Will Brehm:  2:02
Bernhard Streitwieser and Anthony Ogden. Welcome to FreshEd.

Bernhard Streitwieser and Anthony Ogden:  2:06
Thank you. Thank you very much.

Will Brehm:  2:08
You both have co edited a new volume on International Higher Education’s Scholar-Practitioners. And I just like to start by asking, universities are generally seen as institutions that are staffed by two types of people. So professors, those who teach and administrators, those who manage.
How is this dichotomy between these two classes of staff members and universities falling apart, in a sense, in front of your eyes?

Bernhard Streitwieser:  2:43
Well, all right, I wouldn’t say that it’s falling apart, first of all. I would say that it’s changing and it’s not even changing very quickly. And it’s been changing for a couple of decades for a number of reasons that Tony and I point out in our chapter in the book. And I would also say that we characterized two distinct camps by, you know, the scholars and the practitioners. But really, there are more like four sort of distinct groups of stakeholders at the university. And these are faculty, upper-level administrators, so provost, deans, directors of major centers, then what Philip Altbach calls the administrative estate, which is sort of the people who make the university function. The directors of, in the case of our research, Study Abroad, and International Scholar and Student offices, people who manage Student Life offices, counseling centers, you know, teaching and learning centers, and then all the staffs within those centers. And then sort of the support personnel, I’m not talking about the janitors or people who run the dining areas, but really the sort of the workforce of the university that keep the wheels greased, and then you have the students.

So those four different stakeholders broadly define the institution. And then within that we’ve pointed out what we believe is a pretty stark dichotomy between scholars, and that’s one class of people that are defined in a very specific way, and then practitioners that are defined in a different way and have different job expectations and different sort of areas within which they can move and do things. And the book is about pointing out that there’s a great possibility and great potential in having more synergy between those two broad camps that we point out within this more complex university structure that has these four levels I pointed out. But that is a dynamic and changing environment with, according to Altbach’s work, a gradually diminishing or quickly diminishing core research faculty group. And then a much larger group of alternative academics, what Celia Whitchurch in her research calls third space academics who we argue have scholarly credentials and aspirations to do more than, quote, unquote, just be administrators. And I say that with the deepest respect for administrators, but who would ideally be doing more in terms of their academic and sort of reflective thinking and contributing to a wider dialogue in their fields. But sometimes these positions for reasons of, you know, heavy workload and very defined roles and expectations, don’t give them that freedom.

Anthony Ogden:  5:44
Allow me to add to that a little bit. I think this dichotomy that you mentioned, William, is blurring across higher education, certainly here in the United States, as you mentioned, not necessarily falling apart, but it is blurring and it’s blurring more readily in certain disciplines than others. For example, here at the University of Kentucky, where I’m currently employed, I was hired primarily as an administrator. But my job also requires a PhD and 10 years of experience in higher education. That said, the College of Education, and I think this is similar in many colleges of education, they are starting to hire what they call clinical title series faculty or practitioners who are out and about in the profession working and they are being hired to come in and give this level of profession or this professional perspective, or this view into the classroom in a truly applied sense. And, of course, colleges of education typically are more professionally-oriented in that regard, anyhow. But I am now an applied assistant faculty member in our College of Education. And so in this case, but the boundary has been very much blurred, I’m not a full time faculty member, but I’m not a full time administrator, either in that regard. And I think it’s from that premise and as Bernhard was saying, that the impetus for this book got started because we are looking primarily not at any one discipline, necessarily, but this emerging field, and this other developing profession of international higher education.

Will Brehm:  7:24
And it seems as if there are, in a sense, that the bulk of people who work at universities in the US context at least couldn’t be considered these hybrid admin scholarly fields, or they combine or they form the hybrid. So, and it’s what you call the scholar practitioner. So how would you define that term in your work?

