“Steering Core”: Strategy-Makers amid Competing Agendas

Abstract

The deans of Medicine, Education, Arts and Science, Engineering, and the principal of the Outskirts College, who participated in the Task Force meetings, each brought to the table a distinct set of interests, commitments and concerns. While the university-wide strategy made sense to them to some extent, it also failed to resonate in equal measure with the various epistemological communities in each division. Undoubtedly, the deans benefited from listening to each other. There was value in understanding what others were doing, but there also seemed to be many irreconcilable differences in how each division understood the importance of linking globally. Indeed, the deans of Business and Law decided not to take part in the consultations. Their divisions were largely oriented on markets and clients, while most of their faculty members were concerned with generating revenue, rather than science. To them, cross-disciplinary collaborations seemed cumbersome, eclectic, and most likely fruitless. Others decided to attend the Task Force meetings, but hesitated to make any commitments to university-wide structural transformations related to the internationalization of their research and teaching. The following insights from the leaders of the institutional divisions shed light on the nature of those concerns. The sections below reveal the key challenges faced by the Glonacal U schools in shaping their international strategy.