Reitumetse (‘Reitu’) Obakeng Mabokela has been the Vice Provost for International Affairs and Global Strategies for three years and yet she says that her work is only just beginning. The professor turned administrator has a passion for international education that has followed her at every stage of her career. It is a passion that guides her decisions every day to make Illinois a global competitor in higher education. Recently recognized by the McKinley Special Populations Student Health Concerns Committee for her leadership on campus, Vice Provost Mabokela spoke with Illinois International Communications about what drew her to the Vice Provost role, how it has evolved in a changing higher education landscape, and what the U.S. can learn from its partners around the world.
For those who may not be familiar with your background, can you start by telling me a little bit about yourself and what led you to international education?
I think my earliest introduction to international work was when I was still in South Africa. In high school, I was very active with Interact Club, which was sponsored by the local rotary organization in my hometown. At the time, it was an interesting student club that offered opportunities to do volunteer work and other exciting community projects. At that point in time, it was not an intentional decision to belong to or participate in an international-oriented organization. Then, right after I finished high school in South Africa, I took a year off and was a rotary exchange student. That was really my first introduction to another country and it just happened to be the United States.
The year I spent in upstate New York is when I really began to shift my own thinking about possibilities for future academic pursuits. The mere exposure to a completely different set of both academic and cultural experiences, made me think, "oh I guess studying abroad is a real possibility for me." As a Black South African growing during the Apartheid era, there were significant political constraints, which restricted opportunities for many. So, when I returned to South Africa, I applied for scholarships and then returned to the U.S. as an undergraduate student at Ohio Wesleyan and then proceeded to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I did my masters in Labor and Industrial Relations and my Ph.D. in Education Policy Studies. I found myself quite drawn to many topics and issues that had an international dimension to it. When I was doing my dissertation, I did a study that examined higher education policy issues in South Africa. Later when I became a Fulbright New Century Scholar, I had further opportunities to work with colleagues, not only in South Africa, but Mexico, Peru, Russia, and Denmark, coming together to examine these issues from multi-national perspectives. That really started a whole career that has led me to other countries beyond South Africa, including Ghana, Tanzania, Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey-to name a few. In essence, my scholarship and my professional career have always been anchored in international work in some form or fashion.
What drew you back to Illinois and the Vice Provost role?
I spent the majority of my professional academic career at Michigan State University and gradually migrated into academic administration while I was there. It was just one of those things where the right opportunities and the right timing converged. At Michigan State, I was a faculty member in the College of Education but I was also engaging in international work across campus. For example, I was actively engaged in Michigan State's Center for African Studies and their equivalent to Illinois International, called International Studies and Programs.
For me, the transition to becoming the Vice Provost for International Affairs and Global Strategies at Illinois was almost natural because the role aligned so strongly with a lot of the previous work I had done. Also, as Illinois is my alma mater, I had that familiarity with the institution and its history. One change that my current responsibilities do not afford me is the opportunity to teach. However, I still publish about international topics, although at a much slower rate than I did when I was a faculty member. Schedule permitting, I try to present some of my scholarship at national and international conferences. I find that it is really important to remain engaged in the research dimension. If I am going to work with faculty members on this campus or elsewhere, if I'm going to collaborate with deans or other people who do international research, I think, it's really important that I maintain a degree of currency and relevancy so that I can be credible as a colleague. Here at Illinois, I have a faculty appointment in the College of Education, and, though I am not teaching, I periodically participate in the college activities so that I remain engaged in international work and scholarship in that way as well.
What were some of the challenges coming into the role? How has the role changed?
The role of Vice Provost for International Affairs and Global Strategies is one that is overarching, not only in the sense that I am responsible for oversight of the units that report to me directly, but also that I have a broader understanding of the global activities of the entire University. I really think that over the last 3 years—it is hard to believe it’s been 3 years already—a significant amount of my time on this campus was spent on building relationships. As much as Illinois is my alma mater, I have also been gone for almost 20 years, and when I was here the last time around, I was a student. The nature of the relationship is just different. In coming back to Illinois, I really had to almost treat it as a new institution. A lot has changed at the University and my own responsibilities and position within the institution have changed fundamentally since the last time I was here. As a student, my world revolved around what I was studying, the colleagues that I was with, the classes that I had to take, and the research that I had to do. My degree was fairly interdisciplinary, so of course, I took courses in other parts of campus, but it was a fairly, neatly defined area of engagement. So, I really had to re-learn Illinois so I could understand the ways in which I could contribute most constructively (Photo: Vice Provost Mabokela speaks at the 16th Annual International Achievement Awards Banquet).
