MSU Boasts Largest Study Abroad Program in Nation

Students are opting to cross international borders in record numbers, making study abroad a common and well-integrated feature of the undergraduate experience at MSU.

According to the Institute of International Education's December 1999 report "Open Doors 1997-98," MSU sent the largest number of students abroad from any single campus in the United States-a total of 1,454 or 22 percent of the graduating class.
"MSU has increased enrollments by 101 percent over a four-year period by making programs more accessible and affordable, all while enhancing quality," said MSU President Peter McPherson. "In democratizing access to study abroad, MSU has developed strategies to make it relatively easy to participate in a broad range of international experiences.

"Making as many programs as affordable as possible continues to be our goal. We have put in place a number of programs that don't cost any more, roughly, than what it costs to study on campus."

One strategy is expanding and enhancing program choices that fulfill the wide variety of needs and expectations of individual students. MSU now has more than 140 programs in 51 countries, many of them in academic disciplines traditionally underrepresented in study abroad, such as engineering, natural science, and veterinary medicine.

"We at the Office of Study Abroad are delighted that more and more students are taking advantage of the many opportunities for studying abroad that MSU has to offer," said Acting Director Edward Ingraham. "We urge our students to live abroad not only because of the extraordinary possibilities for academic and personal growth that such an experience provides, but also because the international perspective to be gained will be invaluable in their professional lives."

With 22 percent of graduating seniors having participated in at least one study abroad experience, MSU is more than half way to meeting its internal goal of sending 40 percent of the undergraduate class abroad by 2006, a challenge that was issued by President McPherson in 1995.

Study abroad participation continued to increase during the 1998-99 year, with 1,565 students going abroad.
For more information about MSU's study abroad programs, visit the Office of Study Abroad Website at http://studyabroad.msu.edu/

-Lisa Acheson

Michael Kron, associate professor of medicine, sees patients in a rural jungle while participatingin the summer 1999 "Primary Health Care in Ecuador" program. (photo by Payel Gupta)

"Not only do they provide the intellectual anchor for the indispensable academic component but they also serve as valued guides in the exciting but sometimes daunting adventure of being immersed in a foreign culture."

Although participating in a study abroad program takes a tremendous amount of time, energy, and commitment, faculty members say the benefits are worth it.

"I spent over six years thinking of how to get our students to Ecuador," says Michael Kron, associate professor of medicine, who leads first- and second-year medical students to Guayaquil and Quito.

"The program that we developed, one that explores the special challenges in the delivery of primary health care in a developing country, offers students a glimpse of what is going on in other countries, in the hopes that they will take that knowledge and apply it wherever they may land," Kron says.

Grant Littke, director of field experience for James Madison College, has led students to the Czech Republic to study Central Europe. He says the rewards of going abroad for faculty are not always tangible, but the experience is invaluable. "Being involved in study abroad has opened doors across campus, and internationally," Littke says. "The opportunity to compare teaching styles with foreign instructors is a tremendous experience, one that enhances my own classroom instruction."

I. C. Shah Gives Back to His Alma Mater
I. C. Shah, founder and chief executive officer of ICS Telecom, Inc. in Rochester, New York, announced a pledge of $100,000 for study abroad programs at the 1999 MSU President's Brunch in November.

Shah, born in 1938 in Bombay, India, earned his MBA from MSU in 1964. In his remarks at the brunch, he recalled the predicament he found himself in shortly after earning his degree here. He married a woman from the United States of whom his family in India did not approve. His family cut ties, and Shah became a young man on his own in a place he had known only a relatively short time.

Michigan State became Shah's new home, and he benefitted from his time here as much as possible. "The financial assistance and leadership training I received on the campus as director of the International Cooperation Committee, the International Club, and Campus United Nations provided me with all the foundation I needed to be successful in life," he said.

ICS Telecom, which Shah started with $500 and 33 credit cards, is now a multimillion-dollar company. Shah says he believes his "years at MSU taught me to give back to the community."

Coca-Cola Continues Support
The Coca-Cola Foundation, leading corporate sponsor of the MSU Study Abroad Initiative, announced a grant of $150,000 over the next three years. The grant renews Coca-Cola's funding for study abroad and continues support of the Coca-Cola Global Fellows Program. Since 1997, support from The Coca-Cola Foundation has provided the opportunity for 345 MSU students to participate in a study abroad program.

"We are deeply grateful to The Coca-Cola Foundation for its generous and crucial support," said Professor Edward Ingraham, acting director of the MSU Office of Study Abroad. "Without it, many of the more than 1,650 MSU students who will participate in study abroad programs this year would have been unable to do so."

Michigan citizens and groups have frequent opportunities to participate in continuing education and professional development opportunities abroad through MSU-sponsored programs.