Bernhard Streitwieser:  7:57
Let me just add, before we give the definition that we’ve developed. There have been recent articles in, sort of, the journals in our field, the trade papers, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed, where people are really expressing a good deal of frustration in their alternative academic positions. I’m really asking can’t this situation change in a way that would make our working life a more satisfactory one? There’s an article by a woman, last name of June in the Chronicle of Higher Ed 2012, Adjuncts Build Strength in Numbers: The New Majority Generate a Shift in Academic Culture, which is putting a more recent perspective on the figures that Phil Altbach mentions in his chapter. There’s also a very good, sort of, editorial by a guy with the last name of Bousquet, “a PhD should result in a tenure-track job, not an alt-ac one.” And that’s, again, expressing this frustration. And then, there’s Bickford and Whisnant, A Move to Bring Staff Scholars Out of the Shadows, also, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. All these people are expressing, you know, their interest and their desire to move out of this defined practitioner space, and at least get more access to doing scholarly work, because they can’t necessarily find a full-fledged, you know, faculty position, but they have those credentials and that way of thinking about their work that I think is valuable. In terms of the definition, Tony and I came up with one that we use in the book, but it’s really driven by the research that was done by Donald Schön, Ernest Boyer, and Charles McClintock, and then our own thinking on this position of scholar practitioners. And really, it’s this idea that it’s practice if it’s reflective, and scholarship if it’s applicable, can and must become conjoined activities rather than remaining separate domains.

And we have a graphic in the book that shows, sort of, a circular movement where national education is at the top and international education profession is at the bottom of the circle. So think about the scholarly sort of part is at 12 on a dial and the practice professional part is at six o’clock on the dial. And then going around the circle, the scholars encourage international education, research and scholarship where they perform research and scholarship. However, we need international education research to be utilized and applied so we encourage practitioners to utilize research and scholarship to inform practice. And as we do so we need to determine the focus and direction of needed research. And so we must, back to the top of the circle, encourage international education, research and scholarship. And this continuous synergy between, sort of, the scholarly lens and the practitioner lens, informing one another in what we believe are really productive ways. So the definition we have, and this is, you know, this is the first time I believe that a definition exists in the field of international higher education, where we were not able to find one before. And there are other definitions from human resource research, from legal research, from nurse practitioner research out there that has different definitions, some of which we find very compelling and close to ours. But the one that we came up with, it goes as follows, the scholar practitioners of international higher education, or collaborative educators who engage in the research process and use and disseminate their knowledge and information in the form of concepts, procedures, processes, and skills for the benefit of those who are engaged in international education. While they do not necessarily need to maintain an active research agenda, it’s important that they understand, utilize and facilitate research directions.

Anthony Ogden:  11:52
Let me add to that. Thank you, Bernhard. I think it might be also important to understand what we mean by the field and the profession of international higher education. As Bernhard mentioned, various other disciplines have dealt with and have defined to certain extent scholar practitioners within those disciplines or within those particular areas. International higher education is a growing and it’s an increasingly complex profession. And that has been centrally focused on a global student mobility for higher education, international partnerships and linkages, and so on. This is sort of the profession of international higher education. And it’s the profession that I’ve committed my career to now for nearly 25 years to develop as a potentially moving toward becoming a recognized profession. Grown up around that has been this field of international education, where scholars have come in and said, what are we, how are we internationalizing our campuses, our curriculum? How are, what are students learning when they come to study here, or go abroad to study and so forth? What are those learning outcomes? What are the institutional outcomes? There’s much scholarship and research increasingly focusing in what I’d like to describe as a field of international education. But going back to that term that you use so clearly, Will, this dichotomy. So if it’s true that we have a growing field of international education research, and we have a growing profession of international education, how do these two inform and support each other?

And that’s that circular diagram that Bernhard mentioned. So if the goal of a scholar is to focus on research and sharing knowledge, then that knowledge needs to be applied and be applicable to the profession so that we can grow what we do for our students and our institutions and to further enhance that profession or that process that we’re engaged in. But at the same time, therefore, we must inform the research. What is it that we need to know? What is it that we don’t know? Because currently, and I think all too pervasively we rely on anecdotes. Many professionals say this is what I think is happening. Let me give a simple example, you’ll hear many who look at international education and say, you know, when American students study abroad, they really should be living with homestays, because that’s the best way for students to learn language and learn about the local culture, to live with homestay families. But the truth is, the research is not very conclusive to that. It doesn’t show that in fact, that by living with a homestay family in another country, that they do actually show a language proficiency growth or inter-cultural competency development, and so forth. So what we need to do is to understand, to break down our own anecdote or our assumption, by understanding what the research tells us, but also to contribute to our questions and our guidance, if you will, to the focus of the research. And this is why scholars and practitioners have to work together. But then and most importantly, has grown this cadre of these folks that we call scholar practitioners out of necessity, out of determination, I’m not sure but that is the focus of this book. And I’m quite excited to talk about it.

