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By Scott Crawford
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G g l o n b i
Here are some interesting statistics to ponder: While postsecondary enrollment in the United States is growing at two percent per year, enrollment worldwide is growing at five percent. The numbers in China, where enrollment grows at a whopping 12 percent, are particularly staggering. According to InsideHigherEd.com, the number of universities in China tripled between 1978 and 2006, but even that could not keep up with demand for postsecondary education. Thus, the number of Chinese undergraduates studying in the U.S. has also more than tripled…and just in the past five years: from 8,300 in 2004 to more than 26,000 in 2009! But here’s my favorite part: when one Chinese undergraduate was asked why she chose to study at the University of Washington, she remarked that “Grey’s Anatomy,” the TV show set in Seattle, had influenced her decision. Think about that for a moment: a Chinese student studying in an American university because of an American TV show she saw in China. Does anyone need more evidence that we are living in a global age on a planet growing flatter each year? So what does this mean for U.S. colleges and universities? It is just one more reminder that when our graduates leave campus, they will enter an economic and social landscape that demands a minimum threshold of global awareness and cultural competence to succeed. Preparing students for such a world has become an unwritten mandate for any college in the 21st century. At Lees-McRae College, we take this mandate seriously. The Global Community Center (GCC), which serves as the College’s central office for international education, coordinates global efforts on campus, but these efforts go beyond the responsibility of any one office. They require an institution-wide commitment—a supportive administration, a motivated faculty and staff, and a curious student body—to produce a thriving culture of global citizenship.
Study Abroad Perhaps the most obvious way to build global awareness is to actually send students out into the larger world. Expansion of the College’s study abroad offerings, which currently include partnerships in Northern Ireland and London, as well as with KEI, a company with 14 international centers spread throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin 14 | The Pinnacles Winter/Spring 2010-11
America, has been a GCC priority. Study abroad allows students to engage directly with another culture while adding a vital global perspective to their academic studies. Take Lees-McRae junior Nathan Larson, for example, who spent fall semester participating in a European Union studies program at the University of Strasbourg in France. Larson, a business administration major, took courses like International Economics and European Contemporary Affairs while going on excursions to EU sites of interest. “This has been quite an experience,” claimed Larson in an e-mail from Europe. “All of my classes have been with international students. There is such a wide breadth of experiences to discuss in class. It makes things interesting and very diverse.” Studying abroad for a full semester is not the only way to gain international experience in college. According to the Institute of International Education, of the 262,000 U.S. college students who studied abroad in 2009, well over half did so through short-term travel experiences. This trend is reflected at Lees-McRae College, where students earn credit by participating in two- to three-week travel courses led by LeesMcRae faculty. In 2010, students studied marine biology in Fiji, wildlife biology in Belize, art and spirituality in Prague, and Spanish language in Costa Rica. Benefits of such experiences extend beyond the academic credit earned. Dr. Fiona Chrystall, who led students to Fiji, explains further: “It is more important than ever for students to experience and understand cultures and ways of operation different from their own. We live in a connected world, but connection does not always mean understanding. Experiential learning goes far beyond any textual learning that might take place in an American classroom.”
Globalizing the Curriculum Of course, not every student will study abroad. Last year, five percent of Lees-McRae students studied abroad in one form or another, far exceeding the national average of two percent. Still, to do justice to the other 95 percent, a college must provide on-campus global experiences. This has been a priority at Lees-McRae, aided greatly by a Mellon Community Foundation grant, which two years ago sent faculty members from the Appalachian College Association (ACA) to Salzburg, Austria to establish a globalization plan for their campuses.