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Latitudes

Get a rundown of the top stories in international ed and Karin Fischer’s expert analysis. Delivered on Wednesdays. To read this newsletter as soon as it sends, sign up to receive it in your email inbox.

May 17, 2023
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From: Karin Fischer

Subject: Latitudes: Two colleges, two approaches to increasing study abroad

How two colleges made it a priority to expand access to study abroad

Both the University of Chicago and Worcester Polytechnic Institute have made it an institutional priority to give students an international-education experience.

And both colleges have succeeded in getting a large share of their undergraduates abroad — but they’ve followed different paths to do so.

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How two colleges made it a priority to expand access to study abroad

Both the University of Chicago and Worcester Polytechnic Institute have made it an institutional priority to give students an international-education experience.

And both colleges have succeeded in getting a large share of their undergraduates abroad — but they’ve followed different paths to do so.

Historically, students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, have studied abroad at lower rates than those in disciplines like foreign languages or the arts, although their numbers have been slowly climbing.

Educators at WPI, as the STEM college in central Massachusetts is known, viewed low participation as a problem. STEM fields are highly international, attracting large numbers of foreign students and sending graduates to work in cross-cultural teams. The challenges scientists and engineers tackle are frequently global in scope.

WPI is committed, said Mimi Sheller, dean of the college’s Global School, to “STEM-centered higher education that promotes global competency at the intersection of science, technology, and society.”

To get more students abroad required nontraditional thinking. “These are not students who come to college planning, I want to be a French major and spend a semester in Paris,” said Kent J. Rissmiller, the Global School’s associate dean.

WPI has, for decades, taken an experiential approach to education, its curriculum capped by an academic quarter spent in interdisciplinary teams focused on real-world projects with companies, nonprofit groups, and other sponsoring organizations. Students, who complete the projects during their junior year, have traveled to program sites around the globe.

WPI decided to expand the global footprint of its project-based learning. Through its Global Projects for All program, begun in 2017, the college increased the number of project host sites to 50, located in 30 countries on six continents as well as the United States. It also added to the number of terms programs are offered at existing centers. And beginning with the class of 2022, the college offered all undergraduates scholarships of up to $5,000 to help defray the costs of travel and ensure that all students can have a global experience, regardless of financial means.

Eighty-five percent of students take part in Global Projects for All, the college reported. Last week the program won the Andrew Heiskell Award for student mobility and exchange from the Institute of International Education.

About half of the funding for the new scholarships came from existing sources of financial aid, but the rest was raised through donations. Rissmiller said there’s a deep well of enthusiasm among trustees and alumni for the project. More than 90 percent of recently surveyed alumni report that their experience of international travel through doing global projects had a positive impact on their lives after graduation.

No other part of their WPI experience had as lasting an effect, Sheller said.

The college is now attracting students eager to have a global experience. Its international focus also appeals to prospective faculty members. (Professors lead the project teams.)

In fact, Sheller and Rissmiller said a new challenge may be to meet demand — the international projects are more sought after than those in the United States.

“Why not in Barcelona?”

When John W. Boyer became dean of the college at the University of Chicago three decades ago, few undergraduates, only about 40 a year, studied abroad.

In fact, Boyer recalled, doing so was discouraged. Students had a hard time using their financial aid abroad or getting credits for the courses they took overseas. “The thinking was that you were accomplished enough to get into the University of Chicago, so why would you go anywhere else?”

Boyer, a modern European historian who had lived in Britain and Germany, knew from his own experience that one learned to see the world differently through immersion in another culture.

He had an idea: Why not use Chicago’s distinctive common-core curriculum as a vehicle for study abroad? Because the courses would be drawn directly from the general-education core and taught by university faculty, concerns about quality would be allayed, and students wouldn’t face any difficulty earning credit.

Boyer’s pitch to his professorial colleagues: “If you teach European history in Hyde Park, why not in Barcelona?”

Five years into his tenure as dean, the Civilization Abroad Program began, taking a handful of students to France and Spain. At first Boyer faced detractors. “I was accused of creating Club Med,” he said. Soon, though, as returning students and professors shared their experiences, there was a waiting list to become faculty leaders.

