In recent years, the university has strived to open doors while also opening minds by creating opportunities for international students and scholars to study, teach and do research on a North American campus.

Allowing international students to simultaneously gain enlightenment while encouraging an expansive worldview among students prevents homogeneity and encourages the global diversification and dissemination of knowledge, the aims of university programs such as the Master of Laws (LLM) degree, the visiting international research program and the Scientiae Juridicae Doctor (SJD) degree.

The “combined three international programs is (for most years) the largest group of international students on campus, Susan Montaquila, Assistant Dean of the International Graduate Program, said. As a one-year, full-time, graduate program, the LLM (a Latin acronym for Legum Magister) degree allows for many international lawyers and students to study the laws of the American Constitution based on their own interests and goals within the field.

By joining the university’s program, these students gain understanding of how American laws operate in an intimate classroom setting, where diversity of thought is encouraged by interweaving international students with American SJD-seeking students.

The LLM class of 2008 is composed of students from China, France, Gaza, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine and the West Bank, and past graduates have hailed from such countries as Austria, Bolivia, the Bahamas, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Wales.

Although it is possible for students to transition from their one-year LLM studies into longer stays in the U.S., to date the majority of graduates have decided to take their gained experiences and new knowledge back to their homelands to practice their preferred specialties, with an emphasis on international law.

With the support of the School of Law, many foreign academics are given the opportunity, through access to all university libraries, Westlaw, Lexis and the option of auditing law courses, to advance their learning by a more private and self-directing means through the visiting international research program. The strengths of this opportunity and the benefits received from participation vary widely compared to those of the Master of Laws degree.

For those aspiring to obtain high-ranking government positions in their home countries, the university offers a non course-oriented graduate degree: the SDJ. As the highest post-graduate degree offered by the Law School, the SDJ is highly selective and only admits up to three students each academic year.

Rather than directing students toward material worth studying and encouraging them through bruit coursework, the SDJ degree attracts already inspired international students and directs them toward research topics with the expectation of having a dissertation, original in content and worthy of publication.

All in all, the university had made a dedication to the future to expand international influence and the diversity of ideas that follow. To date, the three programs have over 140 alumni in numerous countries and in all developed continents.