Will Brehm:  15:18
Right. So there are faculty members who have to produce research and you then need to have practice that is informed by that research. But then, you’re saying that there are this growing class of university staff members who have to do both practice, making as Bernhard said that the grease in the wheels turn to get the student mobility, to build the relationships between US institutions and institutions abroad, to internationalize the curriculum, and all sorts of ways. And so their job actually entails both scholarship and practice. And so they, you know, this new term and this new type of, I guess, they’re administrators, but really, they’re also more than that, in many ways they are not more, but they’re in addition to they’re also scholars. But so what sort of, how have these scholar-practitioners like, what sort of barriers do they face in the scholarship process?

Anthony Ogden:  16:36
Let me start with that one. You’ve just described, William, my current reality. Look, I’ll just use myself as an example here. My job, as I mentioned earlier, requires academic credentials. I’m required to publish and I’m required to present nationally and internationally and so on. I’m required every day to work with and for and closely with faculty members, and Deans across our institution and other institutions. I’m expected to act like and be like a faculty member, for all intents and purposes. That is, kind of, the source of frustration. There are many people in international education, international higher education that truly do function in both worlds, both either out of necessity, or will or out of expectation. And it does create a sense of frustration. And we can talk about how these people come to this point if you’d like. But I do think that it is a growing group of people. There are a number of positions now across the United States in particular, like mine, that are requiring PhDs and an academic record of scholarship, but are not given tenure-track positions, are not considered for a faculty, as a faculty member necessarily when certain senior level positions come open. Now, again, I’ll just use my specific case in point here. Here at the University of Kentucky, and I shouldn’t be so vulgar. But I will tell you, I would never be promoted beyond the current position I am in because I am not, and almost solely because I am not a tenured faculty member. Even though I may be the most well-qualified person for such a position. Now, of course, I have  not tested that necessarily, but I suspect that would be the case that they would say, I’m not eligible, because I’m not tenured.Even though I may have far more experience and more publications and a much more robust record of scholarship than the person who actually gets it. But if that person is a tenured faculty member, they may actually have more of an entree than I would be in those situations. Now, is that okay or not? I think it’s time that higher education started addressing these scholar practitioners, because, frankly, everybody loses when you quiet a person who’s contributing to the advancement of scholarship in higher education. So yeah, I think we do need to recognize the dichotomy but also recognize this third space, as Bernhard mentioned.

Will Brehm:  19:22
And how would you propose universities address this frustration of scholar practitioners who have limited career pathways?

Anthony Ogden:  19:33
Well, it’s going to be very, very hard because there isn’t or nothing that might be changing at certain institutions. But certainly at public land grants, there really are those more traditional categories, and it really is hard to break free of those. There are traditional faculty members and traditional posts assigned to them. And it really is just going to be hard to break that down. But as we see promotion and tenure process is changing across the universities. And I think so too, will be the players that are being hired into higher education. I’d like to think that higher education broadly is changing in many other areas, in ways as well. I think this is just a matter of time and perseverance.

Will Brehm:  20:20
Do you think the rise of the scholar practitioner, what does it say about the contemporary state of American higher education?

