For Immediate Release January 31, 2006

For More Information Contact: Hilary Kahn, 317-274-3812

IUPUI Receives Grant to Internationalize the Professional Undergraduate Curriculum

INDIANAPOLIS - The IUPUI Office of International Affairs has been awarded a two-year, federally funded grant to internationalize the undergraduate curriculum in three professional schools at IUPUI by engaging in an international partnership with Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

This project will stand as a national model of internationalization that can be applied by other IUPUI schools and U.S. universities toward the internationalization of their curricula through the collaborative study of another nation or culture area. IUPUI faculty from the schools of Engineering, Education, and Social Work are collaborating with faculty at UGM to produce new courses and course modules that will explore professional concerns in cross-cultural contexts by blending coursework with the perspectives of one particular nation: Indonesia. The project does not rely on stand-alone courses that can be too easily isolated from the rest of a student's course of study; rather, it aims to internationalize more broadly by building a foundation of international collaboration and by providing a comprehensive understanding of and familiarity with specific professional issues in Indonesia and, more generally, within international contexts. The ultimate goal is to equip professional undergraduates with a deep, cumulative understanding that advances their international thinking and improves their professional practice in an increasingly interdependent world.

Faculty at IUPUI and UGM are directly involved in this international curriculum development through fellowships, workshops, curricular collaboration, and study trips. Faculty from both universities are receiving training so they may collaboratively develop professionally relevant new courses as well as shorter modules to be built into existing courses. Advanced communications technology, especially videoconferencing and web-based course management, is facilitating dialogue between faculty counterparts and bringing outside expertise and international dialogue directly into the classroom.

Language training is also integral to this project, resulting in the following new foreign language courses: Bahasa Indonesia I is currently underway in Spring 2006; Bahasa Indonesia II is planned for Fall 2006; and Bahasa Indonesia for Special Purposes I and II will be offered thereafter. Additionally, a Summer Institute in 2006 will allow a core group of IUPUI faculty to collaborate in internationalizing their professional courses; for four weeks, they will attend instructional and faculty development workshops and collaborate with their UGM counterparts to develop courses and modules through virtual as well as face-to-face meetings. A second Summer Institute in 2007 will be open to other IUPUI faculty who wish to internationalize their own courses.

The core faculty at IUPUI are Jan Cowan, Engineering and Technology; Bob Osgood, Education; and Irene Queiro-Tajalli, Social Work. They are collaborating with UGM colleagues in the Faculties [Schools] of Engineering, Psychology (which includes education), and Social and Political Sciences. IUPUI faculty have already traveled to Indonesia to meet and work with their counterparts at Gadjah Mada University, and faculty members from Gadjah Mada will visit the IUPUI campus in early February 2006.

The project is part of the U.S. Department of Education's Title VI grant, intended to build capacity in the United States for international education. The grant program supports foreign language, area, and international studies at U.S. colleges and universities. ###