Building International Faculty-Development Collaborations: The Evolving Role of American Teaching Centers

In the last 30 years, teaching centers in American colleges and universities have moved from the margins of their institutions to the mainstream. Their roles have expanded exponentially: To their core task of providing instructional support for individuals, they have added cross-campus initiatives to promote pedagogical innovation, curriculum reform and redesign, assessment, interdisciplinary work, re-accreditation, and (most recently) leadership and organizational development training. Meanwhile, during the last decade, there has been an escalating interest in globalizing American higher education, reflected in efforts to internationalize the curriculum; recruit international faculty and students; promote study abroad; and build international research, community-development, and outreach collaborations. Campus leaders are turning to their teaching centers to assist not just domestic but also international faculty and students, enabling many of those centers to build their capacity. This essay provides a framework for building international collaborations in a post-colonial world; describes four cases involving partnerships between US faculty developers and campus leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Singapore, and Thailand; and concludes with the lessons learned from those experiences. (Contains 10 resources.)