I love a good puzzle. When I was a child, puzzles meant summer evenings on the porch with family. My brother always reached for control of the corner pieces. My sister organized by color. I started with the big picture. And to this day, it is the mosaic that interests me—how the pieces fit together to create a coherent whole.
The purpose of this magazine is to piece together the Dominican University international studies puzzle—to show you how the mosaic has taken shape over time. I think that you will be surprised by its complexity. I hope that you will appreciate how the university has nurtured its study-abroad legacy while, at the same time, fitted new pieces into the puzzle that complement graduate professional education and advance Dominican’s service-learning curriculum.
There is a picture in the Dominican archives of a group of Rosary College students and two sisters in full habit about to set sail for Europe. It is the 1920s, when Rosary was among the first colleges in the country to send students abroad to study. To grasp the university’s current commitment to international programs, you must first be aware of this anchor piece of the puzzle. Study abroad always has been an integral part of the Dominican big picture, and, as a consequence, there is a “can do” spirit about international entrepreneurial ventures at Dominican that crosses schools and disciplines and, in the view of many, defies the size of the university.
It is not only the geographic breadth of Dominican’s international efforts—Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and more recently, Asia, Africa, India and South America—that creates such an interesting mosaic, but also, the different shapes of the pieces. For example, Rosary College now provides short study trips as well as semesters abroad to make international travel more accessible to more students. The Brennan School of Business offers degrees internationally. The Graduate School of Library and Information Science publishes World Libraries. And the Graduate School of Social Work has a globally focused curriculum with international internships.
The thing about a well-designed puzzle is that its organization is not apparent at first; then a few pieces fit together, and suddenly you recognize the picture— and the rest of the pieces make sense. International study makes sense at Dominican because the big picture is mission: the recognition that truth and compassion are shaped by multiple cultural perspectives and that education obligates the graduate to be a force for good in the world.
Over my dozen-plus years as president, I have traveled extensively on behalf of Dominican University—visiting all corners of the puzzle, so to speak. Whereas once I might have viewed international programming as an attractive academic extra, today I view it as essential, not only because its own mosaic is so compelling, but because it is an essential, interlocking piece of the larger Dominican puzzle. Once you read this magazine, I hope you agree.
Bon Voyage,
Donna M. Carroll
President
Search:
President Carroll met with visiting students from Poland and the Czech Republic in May 2007.
