How to Initiate a Bilateral Exchange Partnership
Bilateral exchanges offer the opportunity for two institutions to exchange students back and forth for a semester or a year. It is a great and affordable way to offer new experiences and perspectives to your students while building partnerships with institutions abroad. Research has shown that studying abroad improves students’ retention, and incoming exchange students can be a good way to bring international perspectives to WSU’s campus.
Take a look at our bilateral exchange partners to get an idea of our current offerings.
Factors to Consider When Planning a New Partnership
- Academic Compatibility: How do their courses match up with your major requirements? Can students take a full term of these courses and remain on track to graduate? What about two (in case backup courses are needed)? If not, do students have enough academic progression flexibility to save their UCORE courses for abroad? If your College has accreditation requirements for transfer credit sources, does this potential partner meet those requirements (ABET, EQUIS, AACSB, etc.)?
- Student Interest: Would your department be able to sustain this partnership? Would your students be interested in the location, courses, and/or program and would their students be interested attending WSU-Pullman? The typical goal is 4 semesters of students each year. If you need further explanation, please see the FAQ section. This exchange opportunity won’t be available only to your department’s students. However, as the origin of this partnership, recruitment will be primarily geared towards your department’s students.
- Promotability: How will your department promote this exchange partnership? This can be as simple as professors mentioning the value of study abroad in general or this exchange opportunity specifically during class. Other options might include advertising in the department or classrooms (TVs or paper), holding an info session, working with advisors to include it in advising meetings, or maybe even working it (and study abroad in general) into academic progressions.
FAQs
Each semester and student are counted as 1 point. Therefore, WSU sending 2 students during the fall term (2 students x 1 term = 2) equals the same as sending 1 student for the full academic year (1 student x 2 terms = 2). So, when we say we want to send 4 in a year, it can be any of the following combination examples: 2 academic year students, 1 fall student and 3 spring students, 1 academic year student and 2 spring semester students, etc.
There is no penalty for you or your department. Exchange numbers are not an exact science and can fluctuate year-to-year based on WSU student interest and partner student interest. However, the flow of students is considered when it is time to renew partnerships (typically every 5 years). If an imbalance is prolonged, it may be cause for the ending of a partnership.
International Programs maintains the WSU Exchange Fund. Outbound students pay tuition into this fund, and we in turn use it to pay for the tuition of incoming students. When a partner university sends more students to us than we are able to send to them, each semester represents a deficit in the Exchange Fund for the amount of the current semester Tuition and S&A fees. This can further complicate things if the imbalance is prolonged while tuition costs rise.
There is a policy in each Bilateral Exchange Agreement that we will not allow an imbalance in either direction of more than two semesters. There are very few exceptions to this policy.
Great! You can either reach out to a colleague in the department that you think would match best, or you can email ip.exchange@wsu.edu. The Education Abroad office will have you fill out the initiation form before they contact the WSU department you think would best fit this partnership. Filling out the form is not a guarantee that the partnership will be initiated, but we will collaborate with you to determine its viability and initiate the program if that is the outcome decided.
No, staff are also welcome to initiate partnerships. However, we strongly recommend your department chair or dean be aware and supportive of your initiation prior to filling out the form.
Yes! Students from all campuses can participate in an exchange, therefore, exchange partnership initiations are not limited to the Pullman campus. However, we do require incoming exchange students to live on campus. For this reason, incoming students will only be allowed to study on the Pullman campus.
Next Steps
If you’d like to initiate a bilateral exchange, please email ip.exchange@wsu.edu for the initiation form and next steps.