In 2004, for the first time, the number of Americans studying abroad surpassed 200,000. While newer numbers are not yet available, there is every reason to think they will continue to climb steadily (even with recent legal turmoil over study-abroad providers and perks), since most universities now recognize global awareness and international experience as key components of the intellectual and vocational “value added” of an undergraduate education. Indeed, legislation approved by the House of Representatives in June would create a foundation whose goal would be to send one million American students abroad each year within the next 10 years.
As a participant in two study-abroad trips, first as a high-school student and then as an undergraduate, I well know how intellectually transformative and worldview-expanding such experiences can be. But I want to make a plea for a related though often overlooked type of experience. Faculty members need the experience of teaching abroad as much as students need the benefits of studying abroad. I firmly believe that a focus on teaching abroad is just as crucial for increasing the intellectual dynamism of our colleges as the current emphasis on study abroad is.
I have taught abroad four times at the university level: as a visiting professor with the Peace Corps at the National University of Rwanda in the 1980s; as a Fulbright chair at the University of Graz, in Austria, in 2005; as a Fulbright senior specialist at the University of Helsinki, in Finland, in 2006; and, most recently, as a visiting professor at the University of Malmö, in Sweden, this past May. The first involved a two-year stay, the second a four-month stay, and the most recent ones only two weeks each. However, there was no direct correlation between the length of the stays and their impact. Even the two shortest experiences were profoundly valuable for me, for the students I taught there, and for the students I teach in the United States.
Obviously, some teaching abroad is already part of our current overseas-study programs. Faculty members regularly lead student groups to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, and often teach those students as part of a summer or semester-long experience. That is all well and good, but it is not what I am advocating here. Just as students abroad benefit most from a total immersion in cultural difference and the unpredictable, so too do faculty members stand to gain more from teaching at a different institution, with different students, in circumstances outside their academic comfort zone. The proverbial yellowed lecture notes, stained and creased from years of use, rarely work with students whose assumptions and frames of reference are very different from those of American undergraduates.
I have learned important pedagogical, research-related, and life lessons from my four teaching trips abroad that I never could have learned otherwise. Rwandan students and university colleagues taught me how individuals even in the most difficult economic circumstances can create networks of support and information sharing to produce important research and locally useful knowledge; those networks are models for the way I try to interact with other faculty members now. From my experience in Austria, I have come to appreciate the American system of student advising, one that is still unique in the international higher-education landscape, in which students usually have to fend for themselves without benefit of academic and career counselors. Finnish students taught me how difficult it is to transplant American theories of gender and ethnic difference to a country with very different racial demographics and norms of masculinity and femininity; those are differences I now incorporate into my research. And my Swedish students and colleagues showed me how far we in the United States lag behind others in interdisciplinary teaching and research, and how radically we might rethink our professional self-definitions and boundaries.
If those experiences were useful only for me and my own self-awareness, I would not insist on their extraordinary value. My teaching and the experiences of my students here in the United States have been substantially enhanced because of my work abroad. Not only has my knowledge base in my subject areas, gender and cultural studies, been diversified and deepened, but my ability to broaden the narrow American perspective on the topics covered in my classes has expanded significantly. I can speak from firsthand experience about the culturally specific assumptions embedded in the materials I teach, rather than naïvely promote their transcultural truth or value. That type of humility is valuable but often sorely lacking in American classroom exchanges. Students will not learn the cultural limitations of their knowledge, which they must if they are to develop effective global-communication skills, if faculty members themselves are parochial in their vision and awareness.
We need more and different opportunities for faculty members to teach abroad. The Fulbright, a highly coveted and competitive award program, is
the one major opportunity that exists now, sending more than 900 faculty members abroad annually to teach and conduct research. Admirably, Fulbright has significantly increased its offerings in the past few years by starting the senior-spe-cialist program, which allows faculty members to teach or conduct short-term projects in host countries for two to six weeks. It is a program that I recommend enthusiastically. However, its rules have recently changed; individuals are now allowed no more than two awards in a lifetime, separated by at least two years. That opens up opportunities for more applicants, but it also means that those who might benefit from regular trips abroad will have to look elsewhere for assistance.
We and our institutions must take the initiative in this endeavor. My recent trip to Malmö was one that I arranged myself, as a simple guest professorship during early summer. It took more time and effort than if Fulbright had handled much of the paperwork, but the result was practically the same. I taught a two-week intensive course in American gender theory, with 36 contact hours over the two weeks and other work assigned to make it the equivalent of a full-semester course. I initiated the contact and made all of my own travel arrangements, while the university helped me find housing and gave me an honorarium that covered the cost of my airfare and living expenses.
I made the arrangements myself because I knew that my university’s Office of International Programs, as helpful as it would like to be, is overwhelmed by the demand for — and the amount of work that goes into — study abroad. Its staff members do not have time to focus attention on faculty exchanges, because they are flooded with students who need help arranging study abroad and faculty members who want to set up such programs. The office does excellent work, but not for those of us wanting to find ways to teach abroad.
Our institutions should develop new programs, parallel to study abroad but dedicated to facilitating teaching abroad. More-frequent bilateral exchanges would be a particularly worthy goal, getting American faculty members into other teaching environments and, just as important, bringing foreign professors here to learn about American systems and to educate our students about academic and cultural difference. Given the flexible scheduling at many institutions now (in the United States and internationally), two-week or three-week courses are an efficient way to do such exchanges while still recognizing the realities of faculty members’ personal and professional lives. Not everyone can take a semester or a year off (sabbaticals are rare and precious), but many can take a couple of weeks.
It does takes some financial creativity to ensure that modestly paid professors are not economically overburdened by the experience. Host universities should help arrange housing and simple necessities such as bedding and linens, while both host and home institutions might assist with the costs of transportation and living expenses. One way West Virginia University is beginning to support teaching abroad, even with its inability to spend much time on new initiatives, is by paying the airfares of some faculty members who teach short courses at overseas institutions. That helps tremendously in making the experience financially feasible, since the host campus cannot always shoulder travel costs in addition to everything else.
Teaching abroad is a process inevitably filled with small glitches and discomforts. My housing in Sweden was uncomfortable, and there were innumerable small problems with classroom availability, the scheduling of assignments, and technology. But that is part of the overall experience. More important, when I teach my gender-studies class here next spring, I will have new knowledge to draw on when I discuss the diverse ways people live and interpret their gender roles and envision a more equitable future. I have benefited, and my students will benefit. And all it demanded was a small amount of time and inconvenience, my dean’s endorsement of the project and tolerance of my absence, and the support of the university I visited. Those amount to a small price to pay for what I know will be an exponential return on our collective investment.
Donald E. Hall is chairman of the English department at West Virginia University. His latest book is The Academic Community: A Manual for Change, which will be published this fall by Ohio State University Press.
http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 54, Issue 6, Page B20