Over the years, Chicago has built up a study-abroad infrastructure, with centers in cities around the globe, like Paris, Delhi, and Beijing, and a professional support staff. But the basic model has been little changed: Students spend an academic quarter abroad, taking mostly general-ed courses that allow them to fulfill academic requirements through a global lens. (There are also a few courses that meet more-specialized major requirements, like urban studies or neuroscience.) They also study a foreign language, although proficiency varies widely.

Small program sizes help build closer relationships between students and their professors, Boyer said. Many faculty leaders teach in locations that are tied to their professional or scholarly interests, and they have time to go to conferences, take part in workshops, and do research. Many apply lessons learned teaching abroad back in their classrooms. “It’s been a scholarly boon for our faculty,” said Boyer, who plans to step down as dean at the end of this academic year.

If lack of financial assistance had previously discouraged students from studying abroad, under the Civilization Abroad model, they do not incur costs on top of existing tuition and pay a program fee in place of on-campus room-and-board expenses. Those on financial aid receive a travel stipend for airfare.

Today, the demographics of students who go abroad mirror those of the student body. And 60 percent of Chicago undergraduates study overseas at least once. In the 2022-23 academic year, close to 1,000 students were slated to go abroad.

On the face of it, the Chicago and WPI strategies look distinct, one rooted in the liberal arts, the other in experiential learning. But as different as those approaches are, they are united by a common thread: Each is embedded in its campus’s signature educational model, a reflection of the institution and its values.

I’m always looking for stories about what it takes to expand or diversify education abroad. Share your best practices with me at karin.fischer@chronicle.com — and I may share your insights in a future issue of Latitudes.

Pandemic student-visa policy ended

With the end of the Covid-19 public-health emergency, the federal government has terminated its more flexible pandemic guidelines for international students.

In a broadcast message on Friday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it would no longer allow foreign students to take online or hybrid courses, reverting to pre-pandemic visa rules that require them, except in special circumstances, to enroll in full-time in-person coursework. Students are permitted just one online course per semester.

The federal agency suspended those regulations in the first days of the pandemic to allow international students, the majority of whom remained in the United States, to continue their studies online. But in July 2020, the Trump administration abruptly revoked the remote-learning flexibility, telling students to take face-to-face courses or leave the country, in what many saw as a backdoor move to force colleges to resume in-person instruction that fall. After colleges and others went to court to block the decision, the administration backed off.

Still, as the broadcast message noted, the guidance was always meant to be temporary. Students will be able to complete the 2022-23 academic year under the Covid-era policy, the department said, as well as take summer-semester courses.

Around the globe

More than 70 experts in national security and science are warning Congress that if the United States wants to win a talent war with China, the country must do a better job retaining top international graduate students and scientists.

Gang Chen, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor falsely charged under the federal China Initiative of hiding his ties to China, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, a recognition of his contributions to research.

Scientists in Canada said they have been questioned by intelligence agents about their ties with China, sparking fears of a crackdown on research collaboration with China.

More than 80 Jewish organizations are calling on the American Anthropological Association not to approve a boycott of Israeli universities over the Israeli government’s policies toward Palestinians.

The British government could prevent international students enrolled in some master’s programs from bringing family members with them, a response to a sharp increase in visas to dependents.

Imran Khan, a former prime minister of Pakistan, was arrested on corruption charges related to accusations that he illegally acquired land to build a private university.

The number of international students studying in South Korea has hit a high, of 205,000. But some of the country’s private universities may becoming over-reliant on foreign enrollments, which have reached 99 percent at some provincial institutions.

Youth unemployment in China is at 20 percent, a record and more than four times the national jobless rate.

Other winners of the Institute of International Education’s Heiskell Award include Rice and Indiana Universities and the University of Notre Dame. Purdue and Rutgers received honorable mentions.

The U.S. Department of State announced that 2,100 students are recipients of the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship, which seeks to expand access to study abroad.

And finally …

Did you watch the Eurovision singing competition over the weekend? One of the members of the group representing Ukraine, which finished sixth in the continental battle of the bands, wasn’t from Europe at all — Jimoh Augustus Kehinde first came to Ukraine as an international student from Nigeria. Ukraine’s musical gain might’ve been Britain’s loss. Kehinde considered studying there, but decided to go to Ukraine to study for a medical degree.

Thanks for reading. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, so drop me a line at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. You can also connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here.

Karin Fischer
Karin Fischer writes about international education, colleges and the economy, and other issues. She’s on Twitter @karinfischer, and her email address is karin.fischer@chronicle.com.
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