Pushing Study Abroad in STEM Fields

Study-abroad advocates have long faced a challenge in convincing more science, technology, engineering and mathematics students to take part, as many of those students have tightly sequenced and demanding programs that rarely permit the flexibility that a short-term or long-term abroad program demands.

Now the Institute on International Education is offering ideas on expanding participation by STEM students in a new white paper that explores models that have worked in some institutions.

Only 16 percent of 241,000 U.S. students who go abroad come from the STEM fields, according to IIE’s most recent Open Doors report. That compares with 23 percent of all students who study in one of those disciplines.

The irony is that a much larger portion— 40 percent — of 624,000 international students who come to the United States to learn are in the STEM fields. And 70 percent of all the international scholars who are in the country come from those fields.

But the IIE report points to several programs that could serve as models for improving study abroad in several of the STEM fields:

• The Global Engineering Education Exchange is a consortium of more than 80 institutions around the world. During the past year, more than 200 students — more than half of them American engineering students — have taken part. IIE says the program has been particularly successful at encouraging American female engineering students to study abroad, even though they represent only about 20 percent of all U.S. engineering students.
• IIE also has been managing a Central European Summer Research Institute with National Science Foundation support since 2005. The program helps science and engineering student pursue research internships in several European countries. Evaluation of the program is just getting underway.
• Private programs, such as the Whittaker Foundation and the Winston Churchill Foundation, also have been providing scholarship monies for STEM students to pursue international education.
• Research Internships in Science and Engineering in a 2-year-old program for American undergraduates to work in labs with German doctoral students during the summer months. The RISE students needn’t be proficient in German, as the primary language in German labs is English. And the American students get to participate in the creation of basic knowledge in their field of choices while also being immersed in the local culture.

Solving the Troubles with Teaching Arabic

U.S. and Arabic institutions could improve cooperation and create significant growth in the numbers of American students studying in the Arabic world, according to a new white paper just out from the Institute on International Education and the Hollings Center.

The paper, “Expanding U.S. Study Abroad in the Arab World: Challenges and Opportunities," was released at the IIE Best Practices Conference in New York on Thursday.

IIE and Hollings Center authors said American institutions sent no more than 2,200 students to Arabic countries in 2006-2007 — less that 1 percent of all U.S. students who went abroad that year. More than half of those who did go to the Arabic world studied in Egypt.

By comparison, 138,000 American students traveled to Europe in 2006-2007.

The paper’s authors note some hopeful signs for increases in Arabic study abroad: There’s been a 127 percent increase in the numbers of American students pursuing Arabic-language courses since 2002, accompanied by a 43 percent increase in student travel to the Arabic world since 2004.

To promote even further increases, the paper calls for:

• Preparing an expanded inventory to include all institutions in the region.
  
• Creating an organization of like-minded Arab world institutions to address issues of common concern, including academic quality, credit transfers, and institutional collaboration.
• Expanding Arabic teacher training and development of supplemental teaching materials.
  
• Awarding study abroad scholarships for U.S. students to study at any institution in the region.
  
• Organizing U.S. campus study tours for underrepresented Arab-world institutions.
  
• Sustaining ongoing dialogue between U.S. and Arab-world participants on the issues at workshops and seminars.
  

IIE Conference Underway

Today’s the day of the Institute for International Education’s Best Practices Conference in New York City. If (like me) you’re not there today, you can at least check out a copy of the conference program.

Any readers who are in NYC and would like to make reports are welcome to do so.

International Education Awards

Awards season isn't limited to Hollywood this month — the Institute for International Education will be honoring several universities and community colleges for their study-abroad programs at the IIE conference in New York in March.

Clemson University and the University of Kansas have earned IIE honors for a joint Maymester study-abroad program they operate in Carpi, Italy.

The schools are the winners of the Andrew Heiskell Award for Innovation in International Education for their joint program, in which students from Clemson, Kansas and other universities are immersed in Italian classrooms for four weeks. The goal is to give future teachers the global skills and dispositions that they'll need to operate in diverse classrooms.

“In short, the beneficial tension of living and learning in new environments heightens their potential in addressing the individual needs of each child in their future classrooms,” says Doris R. Helms, vice president for academic affairs and provost at Clemson, in a release from the Institute for International Education. 

Vanderbilt won honorable mention in the Heiskell competition for its Initiative in Scholarship and Global Engagement. The year-long program begins each January with an on-campus core course, followed by summer service or a field-based project abroad, and a research-intensive seminar in the fall semester when students return to Nashville.

