BURLINGTON, Vt. (March 19, 2009) - Champlain College's international initiatives for students and faculty has earned the college a prestigious award for innovation from The Institute of International Education.

Champlain College President David Finney accepted the 2009 IIE Andrew Heiskell Award for Innovation in International Education (IIE) today at a ceremony held at the United Nations in New York City. The awards promote and honor outstanding initiatives in international higher education among the members of IIE's association of more than 1,000 institutions.

Champlain College earned the top recognition in the category of "Internationalizing the Campus," for advancing international curriculum development and providing innovative services to students through its Institute for Global Engagement headed by Gary Scudder, assistant dean for Global Engagement. 

Champlain's Institute for Global Engagement developed three successful student and faculty programs designed to make the college's curriculum more international:

•·         Global Modules program (four-week, intensive online projects linking more than 3,000 students in 12 countries)

•·         Faculty Internationalization Initiative offering stipends for summer travel and course development

•·         A visiting scholar-in-residence program for international faculty.

"We are honored by this award and the recognition of Champlain's efforts help our students become better global citizens through study abroad, increased opportunities for international dialog between students and hosting international scholars on campus," said Finney.

 "By recognizing excellence and innovation, the Institute hopes to promote a comprehensive range of efforts to make college campuses more international," explained IIE President Allan E. Goodman. "The award-winning programs represent the best practices in internationalization. We hope these will encourage and inspire other campuses to better prepare their students to be active global citizens."

The IIE conference brought some 200 university presidents, provosts, deans, administrators, and government officials to share strategies and achievements in international education.

Goodman chaired a panel discussion on "Institutional Linkages with the Middle East," which featured insights from representatives of the Qatar Foundation, the lead sponsor of IIE's Best Practices Conference, and Carnegie Mellon University, which has a campus in Qatar's Education City.

Speaking at the conference, Elizabeth Beaulieu, dean of the Core Division of Champlain College, shared her experiences in the Middle East last summer through the Institute for Global Engagement.

"Preparing citizens to actively engage in a global society is a widely held precept in education, and most colleges and universities have embraced the idea," said Beaulieu. Still, fewer than two percent of Americans study abroad (the traditional venue for offering an international experience), and overwhelmingly they choose destinations in Europe.

  Educators at the conference discussed the growing interest in the Arab world and noted that while enrollments in Arabic language classes on American college campuses are on the rise, only about 2,200 American students a year choose an Arab country, or less than one percent of all Americans who study overseas for academic credit annually. The study also notes that more than 80 percent of students go to one of three countries: Egypt, Jordan or Morocco.

The IIE report found that capacity does exist to host more U.S. students in the region, and that there is great enthusiasm for increased study abroad among both U.S. and Arab-world educators, despite the challenges they face. The full report can be downloaded at http://www.iie.org/StudyAbroadCapacity .

Champlain College was founded in 1878, and at its core is a bricks and mortar school, offering professionally focused majors. It has 2,000 campus-based undergraduate students on campus and is ranked in the top tier of Best Baccalaureate Colleges in the North by 2009 America's Best Colleges, published by U.S. News & World Report. To learn more about Champlain College, visit www.champlain.edu.

For background on Champlain's Global Modules, Faculty Internationalization Initiative and the Cities of Refuge Writers in Residence program, please visit:

http://www.champlain.edu/News-and-Events/News/Global-Modules.html