Last week I was honored to be part of a panel sponsored by the Association of International Education Administrators on “Global Engagement and Leading Campuses Aboard.” One of the questions the moderator asked was, “As a university leader, how do you align/readjust the visions of the home campus with the local conditions?”
The further I went into my answer to this question, the more I realized that the answer is “we don’t.”
I did not answer the question this way because Mason Korea ignores our location. On the contrary! We regard the “local conditions” of our international location in many ways. We encourage global perspectives in the classroom and cross-cultural conversations among our international student body. We look for opportunities to make “Korea our classroom” to enrich our students’ academic experiences. We support our multilingual students through our English for Academic Purposes curriculum and the talented faculty who teach for it, and through our intentional development of strategies to teach multilingual students in all our courses.
Rather, my answer was “we don’t” because none of what we do in Korea is distinct from what happens at George Mason in the US.
George Mason is one of the United States’ most diverse universities. And Mason in the US likewise takes advantage of, and celebrates, its diverse student body. In the US, experiential learning is similarly part of students’ academic experience. For example, our Mason Korea students who go to the US for their year of study there will find opportunities, along with their peers on the home campus, to make “Washington, D.C. their classroom.” Over 40% of US Mason students are multilingual, with a significant number of English as a Second Language students. Our English for Academic Purposes program originated at Mason in the US, to serve multilingual learners there.
What, in other words, do “local conditions” mean in a globalized world? George Mason celebrates the diversity and internationalism that defines both its home campus and its international campus in Korea. Indeed, the establishment of Mason Korea was a product of that celebration, and we in turn contribute to it.
As I was working my way through this conclusion, worried that my answer came just from my love of playful trains of thought and language—that love is something in the DNA of English majors like me—I realized I had hit on George Mason University’s new articulation of its longstanding vision. Whether in the US or in Korea, George Mason is “All Together Different.” That is one of the reasons I love George Mason, and the work we are doing here at Mason Korea.