Author

Guilan Wang

Date of Graduation

1993

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

The internationalization of curriculum has become an important part of internationalizing higher education institutions in the United States. This realization of importance reflected in the increasing number of centralized offices of international programs (OIP) charged with institutional responsibilities to provide leadership in the process of internationalizing their institutions. The purpose of the study is to determine the degree of impact of centralized OIPs on the internationalization of curriculum in the Land Grant institutions. The study looked into three major OIP components, input (human input and economic input), process (programs and activities), and output (number of internationalized courses, majors, minors, etc.). The methodology used was a mail survey of all the centralized OIP executives and follow-up interviews of selected OIP executives, representing different OIP sizes and capacities. Descriptive statistics was used including central tendencies and correlation. The results showed that OIPs' impact on the internationalization of curriculum was great. The major input variables that exerted such influence on process and output included OIP executive's authority, the number of OIP staff, OIP financial capacity and commitment as well as the institutional support. The major OIP process variables that exerted significant impact on output included international linkages, student exchange activities, international seminars, program coordination, etc. In conclusion, OIP human input and OIP economic input are the most crucial factors in the degree of success of the internationalization of curriculum.

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