Over its history CBIE has played many roles:

• A forum for new ideas and innovative programs in internationalization, student services, emergency management, and marketing;
• A research centre conducting seminal research, and developing training programs and ethical standards for our field;
• A lobby engine for bringing forward new policies and programs;
• A vehicle for development assistance across the globe, with a focus on governance and civil society development;
• A marketplace for the world to access Canadian education in all its forms.

More Background

CBIE was founded in 1966, although our antecedents date back to the 1940s. We were founded under the banner "Friendly Relations with Overseas Students" in the postwar years by a group of inspired students at the University of Toronto, among them Prof. Thomas H.B. Symons, founding President of Trent University, and Dr. Alan Earp, former President of Brock University. In the 1950s CBIE expanded to comprise campus and community organizations, engaging the active interest of Mrs. Helen Hnatyshyn of Winnipeg, mother of our former Governor-General Ray Hnatyshyn, among many dedicated Canadians. In the 1960s visionary individuals including university and college Presidents, students, student services professionals and international centre directors — such as Mrs. Kay Riddell Rouillard who organized the International Student Centre at the University of Toronto — recognized that the time had come for an incorporated organization that would sustain and expand interest in international education at the national level.

CBIE was formally established in August 1966. Signatories to our letters patent were:

James A. Gibson, Jean-Charles Bouffard, Grace Maynard, Pierre Meunier, E. Clifford Knowles, John B. Thomas, Andrew Stewart, Douglas Mayer, Patrick Kenniff, Robert L. Dunsmore, Robert Murray MacDonald, Hugh G. Christie, Jacques Garneau, Mohammed Jeeroburkhan, Katherine D. Riddell, Helen Hnatyshyn, Gabrielle Einsle and Robert J. Torrance.

CBIE's achievements in the intervening years are numerous and significant. They include groundbreaking research, advocacy leading to major improvements in the experience of international students, scholarship programs bringing literally thousands of young people to Canada to study, the first major private sector-supported international scholarships for Canadians, extensive resources and information on study abroad, exports of education services engaging hundreds of Canadian professionals and involving substantial foreign exchange earnings for Canada. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, CBIE has been a leading executing agency in official development assistance for countries in transition such as the Czech Republic, Ukraine and the Caucasus countries, notably in public sector reform and civil society development. From 2000-2005 CBIE supported 130 exchange program scholarships for students at member institutions and 30 grants for program development by our members.

While impressive, CBIE’s greatest achievements are not about facts and figures but about people. The many people we have brought together and continue to bring together to network and devise new and improved ways of doing international education. The students who have benefited from the skills and knowledge gained by student services professionals at our conferences and regional meetings or who have won our scholarships to study outside their home country with the range of value-added learning that experience entails. The many mentors, protégés and peers we have connected. The many talented and dedicated individuals we have recognized in our CBIE Awards program — the professionals and students who go above and beyond the expected to make strides in our field.

Ideas and Innovation

Ideas generated in CBIE circles have permeated discourse about internationalization over four decades. In the late 1970s our study The Right Mix generated debate on campus about planning the intakes of international students – notably, ensuring diversity. In the 1980s The Globe and Mail cited CBIE reports in its editorials, urging Canada to market its education effectively and to undertake in-depth studies on Canada’s performance. In the 1990s, CBIE facilitated national discussion of the internationalization of education – becoming the first Canadian organization to raise it as a concept in our presentation to the Stuart Smith Commission on University Education.

CBIE model programs have been adopted by colleges and universities across Canada and CBIE has assisted institutions to develop mission statements with an international perspective. CBIE has developed and managed unique programs designed to help Canadian students to internationalize their education. Since 2000 more than $500,000 of CBIE’s own funds have been committed to funding these programs.

We have also brought visibility to our field through special awards for students and professionals, such as the Elizabeth Paterson Award for International Student of the Year. We have designed, developed and offered a wealth of training resources and sessions for professionals in our field. CBIE helped fund the first certificate program for international educators in Canada, delivered at the University of British Columbia.

In 1989 CBIE’s advocacy on behalf of Chinese students in Canada affected by events at Tiananmen Square led the federal government to establish the Chinese Student Emergency Service, implemented by CBIE. From that time forward, emergency mobilization on behalf of international students in need was established as a national responsibility.

Research

Throughout the 1990s, working with top researchers, CBIE guided the discussion on internationalization of education, identifying its components and providing tools to measure achievement, and initiating discussion around risks and responsibilities in mobility programming. In the new millennium, CBIE has examined cross-border education, attempting to position our institutions to understand and manage new players in Canada and new ways of connecting themselves internationally. Through an important Innovation Grants Program, CBIE has also served as a catalyst for research and program development at our member institutions. CBIE has played a standards-setting role, developing Canada’s Guidelines for Ethical Practice in International Education.

Advocacy

CBIE is a leading advocate for international education in Canada. CBIE lobby efforts have led the federal government to include international education and international students as important elements of our foreign policy; establish advisory bodies such as the Educational Marketing Advisory Board and the National Education Marketing Roundtable; and open up funding channels for educational organizations such as the Program for Export Market Development. Some provincial governments have responded to CBIE calls and followed suit. In recent years the federal government continues to open up work possibilities for international students, largely as a result of discussions within the Advisory Committee on International Students and Immigration (ACISI), a structure urged by CBIE in 1994 and on which CBIE has played a continuous and active role.

Thanks to CBIE’s efforts and those of our counterparts in Europe, the United States and Asia, the G8 leaders at their 2006 summit made their first major statement on international education – a resounding endorsement of educational mobility. This could be an important opening for all of us engaged in international education in countries around the world.

Development, International Peace and Security

CBIE has had a long tradition of working with countries facing challenges such as war, revolution, international sanctions and transition — countries where people-to-people exchange and educational projects with Canada offer the hope of development, democratization and stability.
Throughout the Lebanese civil war, CBIE worked with the Hariri Foundation to educate hundreds of Lebanese of all religious backgrounds.

While Libya was isolated from much of the world during the 1970s, 80s and 90s, CBIE maintained connections through a Libyan-financed scholarship program that brought thousands of young Libyans to our colleges and universities. Following the Revolution in Iran, CBIE led the first Canadian mission — promoting people-to-people relationships through education — and leading to a major investment by Iran in a scholarship program in Canada managed by CBIE.

The forces of political change in the former Soviet Union and beyond led CBIE to organize education missions resulting in major CBIE projects in Central and Eastern Europe funded by CIDA. A Canadian flagship project in Ukraine, the CBIE-assisted Institute of Public Administration and Local Government, was cited in a speech by renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz as the best model for cooperation in the former Soviet Union. In fact, CBIE was among the first organizations to work on the new generation of development assistance required in countries in transition – projects supporting democratization, civil society, community economic development and public sector reform. Today our work continues in Central and Eastern Europe, and in Georgia and other countries in the Southern Caucasus.
CBIE’s highly regarded work in Haiti, Lebanon and Serbia has equipped teachers, schools and ministries of education to provide new youth-centred resources for conflict resolution and peaceful social development.

Marketplace

As Canada’s premier marketplace for international education, CBIE has involved Canadian member institutions in almost $2B of educational activity including scholarship programs financed by Nigeria, Libya, Iran, Kuwait, Oman, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, and the Hariri Foundation of Lebanon, and the establishment of complete Canadian institutions abroad in Qatar, Lebanon and Egypt.
CBIE continues to cultivate relationships that lead to educational partnerships for our educational institutions in a range of countries, notably in the Middle East and North Africa.