Sophomore Deepak Bastakoty trekked to Durham from Nepal—one of 85 countries represented by Duke undergraduates—ready to take advantage of everything Duke had to offer.
Bastakoty’s attitude is exactly what organizers of the University’s annual International Education Week hope to inspire among foreign students who choose to come to Duke.
During the past week, the University has joined hundreds of schools around the country to sponsor activities that highlight current international issues as part of a joint initiative—sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education—to promote programs that prepare domestic students for a global environment and that attract students from abroad.
“The whole idea behind this week is to publicize the world of American higher education and to make the world more of a community,” said Gilbert Merkx, vice provost for international affairs.
Under the direction of the Office of International Affairs, organizations such as the International House, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute and the Center for International Studies have organized more than 40 events that culminate today.
Members of the Duke community have attended panels on terrorism, international medicine and environmental concerns. Students have also watched Russian, Japanese and Spanish films and listened to a lecture by Ambassador David Litt, Duke’s diplomat-in-residence.
This week the University received the Sen. Paul Simon Award for Excellence in Campus Internationalization from NAFSA: Association of International Educators. This is the first year the award has been given out, and Duke is one of three research universities and five colleges to win it.
University officials said Duke has taken extraordinary steps to create a more international focus on campus. One of goals stated in the administration’s 1999 “Building on Excellence” strategic plan was extending the University’s global reach and influence.
“We are the most internationalized of all the research universities in a whole series of ways,” Merkx said.
Merkx said about 50 percent of undergraduates study abroad by their senior year. He added that there are more federally-funded resource centers devoted to foreign studies on campus than at any other private research university. Moreover, nearly 8 percent of the freshman class is international, compared to the Ivy League average of about 6 percent.
Officials said they are looking forward to expanding course offerings on topics around the world. They said they also hope to attract more international undergraduate students and to further integrate study abroad experiences into the curriculum.
“Our goal is to have students feel that their study abroad experience is a complement to their efforts to emerge from Duke as global citizens prepared to enter multinational and multicultural communities,” said Margaret Riley, director and assistant dean for Study Abroad.
Bastakoty had only positive things to say about his experiences as an international student at Duke, particularly as part of an intelligent student body.
“You can start a conversation with some random guy and in 20 minutes you will be walking away with a whole new perspective on something that you’d never thought about before,” he said. “You can’t define Duke students in just a couple of words.”
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