Bernhard Streitwieser:  20:30
Well, that the university has become a larger space than just, you know, faculty teaching students that in such a tuition driven system like we have, we are service providers to a very demanding clientele, in many cases. And that clientele needs an infrastructure to support them. And that infrastructure is massive, and requires a lot of people to run different offices and services that will keep our clientele happy, and fee paying, to put it bluntly. So, you know, I think with the growth of the whole industry, this, you know, third estate, that Altbach so rightly points out is a major factor that has shifted so many, sort of, ideas about how education is transmitted, and what’s all involved in taking someone from, you know, an enduring freshman to a graduating senior. And there’s a lot of criticism that, you know, is college worth it? So are we, you know, we’re charging huge prices in some institutions more than others, but even a lot of the privates have began, incredibly expensive, you know, for in-state students. And some of that is the infrastructure that we have to provide, you know, frankly, I think, you know, do we need such cushy sports facilities, and so much money put into the academic or the athletic programs? But that’s a whole nother issue that I probably shouldn’t weigh into. But I do think that has definitely influenced, you know, the way the academy functions and the people involved in making that whole machinery work.

Anthony Ogden:  22:08
But also keeping in mind, the international higher education is also relatively new, and the scholar practitioners in that emerging world of scholars and practitioners it’s developing and it’s an exciting time. We know that global student mobility is poised for dramatic growth over the next 20 years, as well as the scholarship around it. So I think it is still relatively new. And I think this type of book is timely, because it does raise the issue of scholar practitioners and our role within supporting the academic infrastructure that underpins all of international higher education.

Will Brehm:  22:47
It seems to me one of the challenges here is that these scholar practitioners as there’s more and more positions available in universities that bridge these two worlds, the issue then becomes how are scholar practitioner’s being trained?

Bernhard Streitwieser:  23:09
Well, in John Hudzik’s chapter, he outlines an agenda moving forward that will change the dynamic and really help the scholar practitioners to get more of a voice within their institutions. So the action agenda and I’d like to talk about it briefly here, but the outline makes some really important points for moving forward. And one of them is developed Masters and PhD programs in which core research knowledge and skills are built in. So students, you know, might be coming into a very applied program where they think they’re going to be prepared to emerge as, you know, a study abroad advisor or a manager of an office, which they will. But they also need to come out with some really core research skills and an appreciation and sort of a desire to know the research and not to be afraid of it, or to shy away from statistics or, you know, economic facts and figures, and charts and tables but really how to use those materials to do their work better. So that’s one of his points.

Another one is to engage the professional associations, these are the NAFSA, the Association of International Educational Administrators as Tony mentioned, European Association of International Educators, others, the Forum on Education Abroad. So engage those associations in professional development of scholarship skills, through workshops and fellowships that define key research agendas and topics. That’s something that would help build this group of hybrid scholar practitioners with the skills that they’ll need. And by the way, when they get these skills in the eyes of faculty, they also take on a new persona, faculty look at, faculty want to speak to people who speak their own language. And I think one of the criticism faculty have of study abroad offices is, oh, they’re just, you know, glorified travel agents, which is a terrible way to say it. And I think they would never admit to that. But I think sometimes the perception really is that those folks are the ones that get students out for a semester and bring them back, but it’s a lot of party time, and sort of frivolous fun away from parents. And that’s the last thing people who actually run those offices ever want to be doing. You know, they’re very serious professionals. And they don’t like to be seen this way, because it’s just not an accurate picture. But if they have staff and themselves as directors can take that research and make their case to faculty that the work they do is very serious and grounded in the research, faculty are going to look at them in a much different way, because they’re going to hear the language that they want to hear and engage with them on that on a different level.

Greg Light in his chapter talks about an arrested development of some of these fields, where if we only realize the potential that you know, people who are seen, quote unquote, only as administrators, if we realize their potential and bring them into our sphere of higher level reflection and thinking and interesting work, that dynamic can change that, that arrested development can be stopped and we can come up with a new paradigm, a new way of working. So he brings that out in a really interesting way. Another point back to John Hudzik’s action agenda is that the key journals in the field and I’m thinking here of the Journal of Studies in International Education, which Hans de Wit started years ago, the Frontiers of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, and Brian Whalen. Maybe in those journals, have a research notes section that highlights emergent and innovative research designs and priorities, and internationalisation and study abroad and exchange written by people who work in those offices and are taking a scholarly lens to talk about their work, then that gets published within the key journals, that would be a really, really cool development for changing again, this dynamic of where the practitioners are currently seeing. And then I think the last point that he makes, and it’s really an important one, and Tony is in a position of hiring people all the time, and his office is. Higher education institutions should revise practitioner job descriptions, hiring, and assessment procedures to permit, encourage, and even expect practitioners in selected positions to engage in the scholarship of internationalization. So that when someone applies for these jobs, they realize they’re only going to be competitive if they really have a serious at least again, appreciation and understanding and skills to utilize the research if not produce it, but at least to use it to inform their work. So I think those are some really important points.

