Tag: international study abroad programs

Study Abroad: The Evidence

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Signpost near the Waiheke Island(New Zealand) ferry landing. Photo credit: Josephine Ensign/2015

Until recently, the effects of study abroad experience on college students were mainly anecdotal in nature—more in the form of personal testimonials from students about what they gained through the experience: “Such a blast! Best bar scene ever and their drinking age is 18–how cool is that?!” and “Did you bungy jump yet off the Kawarau Bridge in Queenstown?” to the more serious “It opened my eyes to the way Americans are perceived in other countries.” But parents, university administrators, and funding agencies increasingly want hard evidence on the cost-benefits of study abroad experiences.

The number of U.S. students studying abroad has more than doubled in the past decade. During the 2013/14 academic year (latest stats available), 289,408 students studied abroad for at least a month for academic credit. (Source: Opening Doors, an initiative of the Institute of International Education.) The Institute of International Education recently launched the Generation Study Abroad campaign to double the number of U.S. university students who study abroad by the end of the decade. The campaign also aims to increase the diversity in race/ethnicity, academic disciplines, destinations (the UK and European countries are the vast favorites), and gender. Racial/ethnic minority students, first-generation college students, and STEM majors are underrepresented in study abroad programs. In addition, 65% of study abroad students from the U.S. are female. Are young women more adventuresome somehow?

Here are some intriguing findings from recent studies on the benefits of study abroad programs. Controlling for prior GPA, credit-taking, and SAT scores, a student who studies abroad has a 10% greater chance of graduating in four years than a student who does not. Why would that be, I wonder? It does run counter to what many parents–and even some academic advisors–worry about with study abroad, that it will complicate a student’s credit requirements and therefore delay their graduation. In my own case with a ‘junior year’ study abroad experience, the summer semester’s worth of credit allowed me to graduate a year early. Perhaps through study abroad experiences, students see the value in completing their undergraduate degrees as quickly as possible and getting on with the rest of their lives.

Study abroad experience has been shown to increase students’ self-reported cultural sensitivity, self-confidence/adaptability in dealing with complex, unfamiliar living/working/studying conditions, and knowledge of world geography. The American Association of Colleges and Universities identify intercultural understanding as an essential learning outcome for contemporary university liberal arts education. Employers and graduate school admissions committees place value on prior international study abroad and other international experiences (such as volunteering). For health professions students, study abroad experiences would seem to be ideal for helping to increase cultural knowledge/humility, as well as perspective (and humility!) on the failings of our U.S. healthcare system.

Before our study abroad program started this summer, I asked our current group of twenty-two university students who are here in New Zealand studying community health, to write down at least four personal goals they have for themselves. While a month is not a lot of time for a study abroad experience, it can be impactful, plus I have found it is more accessible to a broader demographic of students who otherwise might not get to have a study abroad experience.

We have an amazing and quite diverse group, many of whom are in (or going into) health professions education, including nursing, social work, medical anthropology, global health, pre-med, and pre-physical therapy. Here (paraphrased to protect identities) are some of what they wrote/shared with me in terms of their goals for this study abroad experience: “To find my place as a global citizen.” “To be able to problem-solve bravely and maturely.” “To learn new ways to manage my stress.” “To let the fire in my heart truly burn for global health.” “To get the chance to slow down and really reflect on where I have been and where I want to be in the future.” “To be able to practice cultural humility and greater global awareness.” “To push my boundaries and push myself outside my comfort zone; deal with difficulties in a mature manner.” And finally, from one of our many ‘first time out of the U.S.’ students, “I hope to have culture shock and awkward moments where my ‘Americanism’ shows.”

If our students accomplish even a few of these personal goals during our study abroad program, I will consider it a grand success.

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International Service-Learning: Take Two

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Franz Joseph Glacier, South Island New Zealand. Photo credit: Josephine Ensign/2014

As a teacher, I believe in striving to learn from my mistakes. I also believe in the power of international travel and of service-learning. Done well, they can become life-changing, enriching experiences for students. Done poorly, they feed into the Ugly American tourist syndrome.

What follows is part of my self-reflection on a study abroad program in New Zealand that I helped lead in (our) winter of 2014. My essay, titled “Fossicking the Ten Essentials,” was published June 2015 in Traveler’s Tales/Tales-toGo. I’m about to embark as a leader on a ‘take two’ service-learning study abroad program in New Zealand and hope to have learned from my mistakes. I plan to publish a series of blog posts about our progress (while, of course, protecting student identities).

