For the past decade, administrators have striven to bring the world to Duke, envisioning the Chapel steps as a place where students from across the globe would cross paths.
Now, on the cusp of opening independent sites in China and India, their focus has shifted to bringing Duke to the world.
The University is laying plans for two outposts abroad, one probably in the Chinese city of Shanghai and the other at an undetermined location in India, Vice Provost for International Affairs Gilbert Merkx said.
The new sites will not be full-fledged campuses, but they will house students in the Fuqua School of Business for two-week stints as part of the Cross-Continent MBA program. Over time the sites will expand to include more programs and serve more students, Merkx said.
Duke made a commitment to being a global institution more than 10 years ago, and since that time it has been at the forefront, Merkx said.
"Duke has been ahead in internationalization of the Ivy League schools since the mid-'90s, and we're still ahead in nearly every dimension you can imagine," he said.
Indeed, this is not the first time Duke has eyed a more global landscape. In 1999, Fuqua announced it would launch the Fuqua School of Business Europe in Frankfurt, Germany, planned to be the headquarters for the newly created Cross-Continent MBA program.
Three years later, Fuqua announced it was scaling back the satellite campus because of waning interest from European students. It dropped the physical facilities and full-time dean in residence in Europe after incurring substantial losses, according to the Fuqua School of Business 2006-2011 Strategic Plan.
Although undergraduates will not immediately benefit from the sites abroad, internationalization is necessary for a Duke education to remain relevant in the future, Merkx noted.
"We feel that education should relate to the real world, and the real world is becoming global, integrated," he said. "To be good citizens, [students] have to understand global issues.... The world has become different, and Duke should reflect that difference."
Making Duke a global player
The University adopted a dual approach to internationalization three or four years ago, Merkx said. Although Duke is only now devising plans for its first independent global ventures, the University has forged connections abroad by partnering with international institutions for years, he noted.
"We have been approached by foreign institutions, and that's been an incentive for us to get more involved," he said. "And one of the things that we've realized is that you can't say 'no' too many times.... We didn't want to be the first ones on the block, but we didn't want to delay too long."
Merkx cited Duke in Venice, a partnership with Venice International University that launched eight years ago, as the University's first significant collaboration overseas.
Each of the graduate and professional schools is pursuing partnerships abroad. In particular, the School of Law is exploring a site in the Middle East, Merkx said.
The benefits of international sites are fourfold for the University, Provost Peter Lange said. Global outposts help Duke attract the best talent worldwide, rapidly escalate the University's global prestige and provide students and faculty with new opportunities, he noted.
But above all, global outposts put the University's commitment to promoting knowledge and bettering society to work, Lange added.
"We're not in this for the money," he said. "It's the education and the research talent and the impact goals."
That said, Duke is actively looking for financial partners to help fund the global outposts, Lange noted.
Making Duke international internally
Since Duke set its sights on going global, the proportion of international undergraduates on campus has increased precipitously. Just 1.5 percent of the student body hailed from abroad in 1992, but almost 10 percent of the Class of 2012 is of international origin, Merkx said.
The expansion of financial aid for those abroad has done much to boost the number of international students on campus, International Admissions Counselor Jennifer Dewar said.
Admissions officers made their first trip to India last Fall, and Dewar said they hope to travel to Eastern Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia too-areas which are traditionally underrepresented in Duke's student population.
Duke has responded to the arrival of more students with the creation of a number of international centers that compete nationally for funding, Merkx said.
The existence of these centers is critical because international students can present special challenges for student affairs, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta said.
International students often come to Duke with very different expectations of the services they are entitled to, Moneta noted.
The University made a number of special accommodations for sophomore Grace Wang, a Chinese student who was at the center of an international uproar when she attempted to act as a mediator at a China-Tibet demonstration on the Chapel Quadrangle April 9.
Wang criticized the University for being slow to support her in an interview with CBS News that aired May 10, but Moneta noted that Wang is just one case student affairs has faced in recent years.
"We have dozens and dozens of examples of how the presence of international students has required us to really change our practices and be individually accommodating," he said. "While [Wang's] situation had the most visibility and press, it was not necessarily the most complicated situation we have dealt with. Students have to be able to survive academically when their support network is elsewhere."
Moneta added that with an increasingly large and diverse international student population, the reverberations of nearly any natural disaster across the globe will be felt acutely on campus.
Beyond emotional support, the University is also providing legal and technical assistance to a group of Chinese graduate students who are collecting donations to build the Duke Hope School, a facility that will educate students whose schools collapsed in the Sichuan province following the May earthquakes.
Lange said such humanitarian efforts do much to promote the University's name abroad, but emphasized that the added prestige is only a fringe benefit.
Merkx acknowledged that internationalization is a delicate balance: The University must be wary of spreading itself too thin as it stretches its boundaries.
The Cross Continent MBA program will send students all over the world, including a two-week stay at one of the University's new outposts. But Merkx noted that the program will conclude with a four-week course in Durham, where diplomas will be awarded.
As the University eyes the globe, standing in awe of the Chapel is an experience all those with a Duke degree will share-for now, at least.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.