Anthony Ogden:  27:34
I think, William, your question is a really important one. And I hope that people listen to what Bernard was just saying, and certainly affect. The professional associations, like the ones he’s mentioned, do offer ongoing training and development opportunities, academies and so forth, for continuous development. But there are and I think it’s very important to mention, such as in chapter 18, Woodman and Punteney, have a chapter looking and critiquing existing graduate school education for international educators. Back in the early 1990s, when I thought I would want to take this profession seriously, I sought out a master’s degree in International Education at SIT, an institute in Vermont. At the time, there were very few such programs in higher education at the graduate level for international education. Even in that program though, it was all very much applied. But if you look in chapter 18, you see that much more, many more of these programs are now being offered, such as the one those two authors are at, including many others, now. In fact, Boston College just announced the development of a new master’s program in international higher education. And those programs are underscoring that international education is not just about understanding visas, or understanding health, safety and security or risk management or program development. But instead, they’re looking, they’re positioning these programs in such a way that they require their students to understand and assess the existing literature that provides a foundation for those types of administrative tasks. And I think that’s very, very important. In January, I was, at the good fortune, to be invited to the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, the program that Dr. Punteney in temporary team, she directs that program, and I was so impressed with the students there and the program itself because those students came at every question I asked, not from a place of anecdote or a place of assumption, but they had a research background. And I thought that was just so important. And I caught myself telling them do not do anything for me that you can’t later position for a publication or for a presentation. And they understood that it seemed inherently they understood the importance of going in that direction. So that later on, should they ever apply to work for me, and in our world or if I apply to work for them, but if they apply to work for me, that I will see on their CV, at least some element of their having contributed to the advancement of an international education field. To me, that’s a realistic positioning of scholar-practitioner mindset in this emerging profession and world.

Bernhard Streitwieser:  30:23
You know, let me just pick up on that, Tony, to again, hawk some of the chapters in our book that talk about making space for people in highly administrative offices to also get a chance to write up some of their thinking or be compelled to write something and contribute it to some of the fora that are out there, David Austell does this nicely.

Jane Edwards does this nicely in talking about bringing in research articles, you know, going through, taking staff time, once a week, or once a month to have everybody read an article and then talk about that article in an interesting way. So step away from the processing of the important paperwork that has to be done, the SEVIS documents, the health and safety stuff, the logistical stuff, and take some time out to also look at at least some piece of research and talk about it in a small group and get some thinking sort of like a seminar once in a while within the office. And then to have some small amount of time carved out within a job description to contribute something to the many different ways that exist in the field to get your voice out there.

The chapter by John Heyl, for example, talks about, you know, the who’s who of scholar practitioners in the field. And he talks about digital voices. That’s one of the sections and, you know, there are so many ways that people can get their thinking out through blogs, through the kind of discussion we’re having today with FreshEd, there are things that NAFSA has with research connections, which Tamar Breslauer runs, and she’s got a chapter in the book. There’s the forum magazine by the European Association for International Educators, Kappa has an educational e-publications series. David Comp, also in this book, who wrote a very important chapter on the history of scholar practitioners going back, you know, to the interwar years, and all the way to the present, the fascinating chapter, he’s got a blog. Rahul Choudaha has a blog, Dr. Education. Stewart Hughes has a blog from the Australian Council of International Educational Research.

You know, they’re all these ways that people can contribute, they don’t necessarily have to be, you know, top peer-reviewed highest impact journals, but can still get their voice out there. Mandy Reinig in our chapter has been terrific about, you know, doing a small interview, but then it’s online, and everybody can watch that. I use that material in my class. You know, this possibly could be useful to students eventually, as well. And I know some of your other podcasts, Will, have been very useful for faculty in their courses. So there are many reasons to encourage people working in administrative offices who might be in these alternative academic positions, possibly not that happy to be in those where they can still make major contributions to shaping the dialogue and really moving the field forward in ways that we frankly, badly need and that we really welcome.

