Campus News
Study Abroad is a Two-Way Door for Cultural, Economic Exchange
(Continued from Bulletin home page)
“When the Senate passes this bill,” Greiner adds, “more undergraduate students will get first hand, cross-cultural interactions as part of their education. As a result, they will graduate having experienced other cultures, not just read about them. They will have immediate knowledge of how the world works that prepares them to contribute and prosper in a dynamic and truly global community and economy.”
Overseas institutions see the same multicultural benefits of study abroad. “When asked why they wanted to attract more U.S. students,” according to the IIE report, “81 percent of responding institutions reported that exchange of knowledge, culture, and language through personal interaction between U.S. and domestic students was the most important reason. Similarly, but to a lesser extent, 54 percent see their institution as serving a primary role in exposing U.S. students to a broader world view and another culture.”
According to its Web site, the IIE in 2007 launched a new policy research initiative to address the issue of capacity abroad (especially in non-traditional destinations) to host a greatly increased number of U.S. students, and to assure that U.S. campuses have the resources and structures available to prepare and send them. The May 2008 white paper on “Exploring Host Country Capacity for Increasing U.S. Study Abroad” notes that host countries’ capacity to accept study abroad students “appears to be in longer-term study abroad programs that last either a full academic year or at least one academic session, and in degree study.”
Arcadia’s newly created Majors Abroad Programs (MAPs) are examples of longer-term programs that require a year of study abroad as part of the major. Demand also is high, the report notes, for shorter-term study abroad opportunities.
Dr. David Larsen, Vice President and Executive Director of Arcadia’s Center for Education Abroad, says semester-length programs are important because study abroad “should not just be about ‘a trip abroad’ but about studying and learning in an academic program at quality colleges, universities, or established center of studies throughout the world. While cultural immersion, as well as excursions and other forms of co-curricular travel, visits, and explorations, are essential to the experience, the basis of education abroad should remain the course-driven and credit-based curriculum within an approved and rigorous academic program.
“In education abroad,” he added, “students discover something of themselves, and the wider world, about which they’ve always dreamed. They explore knowledge, culture, and their own identities in ways that wouldn’t be possible at home. They learn about subjects, realities, and people with an immediate and heightened receptivity. They reflect on their experience, both during and after, in a manner that changes each student as a person. As a result, they are equipped to contribute to the world around them with new levels of sophistication, understanding, and heart that are difficult to achieve without the experience of being a student in a foreign culture. The IIE report underscores Arcadia’s historical approach to study abroad—longer-term experiences.”
The institute’s white paper noted that, “From the perspective of overseas institutions, the main steps that could be taken at the United States end that would significantly increase the numbers of U.S. students abroad would be: a) increasing host institutions’ stature and visibility in the U.S.; and b) making available more funding and scholarships to enable a larger group of students to go abroad.” Arcadia, for example, allows all of a student’s scholarships and grants, except for work study, to travel with a student who studies abroad.