The Conscious Efforts of Key Institutional Leaders at Home Institutions to Replicate Campus Culture at International Branch Campuses in Education City, Qatar

International branch campuses (IBCs) are ventures in higher education that continue to make a global footprint in the delivery of higher education transnationally. However, there is limited knowledge on the intentionality of key leaders about whether to replicate the campus culture of home institutions at their respective IBCs. The purpose of this research study is to delve deeper into the motivations, conscious efforts, and intentions of leaders at U.S. home institutions and their decisions to replicate culture from a home institution at its IBC in Education City, Qatar. Specifically, this research analyzed who the key leaders were and their decisions about what core qualities were most valued and intentionally replicated, and it uncovered the tactics utilized in its replication processes regarding its IBC. A multi-site case study, qualitative approach was used as the method to frame the research along with interviews with former university presidents, provosts, deans, and faculty at the home institutions and at the IBCs. These individuals had most directly contributed to the decision making and replication of their institutions’ culture and had lived-in experiences that were critical to the purpose of this research study. The three IBCs included in this study are all located in Education City near the capital of Doha in Qatar. These institutions are (in order of branch campus establishment) a public, four-year institution (Virginia Commonwealth University), a private, four-year institution (Carnegie Mellon University), and a Jesuit Catholic, four-year institution (Georgetown University). All of the U.S. home institutions examined in this study had IBCs that adhere to the formal definition of an IBC as defined by the Cross-Border Education Research Team (C-BERT). This study revealed how institutional culture was defined by key leaders and whether campus culture replication did (or did not) vary based on the specific missions and attributes of each institution being examined in this study as well as the motivations and challenges behind the decisions that key leaders made at home institutions