I came to Illinois as graduate student because it had this reputation as the place to be—very international student friendly and very internationally responsive. As I have returned as a faculty and academic administrator I think we have areas where we excel, we have areas where I still believe we are leaders, but I also think that there are areas where we can improve. For example, if I look at our efforts to prepare globally competent students, I think we have excellent opportunities on this campus to do that, but I don’t think we are always very clear in how we tell students to navigate or access that process. One of the things that we did during my first year here was to hold globalization “town hall” meetings. At one of the meetings, one of the things that students articulated over and over again was how they felt that there were many internal barriers that discouraged them from participating in study abroad. They wanted to participate, they wanted to study abroad, they wanted to have these experiences, but there were so many internal barriers institutionally that they felt utterly discouraged. I remember one student in particular. He was an Engineering student, he said “I was just so determined to go, but if I was a student who just had an average interest, with the number of hoops I had to jump through, I just would not have done this.” His determination motivated him but it should not be so difficult. If we can minimize those internal barriers as an institution, if we can pre-articulate how courses and credits will work with study abroad programs, that will go a long way in making this a very seamless experience for those who wish to participate in study abroad.
My tenure also coincided with the budget impasse, six months into my role, the beginning of what, at that point I had naively assumed would be a short impasse, turned into two years. For the better part of my three years here, our institution and other public institutions in the state were just beleaguered by this budget impasse, which had some significant impacts for many of our constituents. It was challenging time for our campus. I found it to be particularly challenging because Illinois, for me, is not just a place where I am working, it’s my Alma Mater. I had an exceptional experience here as a masters and Ph.D. student. I really did. I do think that institutionally, we’ve weathered that storm and yes, there were difficult decisions that had to be made along the way to ensure long-term sustainability, but even in spite of all of that, I just never lost faith that we would emerge from that as a better institution.
What do you think that U.S. higher education can learn from some of the countries you have researched?
When I was still teaching, one of the courses that I taught was the history of U.S. higher education. One would think that it is a very straightforward history class but one of the things that I always did was to provide a time table of major events or legislation related to a specific topic in the U.S. in one column and then in another column a list of corresponding global events. I enjoyed this exercise because then my students could actually see that U.S. higher education did not exist in a vacuum. What many students saw as "independent actions" that occurred in higher education in the U.S. were very much informed and influenced by events that were going on globally. It was always a very interesting juxtaposition of what was going on in the U.S. and what was going on in other parts of the world (Photo: Vice Provost Mabokela, Chancellor Robert Jones, Provost Andreas Cangellaris, and College of Engineering Executive Associate Dean Martin Wong at the ZJU-UIUC Institute in China).
I am a scholar of comparative and international education, therefore, it's very hard for me to look at U.S. higher education in isolation. For example, right now we're hearing a lot of rhetoric in the U.S. around the value of public higher education and whether states should be investing in it. But, if one looks at other countries they are investing significantly in higher education. China, for example, is investing heavily in its higher education system. Similarly, Australia, South Korea, Malaysia, India are investing heavily in their higher education systems. We're beginning to see countries that historically were not competitors in higher education, becoming regional competitors and growing their prospective students. When looking at student mobility within the U.S we need to also understand the broader global context and take that into account.
You were recently awarded the Professor William H. Creswell Jr. Leadership Award. What does this award mean to you?
I was really pleasantly surprised and I wasn't expecting it. I was honored to receive the award but that award is not just mine alone. It is a reflection of the work that we do as an entity, as a unit, as a team, as Illinois International. Any work that we do and any successes that we have is because we have an excellent team of individuals who are working long hours, who are deeply engaged on a day-to-day basis, always doing their utmost best to serve our students, our colleagues, and our community. It is truly an award that I share with the Illinois International team and I am very proud of this recognition for the work that they do to advance the global mission of our University (Photo: Vice Provost Mabokela accepts the Professor William H. Creswell Jr. Leadership Award from Dr. Danita Brown Young).
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About Vice Provost Mabokela
Professor Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela has been serving as the Vice Provost for International Affairs and Global Strategies since January 2015. She is also a Professor in the College of Education and the senior international officer for the University. As vice provost, Professor Mabokela cultivates relationships with institutions around the world and guides the University’s strategic vision for internationalization, while bringing together the University’s vast on-campus international presence. She may be contacted at mabokela@illinois.edu.
About Illinois International Programs
Illinois International encompasses 11 unique units, centers, and programs dedicated to supporting campus internationalization through administrative, academic, and programmatic services and initiatives. Learn more about Illinois International.
