Green River Community College named Simon Award winner for excellence in integrating international education

Green River Community College was among eight schools to win the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers (NAFSA) Simon Award for excellence in integrating international education.

Colorado State University (Fort Collins), Lone Star College System (The Woodlands, Texas), St. Cloud (Minn.) State University and the University of South Florida (Tampa) also were winners of the award.

Fairfield (Conn.) University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge) and Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) received the Sen. Paul Simon Spotlight Award for a specific international program or initiative that contributes to comprehensive internationalization.

Named for the late senator from Illinois, the Simon Awards recognize outstanding and innovative achievements in campus internationalization.

"We are proud to present the 2013 Simon Awards to these colleges and universities for their comprehensive commitment and remarkable achievements in bringing global education opportunities to their students," said NAFSA Executive Director and CEO Marlene M. Johnson. "They are excellent models for how higher education across the country can and must innovate to prepare our students for the global economy we live in today."

The Simon Award winners reflect a broad diversity of approaches present in campus internationalization today, both in terms of models and implementation. "Comprehensive internationalization" is the planned, strategic integration of international, intercultural, and global dimensions into the ethos and outcomes of higher education. To be fully successful, it must involve active and responsible engagement of the academic community in global networks and partnerships.

Simon was a strong supporter of international education and foreign language learning. His leadership in these areas was especially evident in his robust support for the creation of the National Security Education Program, which addresses critical national security deficiencies in language and cultural expertise, and for his vision of a national program to greatly expand U.S. citizens' knowledge of the world, which was the inspiration behind the proposed Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act.

The Simon Act is a congressional initiative to significantly increase study abroad opportunities for U.S. undergraduates,

Institutions selected for the internationalization awards this year will be featured in NAFSA's report Internationalizing the Campus: Profiles of Success at Colleges and Universities, to be published this fall, and honored at an event in Washington, D.C., in November during International Education Week.

To learn more, visit www.nafsa.org/SimonAward.

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