Teaching: Education Abroad
Expanding Access to Education Abroad (Continued from previous page)
CIE realizes it can neither predict nor offer programs to meet all students’ particular needs and interests. UWM students are therefore free to enroll in nonUWM programs abroad—programs that have not been vetted and adopted by CIE or a UWM department —and to pursue independent research, study, or internships abroad. CIE works with all education abroad students to ensure that they remain registered at UWM while overseas, can apply financial aid to the cost of their studies, and receive assistance in case of emergency. Currently, approximately 16% of all UWM students who study abroad and 35% of those who go for a semester or longer enroll in non-UWM programs.
This work has yielded an array of unique opportunities, such as a faculty-led, interdisciplinary program on globalization in Mexico and Cuba; a comparative service learning program in Oaxaca and Milwaukee; a multi-year, summer field research program examining environmental sustainability in Romania’s Danube River Basin; a summer business internship program offered by the China Studies Institute at Peking University; a community health program in Malawi; and regular UWinterim Africology programs in Ghana and Ethiopia. New programs have been developed to specifically address the curricular needs of students in the sciences and professional fields. For example: • • • • • • • • •
Marine Science in the Bahamas on the SV Denis Sullivan Geology of Volcanoes in Iceland Conservation of Rivers and Streams in Costa Rica Tropical Ecology in Panama Architecture and Historic Preservation in Japan and Sri Lanka Urban Planning in China Art, Anthropology and Culture in Peru Historic Archiving in Scotland Investigating Barriers to AIDS-HIV Information in South Africa
To further encourage overseas study, CIE has established the joint degree in Global Studies and the Global Studies Minor, both of which require study abroad. Global Studies Majors’ feedback indicates a strong appreciation for the semester abroad and three-credit internship requirements, since they provide additional assurance that the students will, indeed, realize their personal overseas study goals. The Minor was designed intentionally as a mechanism through which students may strengthen the intellectual connection between an overseas course and their academic goals, through further language and globalization studies that provide a deeper understanding of the context for their overseas learning. In 2009/10, 47 Global Studies students studied abroad.
As the program array has expanded, so too have the numbers of participating students in majors beyond Letters & Sciences. For example, in 2000/01, one Health Sciences and 47 Business students studied abroad; in 2009/10, those numbers had grown to 45 Health Sciences and 125 Business majors.
Moving forward, CIE will continue its efforts to strengthen the links between students’ on-campus and overseas studies while reaching out to more students with an expanded array of programs and strategies that enable them to see study abroad as a real and achievable opportunity. On a more practical front, efforts are progressing to facilitate student access by deploying a web service that allows students interested in study abroad to apply online. This technology tool will produce process efficiencies that should result in more students studying abroad, as well as improved service and communication with students prior to departure and while abroad.
Students of color have also increasingly opted to study abroad. From 2000/01 to 2009/10, participation doubled, from 39 to 80 students, including those who self-identify as multiracial. CIE’s deliberate expansion of in-house advising services to include informational programs and individual assistance with the development of study abroad scholarship proposals has led to an increase in the numbers of UWM underrepresented students who have received funding to support their overseas coursework. In 2010, these efforts were further rewarded by the Provost’s designation of funds to support Diversity Scholarships for overseas study.
CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
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