post-secondary schools in international education, offering 125 active exchange agreements, plus cultural student exchanges, field schools, international co-ops and internships. Its 24 field schools include a site in Puebla, Mexico, and a nursing school in Qatar. Options for students looking for international work or study opportunities include work placements through the Canada-Japan Co-op program and the Washington Center Alberta Internship Program.

Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business offers classroom study abroad through 30 exchange partners in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific, including the University of Hong Kong, University of Western Australia and Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. For its part, Grant MacEwan University offers a variety of internationally-located programs and courses highlighted by the Asia Pacific Management diploma, which includes a six-week overseas practicum in Asia.

Until recently, the University of Alberta focused on bringing foreign students here. While that remains important to the overall strategy of creating a global perspective for students and staff, creating international opportunities for homegrown students is a growing priority. “About eight per cent of our students who graduate have some international experience, compared to 12 per cent of University of Calgary students,” says Britta Baron, vice-provost and associate vice-president international at the University of Alberta. “The U of C has a longer tradition of investing in education abroad, but we’ve woken up to that discourse.” The U of A has created an education abroad office that works specifically on foreign internships, she says.

BINDING TIES: The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and Sherritt International have partnered with Cuba’s ministry of basic industry and the Canadian International Development Agency to develop a welding centre. NAIT designed the curriculum, supplies instructors and trains journeymen. Some graduates have themselves become instructors

In Cuba, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology partnered with the Cuban ministry of basic industry and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and currently works with Sherritt International. “We’ve been involved in Cuba for about 14 years. With a grant from Sherritt, we went from start to finish helping them develop a welding centre,” says George Andrews, NAIT’s vice-president, external relations and chief development officer. Under the terms of that partnership, NAIT designed the curriculum, supplied instructors to train local journeymen and now trains local welders to become instructors themselves.

Such programs have been win-win for NAIT’s partners back home, too. The school often shares in the profits associated with these sorts of international projects, and those profits are redirected back into program funding and student support in Alberta. “I often think of NAIT as a company with two different kinds of shareholders: the people of Alberta and our corporate partners,” says Andrews. “Revenue generation allows us to do more work for Albertans, and when our corporate partners are more profitable, they are very generous and supportive to NAIT.” Recent learning opportunities for NAIT students include noise abatement at a South American mining operation, where students created living walls to protect wildlife, and NAIT’s ongoing participation in the Exhibition of Culinary Art, also known as the Culinary Olympics.

International learning opportunities don’t come for free and, in some cases, they can be prohibitively expensive. According to Mount Royal University’s Smith, the average cost for a student taking a semester overseas is $3,500 to $5,000. The University of Calgary’s Glynn Hunter, director of international relations, notes that living costs, field trips and spending money can push the total bill north of $10,000. Post-secondary institutions that offer these programs are trying to make it easier for students to get some international seasoning, largely by tailoring their curriculum requirements in such a way that experiences abroad are given credit. “We can build that into any part of the curriculum. One way we are talking about doing it is through an international education certificate which combines coursework, study abroad and extra curricular international work,” says Baron.

Support from business, though, is just as important. “We’re now engaged in another campaign to raise more money within the Calgary corporate community,” says Smith. “We have been able to build our program, in part, because of corporate support.” MRU raised about $1 million a decade ago, with RBC, Scotiabank and Petro-Canada as major contributors, and it hopes for similar success with its current campaign. “In the last five to eight years, we’ve seen an increase in demand [for international education from MRU students],” Smith says. “That increase is positive for business and positive for students, but we’ll have to find a way to leverage the costs. That’s why support from businesses is so important.”

In another example, Scotiabank has pledged $500,000 to establish the Scotiabank Mexico Corporate Social Responsibility Fund at the University of Alberta. The fund, for undergraduate and graduate students in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences, will provide awards to both Mexican students studying at the University of Alberta and Albertan students in Mexico.

It’s not just the major corporations that have a stake in international education. “We’re part of the community. Private enterprise has to do our share,” says Don Higa of Macleod Dixon, a Calgary-based law firm. Guided by its commitment to corporate responsibility, Macleod Dixon not only provides bursaries to help aspiring lawyers study abroad, but also other scholarship
opportunities and support for capital programs at the University of Calgary law school.

Roseanne Mailman, who participated in the Washington Center Alberta Internship Program when she was a University of Calgary student, now works in Washington, D.C., at K Street Research, a subsidiary of Kimmitt, Senter, Coates & Weinfurter (KSCW). She is convinced that international education is good for Alberta business. “It definitely reinforced that, for me, learning by doing is the most effective method. I ultimately accepted a job with the same firm I interned for, but I’ve made a number of valuable connections that strengthened my new roots in D.C. and helped me to maintain my ties to Alberta and Canada as well.”