Will Brehm:  33:23
What I loved about the book is that you include all of these personal narratives by individuals who are scholar-practitioners. So not only do you have the traditional research papers, but you also have these sort of reflection pieces that are more personal. And I just thought this was a really kind of wonderful way to enter the life and the world of these individuals who experienced both scholarly worlds and practitioner worlds and how difficult it is to navigate either between those two worlds, or to bring those two worlds together. Most of the authors though, come from the US and it is a US-centric book and that’s absolutely fine. But I just am curious, do you know if this phenomenon exists in other countries?

Anthony Ogden:  34:16
And this is a really timely question and one that, well, just came up recently at the AIEA meeting in Montreal, that’s the Association of International Education Administrators. And in that meeting, there were several people from other countries, mostly Australia, but various other countries as well. And they asked that question and they had some very interesting insight to say, well, there are various pathways. In the section in this book, in fact, I think we kind of stumbled upon it. But we asked each person to develop sort of a bio, but that became into what we call a pathway, what was their pathway for becoming an international educator? or their pathway to becoming a scholar practitioner, and in what we see, at least in this mostly US-based authorship, is that there were two primary ways of coming: one coming into the field vertically like me, I started out earlier on in my career, I saw a higher education and I am where I am now vertically. Others came into this profession horizontally, such as from the faculty or they came over from in a tenured position, oftentimes at a higher level than those that came in vertically, hence, that glass ceiling we mentioned earlier. So you have these vertical people and these horizontal people. And to me, that has been primarily the US or the two primary US pathways. But back to these Australians and others that were at that meeting, they said, but hang on but there are these other pathways into this profession. And one person, an Australian, mentioned, he said, we talk about in the United States, about the comprehensive internationalization of US higher education. In Australia, we’re already beyond that. We are not even using those terms as much anymore because we are already beyond this area, or this movement to internationalize. Now, we’re at a different place and if that is true, then certainly the future pathways are going to be very different than the current models that we have in the United States. And so I think going forward, I’m hoping that readers from outside of this country will look at this book and pose some of the same questions that Bernhard and I have and the authors of this book have done by analyzing again, a primarily US-centric topic but do so in their comparative ways. That said, many of those Australians have since written to me, including one just this morning today, he has purchased this book and he is doing that at the moment. So let’s see what happens.

Bernhard Streitwieser:  37:01
You know, let me just add to that. And I’m so glad to hear that we have yet another person purchasing the book. That’s extremely exciting. That’s very exciting. You know, I was at a panel this morning, the panel on this book and Rosalind Raby was one of the people on the panel. Of course, she’s a contributor to this book. And she was saying this has been the most exciting project she has been involved with for many years. She wrote the chapter almost immediately after getting our invitation because she had so much to essentially get off her chest. And that is the same reaction we got from just about everybody we contacted. They said, god, I’ve had this issue on my mind, it’s been eating at me. I’ve jotted down notes, and I’ve had conversations with people in the hallways at conferences. This is something that I feel so much passionabout. And yeah, I’ll do a chapter. Definitely. I will definitely write about this. So we had just a super turnout. Clearly, this is an issue that, you know, really is on the minds of people and we’re happy to have had the chance to put it out there. It’s, you know, we put out the idea. Now, let’s see what people do with it. And I definitely would love to, as a future project, perhaps ask the same question about, you know, who is the scholar practitioner? And what do they do? And what can they do? And what should they do? And what will they do in the future? to other countries to make it a comparative international study? Obviously, that’s my own background and my interest and I do think that you know, a shortcoming could be that look, it’s based on the US only, it’s US-centric, but I don’t see that as a shortcoming. I see that as the first step toward more research in this area.

Will Brehm:  38:34
Well, Bernhard and Tony, thank you very much for joining FreshEd.

Bernhard Streitwieser and Anthony Ogden:  38:39
Thank you.
Thank you very much, William. It’s been a pleasure.

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