Study abroad initiative boosts understanding, helps students relate

In a volatile world, efforts to promote international study and understanding become more important.

"I don't think 9/11 was the result of knowing too much about each other," says Carol Dickerman, director of the Office of International Programs (OIP). "I think that our world is such that we have to know about each other as much as possible."

Student Ilan Brandvain (above) weeds on a Cuban farm while participating in a class exercise. (Below) Three students in Catherine Badgley's "Food, Land and Society" class pose with a male vendor as others look on at a farmer's market in Cojimar, Cuba. The students are, from left, Lydia Child, Sarah Watkins (seated) and Caitlin Brown. The University is expanding the Office of International Programs' Integrating Study Abroad into the Curriculum initiative, started in 2004 with funds from the International Institute and LSA Dean's Office. Backers say that studying abroad makes lessons and concepts hit home for students. Courses will continue in Winter 2006—thanks to grants from the LSA Dean's Office and a gift from LSA alum Beverly Lannquist Hamilton—and in Winter 2007. (Photos by Catherine Badgley)

That's one of the reasons the University is expanding the OIP Integrating Study Abroad into the Curriculum (ISAC) initiative, founded in 2004 with start-up funds from the International Institute and LSA Dean's Office. Students in fields ranging from architecture to Slavic languages are benefiting from grants that reduce their costs to go abroad for course study to roughly $500 per student.

"Instead of photographs and architectural drawings presented on a screen in the form of slides and PowerPoint images, students can see and move through buildings in reality," says Lydia Soo, associate professor of architecture. She led students on a 2004 trip to Rome through the program, and plans to return.

"By observing the urban spaces they had initially studied back in Ann Arbor, at varying times of day and with people present, the students came to a new understanding of their architectural and sociological nature," Soo says. "After returning home for six more weeks of class, I found that the students were much more engaged in the subject, having now an exponentially higher understanding of the form of the city and the issues involved in its physical development."

Dickerman says that for the latest round, for courses to be taught in Winter 2006, they have been able to fund three proposals, thanks to start-up grants from the LSA Dean's Office and a gift from LSA alum Beverly Lannquist Hamilton. And they are funding up to seven proposals for Winter 2007.

"I'm excited about this program because it integrates international education with Ann Arbor-based courses, internationalizing the undergraduate curriculum and providing students with what is, in effect, field experience in a range of course and locations," she says. "It also brings to life what faculty are trying to convey in the classroom."

Catherine Badgley, a research scientist with the Museum of Paleontology and Residential College, participated last year in an ISAC-sponsored trip to Cuba, for her class "Food, Land, and Society," co-taught with Ivette Perfecto. "We collaborated with two universities in Cuba to arrange a more detailed and elaborate program," Badgley says. A U.S. State Department license issued to the University made travel for the class possible.

Students worked on Cuban farms for a week, from 8 a.m. to nearly 2 p.m. "They found out what life was like for farmers, everything from harvesting to weeding and planting," Badgley says. Much farm work centered on producing guava paste, which is made into a hard candy that is popular throughout Latin America.

The fall of Soviet communism and subsequent drop off in machinery and fertilizers to support large farms has shifted the Cuban focus to smaller organic farms. Badgley says the trip allowed students to see the changes close up.

"Michigan is working to further internationalize its curriculum," Dickerman says. The international component could be a week to 10 days on site over spring break, or one or two weeks added on to a course at the end of the semester in late April-early May.

Others who have taken advantage of the program include Ian Robinson, an assistant research scientist at the Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations, in his course on Mexican labor and North American economic integration. He took students to Nogales, Mexico, to see and understand the maquila sector of the Mexican economy—where most of the Mexican-produced goods imported into the United States are made—and the consequences for the Mexican and U.S. economies and labor forces.

Roughly 60 students per semester participate in the program. Students earn one to two credits for participation.

Brian Buchalski, who graduated with a master's degree in architecture this year, also traveled to Rome in 2004. "I very much feel as though I am in the know with my professional colleagues and privy to all their casual references to the Eternal City," he says. "Not only did it reinforce the material of the class allowing it to remain at the forefront of my memory far longer than any slideshow presentation would, but it also filled a general gap in my education as an architect."