In the community-college competition, Scottsdale Community College in Arizona is the winner for its program titled “Australia and New Zealand: Connecting Communities, Sharing Cultures.”

In the five years since the SCC program began, more than 40 students — half of them native Americans — have visited with and learned from indigenous communities in Australia and New Zealand. The students engage issues regarding racism, water and land rights, sacred site protection and rural-to-urban transitions learning.

“By focusing on learning objectives that include connecting our own communities as well as those overseas, this unique education abroad program has strengthened our partnership with the Salt River Pima-Maricopia Indian community,” says SCC President Jan L. Gehler in the IIE release.

Honorable mention among community colleges went to Chaffey College in California for its Study Near and Far program, in which students raise money to finance student travel to South Africa. IIE says the recognition is to honor Chaffey's "socially minded and fiscally practical" approach to study abroad.

Another honorable mention went to Salt Lake Community College for its Vietnam Study Abroad Program, in which nursing student connect what they've learned in the classroom with the needs of the Vietnamese.

Simpson's National Ranking in Study Abroad

Simpson College finds itself ranked 36th in the nation among baccalaureate institutions sending students abroad in 2006-2007, according to the latest data handed down from the Institute for International Education.

According to IIE, Simpson sent 270 students abroad that year and granted 425 degrees, meaning 63.5 percent of the number of students graduating had gone abroad. (I know — potentially a misleading statistic, but we'll take the publicity.)

The top 10 baccalaureate institutions on the IIE list are: Austin, Hartwick, Minnesota-Morris, Centre, Wofford, Colorado College, Kalamazoo, Bates, Goucher and St. Olaf. One other Iowa school, Luther, ranks 20th on the list.

Among doctoral institutions, Yeshiva University in New York, sent 75.7 percent of its undergraduates abroad in 2006-2007 to lead that category. The leading master's institution was Arcadia University in Pennsylvania, which sent 126.1 percent of its graduates abroad that year.

The Economy and Study Abroad

Study abroad advocates are worrying whether the sliding world economy will have a significant impact on study abroad programs at U.S. universities. At Simpson, it appears to be putting the brakes on student willingness to spend time outside of the country as part of their studies.

The Institute of International Education says the past 10 years have seen phenomenal growth in study abroad among college students — from about 100,000 in 1996-97 to 241,791 in 2006-2007. We've seen similar growth at Simpson during that decade, but since then the question here is whether the numbers are going to hold out.

The initial figures aren't looking positive. Our popular May Term program has seen a precipitous drop in international travel over the past couple of years. Nearly 280 of our 1,500 students went abroad in May Term 2007, but that number fell to 197 last year and looks to be around 170 for this coming term.

We've had to cancel several trips for this spring due to low enrollment, and it appears that the only May Term excursions with guaranteed high interest among our students are those going to the United Kingdom or exotic warm-weather locales (such as a course that will travel this spring to the Galapagos Islands).

I've taught four study-abroad courses in Europe since 2001. Until this year, these all drew between 31-37 students. This year's course to France has only 9, a number secured only with intensive recruiting and budget cutting from our original plans. 

To be fair, we've beefed up semester study-abroad opportunities. In addition to our long-running programs in London and Germany, we've started or about to start programs in Thailand, French Polynesia and Spain. But my sense is that not enough students are flocking to those opportunities to offset the drop in May Term travel interest.

We'll be investigating what other colleges and universities are reporting  for their international education programs. For what it's worth, IIE says that in 2006-2007 (a year, remember, when terms such "mortgage meltdown" and "credit default swaps" and "economic bailouts" weren't in common usage):

• The number of students studying abroad was up 8 percent from the year before. But Iowa students, who tend to be more frugal with college education, actually went abroad in slightly fewer numbers than in 2005-2006.
• Nontraditional study abroad locations were rising in popularity. The big gainers among destinations in 2006-2007 were Ecuador, South Africa, Argentina, China and India.
• The biggest losers among destinations were Australia, Mexico and Costa Rica.
• The United Kingdom remains, by far, the most popular study abroad destination, followed by Italy, Spain and France. Almost half of all U.S. students who went abroad in 2006-2007 wound up studying in one of those countries.

One standout statistic that deserves greater attention is IIE's finding that 65 percent of those going abroad are women. Why isn't study abroad more popular among men?