Recent examples of this sort include: a Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad program, administered through the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, for Michigan community college instructors to travel and study in Belize and southern Mexico; the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources' annual Food and Agriculture Study Tour of China for farmers,

Michigan State Senator George McManus of Traverse City (right) stands beside Jorge Retamales, a Ph.D. graduate of MSU's Department of Horticulture and currently a dean at the University of Talca in Chile. They visited a Chilean cherry processing plant near Santiago in February 2000. (photo by Jack Middleton)

community leaders, agribusiness people and MSU faculty and Extension field staff; and Summer Seminars in Spanish in the Dominican Republic and French in Quebec, Canada, for secondary school teachers, sponsored by the College of Arts and Letters and the Department of Romance and Classical Languages.

The MSU Alumni Association offers an array of travel/study opportunities. And a May 2000 Overseas Industrial Relations Tour, sponsored by the School of Labor and Industrial Relations, is intended to provide labor, management, and human resource practitioners, as well as MSU students, with firsthand insight into the changes in British and German industrial relations and the growing roles of the European Union and international trade unionism.

Southern Cone Agricultural Study Tour
The MSU College of Agriculture and Natural Resources' (CANR) Institute of International Agriculture (IIA) and the Michigan Farm Bureau co-sponsored a ten-day agricultural study tour to Chile and Brazil in early February 2000. Participants included people affiliated with the Michigan Farm Bureau, a state senator, and representatives of MSU Extension and IIA. Several MSU graduates living in the two countries helped to make the local arrangements.

In Chile the group visited fruit orchards, vegetable farms, and processing plants between Santiago and Talca. In Brazil, they saw extensive soybean and beef cattle production in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul-the state with the largest soybean production in the country. The trip allowed Michigan farmers to observe first-hand other dimensions of their global market-such as Brazilian farmers' interest in genetically engineered soybeans (currently illegal in Brazil) and the relationship of global pricing to local production costs.

The Institute of International Agriculture conducts several study tours each year for Michigan citizens. Previous tours have taken groups to England and Ireland, Belize and Guatemala, and China. A seed tour is scheduled for China in August 2000. For more information about future tours, contact the CANR Office of International Programs at 517/353-8873.

South African Education Group Project Abroad
In summer 1999, two Michigan State University tour leaders took Michigan K-12 teachers to South Africa for a month. The study tour was funded by a Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad (GPA) Grant to MSU's College of Education. The grant proposal, submitted by tour leaders Anne Schneller and Sally McClintock of the college's International Studies in Education, grew out of the highly successful lattice program.

lattice-Linking All Types of Teachers to International Cross-cultural Education-is a collaborative effort involving several

Thandi Mhlongo, principal of a primary school in Richards Bay, South Africa and Susan Howard, English teacher at East Lansing High School, pose during the summer 1999 Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad South Africa trip.

Lansing area school districts and MSU's College of Education, African Studies Center, Asian Studies Center, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. It fosters international perspectives among area K-12 teachers through a study group that brings together selected MSU international graduate students, K-12 teachers and administrators, and a small number of MSU faculty and staff.

While in South Africa, the 15 GPA participants studied issues of diversity and multiculturalism, lived with South African families, and traveled to Cape Town, Durban, and Richards Bay. The teachers had the opportunity to meet and work with South African teachers, artisans, and many others.

Completing this particular "lattice-work," a multiracial, multicultural group of South African secondary school students visited Michigan in the fall of 1999. The students and their adviser, from Kwazulu-Natal Province, spent significant time on the MSU campus, as well as visiting schools and traveling to northern Michigan.

Experience Abroad Gained Through Teamwork in Ireland

Michigan State University faculty and students from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR) convened a cross-border conference in Ireland in June 1999 with funding from the European Union's Office of Peace and Reconciliation. The purpose of the conference was to identify and discuss development issues that are especially relevant for practitioners who work on cross-border projects.

The MSU party was lead by Frank Fear, professor of resource development, and Richard Bawden, visiting distinguished professor of resource development. MSU resource development graduate student Margaret Desmond and CANR Bailey Scholars Scott Craven and Lori Preston helped plan and facilitate the conference.

Identified through the assistance of MSU's Institute of International Agriculture, 30 community development practitioners from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland gathered in Derry, Northern Ireland to participate in the two-day event. The conference was co-sponsored by the Northern Ireland Community Development Agency and the Conference of Religious of Ireland. Practitioners prepared case studies of their work, and MSU team members visited practitioners in their home communities before the start of the conference.

The practitioners are part of a network that has had great success in advancing the region economically. They would now like to expand their efforts and have invited the MSU team to assist them in undertaking a regional development effort in the west of Ireland. If a pending grant proposal is funded, the MSU team will serve as project consultants and also document the approach and outcomes of the development efforts.

-Frank Fear