RIT has endeavored to develop its transnational relationships by extending its educational model through cross-border programs and degree-granting relationships with schools abroad. In 1997, RIT's College of Applied Science and Technology and Velecillste Dubovnikú, the Polytechnic of Dubrovnik, Croatia, collaborated to form the American College of Management and Technology (ACMT). Currently, RIT has international branch campuses in Croatia, Kosovo, and the United Arab Emirates.
In light of this expanding, transnational institutional character, the school's mission aims "to provide technology-based educational programs for personal and professional development [and] develop and deliver curricula and advance scholarship relevant to emerging technologies and social conditions" (emphasis added). With this framing, the organizing principles for the activities in such a complex learning environment link technology and relevance to an expansive, global reach.
In addition to specific degree requirements established by RIT, the international branch campuses also offer a general education curriculum, which includes first-year writing. Additional shared infrastructures include a global email list and access to all the online resources of the Wallace Center, RIT's library. Course schedules, while administered locally on each campus, are all displayed and listed in the student information system accessible to all advisors, faculty, and staff. In short, meaningful elements of the institutional infrastructure of each location is built on what Star and Ruhleder (1996) called the "installed base" (p. 113) of RIT's infrastructure.
Public documents discussing the RIT/ACMT collaboration highlight the framing of the partnership. During presentations to the campus community, for example, the Provost described the aims of these global campuses: 1) to "deliver the 'RIT-way' of career-oriented education to the world," and 2) to "provide study abroad opportunities for RIT students and students from other schools" (Haefner, 2011). Within the competitive marketplace of higher education, RIT's leadership sees international education as a way to export the educational activities or products that have made RIT successful as one of the largest, private technological schools in the U.S. At the same time, that export functions as one of the latest educational opportunities for U.S. students as part of RIT's brand.
Revenue opportunities, however, are only part of the picture. According to the "History of RIT," "The American College of Management and Technology opened in Dubrovnik, Republic of Croatia. ACMT is a collaborative effort between RIT's College of Applied Science and Technology and Velecillste Dubovnikú, the Polytechnic of Dubrovnik." The membership of the Board of Trustees at ACMT includes RIT's President, Provost, VP of Finance and Administration, the chair of RIT's Board of Trustees, and the State Secretary, Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia. The integration of educational, commercial, and state institutions is further articulated in the history of the collaboration presented on the RIT Croatia website.
The concept started in 1995 when the Croatian Ministry of Science and Technology (now the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports) wished to establish a private institution of higher education in Croatia and contacted Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York. RIT was considered because of its philosophy of applied, practical education and its reputation for formulating and sustaining successful international partnerships. Following their visit to RIT in 1995, officials from Croatia established an agreement with RIT. In the spring of 1997, ACMT was established as the first private institution of higher education in Croatia, and, more importantly, as a model for foreign universities operating in Croatia ("About RIT Croatia").
This partnership enabled ACMT to offer its students dually accredited diplomas. Today, ACMT (now called RIT Croatia) remains the only private educational institution granting both American degrees accredited by the New York Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and Croatian degrees which are fully accredited and aligned with the Bologna process.
After the Croatian War of Independence the new Croatian government was eager to rebuild the country. Initially, the Croatian ministry valued the educational approach and reputation of RIT, and sought its dually accredited diplomas for the desired outcome of building capacity in the country.
The administration at RIT shared similar values, but initially had different assumptions about the outcomes the new government wanted. As then-RIT provost Dr. Stanley McKenzie explained in 2007:
When two members of the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Technology visited RIT in the mid '90s, we assumed they would be most interested in our programs in information technology, telecommunications or engineering technology ... At the end of their visit, to our surprise, we were informed the quickest jump start to the Croatian economy would be in tourism management, since the Dalmatian Coast had been the prime vacation spot for south-central Europe before the war in the Balkans. (McKenzie, quoted in Downs, 2007)
Although what specific programs were chosen to be the articulation point between the two institutions was certainly pivotal to the agreement, the general motivation for the partnership was intently focused on building capacity within the new nation of Croatia as much as it was an opportunity for RIT to expand and create a new revenue stream. Now, after more than ten years in operation, RIT Croatia and RIT offer fully accredited degree programs in information technology, international business, and service management in Dubrovnik, and starting in the fall of 2010, in Zagreb.
The opening of the Zagreb campus, however, also reveals how the infrastructure created for the export of RIT's brand of education has outlasted the initial exigency. New activities, and therefore new infrastructures, are required in order to continue building capacity, continue providing revenue, continue developing RIT's brand.
Here, as in my edited collection, Transnational Writing Program Administration (2015), I use the term "transnational" to describe the growing phenomenon that Grant McBurnie and Christopher Ziguras address in their book Transnational Education: Issues and trends in offshore higher education as "any education delivered by an institution based in one country to students located in another" (p. 1). But unlike "global" or "international," I use the term "transnational" because it also invokes a more critical, analytical orientation like that described by Rebeca Dingo in her book, Networking Arguments: Rhetoric, transnational feminism, and public policy. Dingo (2012) argued:
The term transnational, while defined in a number of ways, generally refers to how globalization has influenced the movement of people and the production of texts, culture, and knowledge across borders so that the strict distinctions among nations and national practices can become blurred. In the last ten years, disciplines throughout the humanities and social sciences have recognized that increasing globalization and enduring neoliberal economics have changed our understandings of citizenship, place, and texts. Drawing heavily from the fields of political science, sociology, geography, and womens studies, the emergent interdisciplinary field of transnational studies has sought to uncover, analyze, and conceptualize similarities, differences and interactions among trans-societal and trans-organizational realities and dynamics across time and space (Levitt and Khagram, p. 10–11). (p. 8–9)
By considering the infrastructure of transnational writing programs, my aim is to continue a critical conversation about the opportunities and implications for the learning, teaching and administration of writing across borders.
The bitter battle in the state of Wisconsin over the right of public employees to unionize and bargain collectively is now shifted to the courts and yet, the massive efforts to recall elected officials failed. The argument made by the Republican Governor, based upon a kind of market logic, is that after years of recession and continued economic downturns, the salaries and benefits of public employees, which were the result of collective bargaining, were too costly for the state to continue paying. Still, while the public employee unions agreed to reductions of pay and benefits, the governor insisting on his legislation in the Republican controlled legislature, despite the efforts of the minority Democrats to thwart the passage of the law, as well as widespread public support. An example of market logic gone awry: even when the unions agreed to reductions of pay and benefits to help close the budget deficit, the governor signed the law to restrict collective bargaining.