186 Strategic Leadership
is drawn from my personal involvement in international education in several
institutions and in study abroad, and influenced in a general way by two excellent
reports (Jenkins 2002; National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant
Colleges 2004).
Position Statement
Monnet University is a small private university in a coastal city in the North-
west of the United States that enrolls 3,500 undergraduate and 500 graduate
students. It sees itself as carrying a legacy of regional leadership and educational
innovation based on a strong sense of collegial decision making. With excellent
resources and a strong admissions profile, it has developed high aspirations for its
future. During the early stages of a new planning cycle, it has tentatively decided
that one of its six strategic initiatives will be international education. Reflecting
views that are widely shared on campus, it has included the development of student
global awareness and competency as an explicit aspect of it educational mission.
Strategic Initiative
As the plan begins to take shape, the SPC decides that it will take a distinctly
strategic approach to defining its ambitions in international education. Its SWOT
analysis has developed evidence to show that the quality and scope of its work
in international education make it a distinguishing capability of the institution
and a competitive advantage. After inviting response to the idea with several
faculty audiences and the administration, the SPC concludes that it will propose
that Monnet should develop international education as one of its defining core
competencies, and that it should seek to gain national recognition for the quality
and scope of its programs and capabilities.
Situation Analysis
Based on the work of its task force on international education, the SPC pro-
vides a brief rationale for the strategic initiative and the goal that it recommends.
It places its thinking squarely in the context of the university’s identity, mis-
sion, and vision and demonstrates the appropriateness of the commitment to
develop students who will be able to think coherently and act responsibly in a
global context. The situation analysis characterizes the strengths of the existing
international programs and notes that the faculty and staff no longer think of
international education as the responsibility of only two or three departments.
The university’s success is also traced to the ways that both academic and admin-
istrative programs have developed formal as well as informal procedures and prac-
tices to create a system and a culture that integrates international students and
faculty members into campus life. The SPC emphasizes that Monnet can create a
core competency precisely because it has shown a distinctive ability to deploy its
resources and mobilize its abilities to integrate an international orientation into
all its educational programs. The SPC’s report is itself an effort to present a system-
atic and integrative argument that is supported by the organizational story, factual