Fossicking the Ten Essentials

Fossicking: An Australian and New Zealand term for “rummaging” and “prospecting,” and specifically for “picking over the abandoned workings” (of gold, precious stones, and fossils.)

The Ten Essentials: A term coined in the 1930s by The Mountaineers Club in Seattle for a list of necessary equipment to take on hikes. Updated in 2003 to the functional systems approach used as the headings in this essay.

~ ~ ~1. Navigation

Using Google Earth instead of a compass or celestial navigation, my current location is 43.4 degrees South and 170.18 degrees East. High noon. Franz Joseph Glacier, at the foot of snow-capped Aoraki/ Mt. Cook, South Island, New Zealand. I’m sitting at the bottom of a huge rock and ice slide at the terminal face of the glacier where its melt waters run into the Waiho River.

The sun is out and there’s no breeze in this deep canyon dug by the glacier. It’s January 2014, high summer here in the land of the Southern Cross, so it’s warm enough to take off my jacket. There seem to be no bugs—no biting flies—no mosquitoes—and no birds to be seen or heard. Feathery waterfalls are cascading down thousands of feet from the sheer cliffs surrounding the canyon. The smell is elemental, metallic. All surfaces my body touches are gritty, covered with the fine glacial flour that turns the river waters to milk, that turns my skin to alabaster, that crunches lightly between my teeth, tasting of bitter iron.

The rocks at my feet are newly fractured, jagged, split open quartz crystals of dazzling white and pale green. I pick one up and gaze into it like a crystal ball, considering its history—considering my history—and considering how it is we came to meet here at the foot of an ancient glacier. Then I become aware of the sound of rocks skittering down from the top of the pile behind me. I will myself to stay, but I turn so I can keep an eye on the rocks. I’m aware of the folly, knowing I could never run fast enough to escape being buried when the rock and ice pile finally gives way. I’m on the supposedly safe side of the yellow rope barrier put up by now absent park rangers. As the sun heats the valley and the rocks begin to fall more steadily, I decide to walk back out of the canyon.

I retreat from the rock pile because I’m leading a group of fourteen young women, college students from Seattle on a study abroad program. I’m responsible for their health and safety for the three months we’re touring New Zealand. I lead them away from the glacier, back into the primeval temperate rainforest of towering tree ferns and vines. The steady din of cicadas and the occasional tremulant trills of bellbirds and tui envelop us.

When we’ve returned to the forest path, I tell the students I’ll meet them back at the van in a few minutes. I duck down a deserted, quiet side path for a few moments of peace—away from the students’ raw enthusiasm, raucous singing, and selfie-picture-taking in front of every scenic view—including the rock pile of the retreating glacier. As I’ve driven them around the South Island in a mini-van, some have taken to yelling out the van windows “Hey cows!” or “Hey sheep!” to scare the herds and then laugh hysterically. Those are the Biology majors, a fact I find ironic. I was a Biology major thirty-odd years ago. Was I ever that young?

On this study abroad program I’m ostensibly teaching community and environmental health, but what I really want to teach is the value of travel as critical self-discovery. Not the navel-gazing, bathetic sort of self-discovery, but rather the sort that leads to greater knowledge of and tolerance for uncomfortable aspects of ourselves and of people we view as “different” from us. I want to expose the students to the deep satisfaction of getting past being picture-taking tourists, instead, becoming travelers, perhaps even pilgrims walking towards the far horizon to arrive home.

It isn’t working out well. So far, halfway into our trip, it’s more like a case study of how not to lead a study abroad program. We’re traveling around so much it feels like we’re never here, in New Zealand. Staying in ten different cities and villages in as many weeks, passing through and ticking off the have-done-have-been-there bragging list of photo-ops, skydiving, and bungee jumping: I feel more like an adventure tour guide (and an emergency room nurse) than a teacher. It’s not helping that we’re staying in youth hostels full of international backpacking nomads who proudly proclaim they have “done Franz Joseph,” they have “done Milford Sound,” they have “done Rotorua,” as if these are all colonial conquests—places and natives and experiences to be possessed and bragged about. But I signed onto this program late and had little hand in its design, so I’m trying to make the best of it.

As we drive and tour and wander, I ask myself: Do we discover more about ourselves through movement or through rootedness to one place over time?

If, as Lucy R. Lippard contends in her book The Lure of the Land, “space” is passing through coordinates and “place” is pausing to make meaning of the space, does it follow that space is to tourism as place is to travel? And if so, what is essential for the work of transforming space into place, tourism into true travel, into pilgrimage?