Reporter Volume 25, No.8 October 21, 1993

By ANN WHITCHER
Reporter Editor

International education in SUNY is of paramount importance if New York
is going to have a competitive edge in world commerce, Edward C.
Sullivan, chair of the New York State Assembly Higher Education
Committee told an audience at the Center for Tomorrow Oct. 15.
	Sullivan was the first speaker in the 1993-94 Breakfast
Seminar Series for Western New York Higher Educators sponsored by the
UB Department of Educational Organization, Administration and Policy,
in conjunction with the Western New York Higher Education Consortium,
Buffalo State College, Hilbert College and the UB Graduate School of
Education Alumni Association.
	Sullivan, a graduate of the New School for Social Research who
taught English as a second language before his election to the
Assembly in 1976, encouraged educators to help students learn foreign
languages and acquire specific knowledge of other cultures.
	Study of Arabic and Chinese at state universities is still a
relatively rare occurrence, despite the fact that billions who speak
those languages could "be ready for our services and products,"
Sullivan argued.
	Acquiring a second or even third language is the first order
of business to global literacy, Sullivan said. "How can you issue a
bachelor's degree to someone who doesn't speak two languages?" 
	Without sufficient linguistic and cultural preparation,
Sullivan said, U.S. markets will continue to shrink. Further, such
study cannot, he said, be confined to those studying the humanities,
but must also be the province of students in architecture, business,
engineering and other technical fields. 
	Sullivan urged educators in SUNY to use technology to greater
advantage in training students. 
	"The business world is way ahead of the academic world in the
use of technology," he said. Each student, he said, should have the
ability to electronically access information in university libraries
from his or her dorm room. Lectures should be available on videotape
to allow for greater understanding in a difficult area, or to make up
for an excused absence. 
	Sullivan admitted that students often greet with wariness his
push for more technology in the classroom. They are painfully aware of
the already too great distance between student and teacher, he said. 
	According to Sullivan, the dilemma is how to make learning
more intimate, even as it fully embraces the technology now available.

	Educators could, Sullivan said, connect these two seemingly
disparate items and thereby give students an enlightened escort into
the 21st century. 
	Sullivan also urged educators to reexamine structures of
educational delivery, now more than 80 years old, to see if they still
work. "Principles should stay," he said, "forms can change. Students
in universities today are not the same demographically as they were 40
years ago. Yet (the structures of educational delivery) are the same.
Is this a good idea? I'm not so sure."