Study Abroad: A 21st Century Perspective - Volume
1 - Table of Contents
Still missing the boat: Faculty involvement in study abroad
by Norman J. Peterson
Director, International Programs, Montana State University-Bozeman
In 1990 the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES)
commissioned professors Craufurd D. Goodwin and Michael Nacht to
conduct a landmark survey of the international experience of American
college and university faculty. The resulting book, Missing the
Boat: The Failure to Internationalize American Higher Education1,
is a sobering assessment of trends affecting U.S. faculty participation
in international programs. One of the few bright spots in Goodwin
and Nacht's analysis was the increasing involvement of faculty in
study abroad programs for American students. "Overseas programs
for students," Goodwin and Nacht observe, "... perhaps
combined with other devices, remain one of the most promising unexploited
and even unexplored devices to provide U.S. faculty with the benefits
of an international experience...."2 A decade later
it is time to ask whether progress has been made in developing this
unexploited and unexplored resource for expanding the global horizons
of the American professoriat.
Before considering some of the central issues involved in answering
this question, it is useful to review Goodwin and Nacht's findings
in greater detail. Based on an ambitious series of site visits to
an array of institutions around the United States, Goodwin and Nacht
chronicled the barriers to getting faculty abroad. Declining funding
for the Fulbright Program and other international fellowships makes
overseas opportunities increasingly unaffordable. Shrinking U.S.
foreign assistance and area studies programs further deplete funding
sources for faculty international activities. Campus promotion and
tenure policies, which frequently do not recognize and reward international
work, make engaging in international activities detrimental to career
advancement. The changing demographic patterns of American families,
especially the prevalence of two career households, inhibit faculty
mobility. Perhaps most disturbing, Goodwin and Nacht discovered
a surprisingly pervasive American academic arrogance that questions
the value of overseas experience. Cumulatively, these factors amount
to a daunting challenge to maintaining the international skills
of faculty on U.S. campuses.
Although Goodwin and Nacht identified some promising institutional
models to use in combating these negative factors, the only positive
countervailing trend they could find is the expansion of study abroad
programs and the involvement of faculty in them. In their travels
around the country to all kinds of institutions, from community
colleges to research universities, they found an "explosion
of interest in study abroad among students."3 Faculty
leaders for these ventures abroad, Goodwin and Nacht believe, "number
overall in the thousands per year."4 Unlike earlier
study abroad programs, which typically involved a narrow range of
faculty members from language and social science departments, the
new programs Goodwin and Nacht found engage faculty members across
the curriculum. The impact of this experience on faculty is profound.
"A particular characteristic of the newer study abroad program
is that often the leader knows little more than the students about
the place where they settle. Study abroad, then, becomes a mind-expanding
experience for the leader as well as for the led. ... The effects
of study abroad on the leaders themselves are seldom taken into
account by institutional administrators when developing the programs,
but often they are great. We hear numerous tales from study abroad
veterans of career changes, research stimulation, teaching reinvigoration,
and personal regeneration."5
Goodwin and Nacht see great value in exploiting further the potential
of this trend.
"This is certainly one of the most obvious means to recruit
the recalcitrant and to reap the benefits of serendipity. Moreover,
it provides access to a source of travel funds. A natural objective
could be, perhaps, to make possible the greatest gain to faculty
from these experiences by providing for collateral or sequential
research opportunities or other enrichments, recognizing that
travel and set-up costs are already in place."6
Thus, the involvement of U.S. faculty in study abroad programs
may be one of the only means available to institutions to prevent
their faculty members from "missing the boat."
The accelerating pace of globalization since the publication of
Missing the Boat adds urgency to the need for U.S. faculty to acquire
global perspectives and international experience. Now more than
ever, colleges and universities need to ensure that they are providing
their graduates with the international skills they will need for
borderless careers. This goal is unattainable without a faculty
equipped to develop these skills.
Meanwhile, most of the trend lines Goodwin and Nacht identified
have only worsened. Congress appropriated $116 million for Fulbright
and other academic exchange programs administered by the U.S. Information
Agency for the 1992 fiscal year, while these programs were funded
at $109 million for fiscal year 1999. Little if any progress has
been made in modifying institutional promotion and tenure policies
to encourage and reward international activities for faculty on
the tenure track. The lives of American families have continued
to become more complex and less conducive to a period of time living
abroad.
