The document discusses the challenges and opportunities for academic writing professionals with the internationalization of higher education. It proposes a proactive strategic approach to identify the growing international language and writing needs of institutions, develop services to meet these needs through self-assessment, and promote these services within the institution.

1. EATAW 2017, Egham, UK
With K. Goldfrad.
Title: Academic Writing and Internationalization: A Proactive Approach to Policy-Changing
Statement: With the recent trend toward internationalization in higher education, the impact on
academic writing policy is not always clear or defined. Our presentation will provide a principled
response to identify the challenges facing writing professionals in higher education institutions,
and offer a methodology for turning these challenges into opportunities.
Summary: The challenges and opportunities arising from the internationalization of HE requires
a proactive strategic course of action. We outline our approach for identifying the expanding
international language and writing needs of our institution, our self-assessment process for
developing services to meet these needs, and our strategy for promoting these services.
Abstract: During the last decade, higher education institutions find themselves competing over
potential students. This ever-growing competition created a dichotomy between being attractive
and maintaining a high academic level. This dichotomy may impact the desirability of writing
courses within academic institutions, and thus marginalize the need for such courses.
Internationalization may offer writing professionals an opportunity to remain relevant within our
institutions. A recent study found that the top three internationalization issues in recent years are
student mobility, English as a lingua franca and multicultural issues (Yemini & Sagie, 2016).
These issues are further strengthened by Engwall’s (2016) conclusion that preparing higher
education students for a globalized world would require more language and culture courses. In
addition to these needs posed by internationalization, institutions also face a number of
challenges, namely economic and political issues encroaching where once academic and socio-
cultural purposes were the sole values of academia (Knight, 2013). For writing professionals to
remain responsive to the current challenges and opportunities arising from the
internationalization of higher education, we would suggest advancing a proactive, rather than a
reactive, strategic course of action within our institutions. In this presentation, we outline our
approach to identifying the expanding international language and writing needs of our institution,
our self-assessment process for developing services to meet these needs, and our strategy for
promoting these services within the institution.
Reference:
Engwall, L. (2016). The Internationalisation of Higher Education. European Review, 24(02),
221-231.
Knight, J. (2013). The changing landscape of higher education internationalisation–for better or
worse?. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 17(3), 84-90.
Yemini, M., & Sagie, N. (2016). Research on internationalisation in higher education–
exploratory analysis. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 20(2-3), 90-98.
Keywords: Policy, Internationalization, Ranking