Close Up
Dunnett key to UB internationalization
Stephen Dunnett says that even if students do not study abroad, they can have an international experience by having classmates from other countries. Photo: DOUGLAS LEVERE
In 40 years of service to UB, Stephen Dunnett has presided over the university’s metamorphosis into the diverse, internationally minded institution it is today.
He founded UB’s English Language Institute in 1971, providing an intensive English-learning program to students from other countries. In 1980, he worked with colleagues in Buffalo and Beijing to help UB establish the first American university center in the People’s Republic of China. Later, he played a role in helping to bring UB centers to Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Cambodia and Latvia.
Today, as vice provost for international education, Dunnett continues to manage some of these programs. He also oversees UB’s study abroad and exchange programs, along with services for the 5,000-plus international students and visiting scholars who will study, teach and conduct research at the university this year.
It’s no surprise that Dunnett is passionate about his job: With a career that has taken him to such places as France, Japan and Singapore, he understands both the excitement and the challenges of living in a foreign country.
To Buffalo and beyond
Born in England and raised in Canada, Dunnett grew up speaking English, French and Italian, which he learned from Italian schoolmates whose parents had immigrated from Europe to Canada in the aftermath of World War II.
As an adult, Dunnett’s first international experience took place at UB, where he came to study English literature in 1964.
“Buffalo at that time was a very different city from what it is today,” he remembers. “There were virtually no Chinese restaurants, there was almost no Asian food, which was a big surprise coming from Canada. There were very few ethnic grocery stores. It wasn't as multicultural as it is now. The university at that time was a lot smaller, and there weren't very many international students either, so it was a different place.”
The lack of diversity surprised Dunnett, as did the United States’ largely monolingual culture. But the real culture shock came in 1968, when he moved to Lawrence, Kan., to pursue a master’s degree in international relations.
Moving from New York to Kansas taught him that “there were many different Americas,” he says.
Lawrence had even less diversity than Buffalo, Dunnett recalls. And while the locals he encountered generally were hardworking and honest people, they also held views that were much more conservative than his own.
Still, despite the limited multicultural offerings, Dunnett managed to find a way to make his life “international.” He began teaching English as a second language (ESL). Many of his students were from Vietnam, and the challenges they faced in picking up English made him curious about language acquisition.
He realized that some were reluctant to speak because they were uncertain about how to address other participants in a conversation or were uncertain about context. He realized that many of the barriers to English-language acquisition were cultural, not linguistic.
Following graduation from the University of Kansas, Dunnett went abroad again—this time to Montpellier, a city in the south of France.
There, he taught English and took linguistics courses at the University of Montpellier, a place that attracted students from not only other European countries, but from Canada, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia.
“I enjoyed a multicultural environment, which is later what motivated me to try to establish that at UB,” Dunnett says. “What I learned was that even if you don’t have the opportunity to study abroad, you can have an international experience by having classmates from other countries. I would always be amazed in class when somebody had not only a different opinion, but a totally different sense of reality because of their background. And I think, ‘Wow. I never thought of that before.’”
Back to Buffalo
In 1971, Dunnett brought his world experience back to Buffalo.
At the request of the director of UB’s foreign student office, where Dunnett had worked as an undergraduate, he returned to the university to found the English Language Institute. He completed UB’s PhD program in education in 1977 while running the institute, and signed on as a full-time faculty member in the Graduate School of Education (GSE).
The years that followed were an adventure.
Dunnett went to Japan in 1984 as a Fulbright scholar, spending his year abroad learning Japanese and researching how Japanese nationals who had studied in the U.S. fared in the corporate hierarchy upon returning home.
With GSE colleagues, he developed master’s and PhD programs for teaching English as a second language. He led efforts to build satellite programs abroad, starting in 1980 with the Beijing center, which he established with George Lee, an engineering professor and former dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences whom Dunnett counts as a mentor. Dunnett is particularly proud that UB was the first American university to establish a center in China after normalization of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China.
Back in Buffalo, as the enrollment of international students continued to grow, William Greiner—then UB provost—selected Dunnett to oversee a portfolio that included international student services and study abroad programs.
That was 1989.
Two decades later, UB has grown to become one of the nation’s most internationalized universities. For his service to the university, Dunnett received the UB President’s Medal in 2007. At the awards ceremony, President John B. Simpson recognized Dunnett for playing a central role in bringing the Dalai Lama to UB for a three-day visit in 2006, and for catalyzing increased international enrollment.
In the 2009-10 academic year, UB hosted 4,911 international students, the 12th highest number among U.S. campuses surveyed in Open Doors 2010, a report the nonprofit Institute of International Education issued last November. That figure meant that one in six students studying at UB in Western New York was from a foreign country.
The university’s study-abroad programs are impressive as well. Nearly 12 percent of UB students take courses overseas, six times the national average.
Still, Dunnett says, that’s not enough.
In the years to come, he wants to work with colleagues to increase the population of UB students who study in foreign countries and to better integrate international students who come to Buffalo into the mainstream of campus life.
“This generation of Americans understands that the 21st century may not belong to the United States,” he says. “Increasingly, young Americans are going to have to work overseas. And even if they look for a job in the U.S., they will have to compete against students in Asia and Europe in an increasingly global labor market. Our graduates need to speak foreign languages. They need to be able to penetrate new and emerging markets. They need to be able to understand different perspectives, to understand how to work within different cultures.”
Today, Dunnett says, “There is no great university that is not internationalized.”
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