So, how is higher education doing in taking advantage of the opportunity
to involve faculty in study abroad programs? It is difficult to
know with any degree of certainty because the data available only
give us a partial indication of the trends at work. What the data
does tell us is that participation in study abroad has grown dramatically
since the Goodwin and Nacht study was released in 1991. Extrapolating
from these data, it is safe to deduce that faculty travel abroad
with study abroad participants has also grown substantially.
The Institute of International Education's Open Doors survey of
U.S. higher education institutions indicates that the overall number
of students participating in study abroad has increased from 71,154
for the 1991/92 academic year, to 113,959 for the 1997/98 academic
year (the last year for which data are available)7. This
sixty percent-plus growth in study abroad since 1991 is bound to
translate into a major expansion in the number of U.S. faculty members
going abroad leading American students.
It is even likely that the increase in faculty involvement in study
abroad is proportionally higher than the study abroad increase,
since the percentage of students participating in the kinds of study
abroad programs most likely to be led by a U.S. faculty member has
increased substantially since 1991. Faculty members are most likely
to accompany students on short-term programs (e.g. those taking
place during the summer or between terms), rather than semester
or longer programs. These short-term programs have increased substantially
within the overall expansion of study abroad. For example, whereas
30.8% of the students who studied abroad in 1991/92 participated
in summer programs, this programs. One of the main responsibilities
of the "Special Programs" staff is to support faculty
in taking student groups abroad, offering assistance including budgeting,
recruitment, travel arrangements, orientation, health and safety
issues, and awarding credits. The Special Programs unit at Montana
State has been very successful in increasing interest in study abroad
on the part of the faculty.
Another way to get more "bang-for-the-buck" from faculty-led
programs abroad is to consider how these programs fit most effectively
into the overall international education program for the institution.
Are there ways to conduct these programs to obtain more impact for
both the students and the faculty members? One of the most promising
ways to accomplish this is to reconsider the level of students for
whom these programs are designed. The tendency is for faculty to
want to take advanced undergraduate and graduate students on sojourns
focused on issues of major scholarly interest. But this approach
does not generally accomplish as much as gearing these programs
for younger students and using them as an introduction to international
programs. If short-term faculty-led study abroad programs are designed
for freshmen and sophomores, they can provide the foundation for
a full semester or academic year program later in the student's
career. This is ultimately more fulfilling for both the students
and the faculty member. The student gets the benefit of a much more
profound study abroad experience than that provided by the short-term
group program, and the faculty member gets the satisfaction of watching
the student develop through this process, knowing that their program
started them on this path.
In conclusion, Goodwin and Nacht's 1991 classic survey and analysis
of U.S. faculty international activity Missing the Boat still provides
us with pertinent insights regarding ways in which study abroad
programs can enhance the international perspectives of the faculty,
at least partially counteracting the influence of trends which tend
to inhibit faculty international activities. Although it is hard
to define the current level of participation of faculty in study
abroad, the substantial growth of study abroad over the last decade
and the disproportionate increase in short-term group programs indicate
that the overall number of faculty involved in these programs has
been rapidly increasing. The challenge to higher education institutions,
as Goodwin and Nacht pointed out nearly ten years ago, is to find
ways to enhance the value of the international experience faculty
have, with relatively low cost expenditures. There certainly are
ways in which faculty-led study abroad programs can be more effective
if carefully planned within the overall context of an institutional
international education program. Clearly, international programs
offices have "missed the boat" to some extent in not taking
full advantage of the potential offered by the growing involvement
of faculty in study abroad programs. Another decade should not go
by without taking full advantage of Goodwin and Nacht's suggestions.
References
1 Craufurd D. Goodwin and Michael Nacht, Missing the Boat: The
Failure to Internationalize American Higher Education, (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge), 1991.
2 Ibid. p. 15.
3 Ibid., p. 14.
4 Ibid., p. 15.
5 Ibid., pp. 14-15.
6 Ibid., pp. 15-16.
7 Open Doors 98/99: Report on International Educational Exchange,
(Institute of International Education, New York), 1999, p. 58.
8 Ibid., p. 62.
9 Ibid.
Next article: Building Diversity into Study
Abroad Programs by Connie Perdreau
Back to Study Abroad: A 21st Century Perspective
- Table of Contents |
