Jim Lassoie is an International Professor of Conservation in the Department of Natural Resources, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University. He was educated as a forest ecologist at the University of Washington and joined the Cornell faculty in 1976. The applied perspectives he gained as New York’s Extension Forester (1976-1990) and during the development of an interdisciplinary research program focused on conservation and sustainable development during the 1990s are deeply reflected in his accomplishments as an educator and applied scholar. Jim has received a number of grants and awards for his innovative approaches to experiential learning and has been especially successful integrating international perspectives on sustainable food, forage, and fiber production into conservation and environmental management courses. Most recently, this involved designing collaborative case studies on agroforestry, conservation, eco-agriculture, and sustainable agriculture for an educational website and developing a service learning course supporting sustainable community-based enterprises in a mountainous region of Ecuador. He has advised over 80 graduate students and has a long list of research and extension publications. Jim and his forest ecologist spouse, Dr. Ruth Sherman, have worked together in Latin America and Asia for many years and share a variety of extracurricular interests including travel, eco-tourism, hiking, photography, and ‘managing’ 175 acres of woodlands outside Ithaca. For over 50 years, my institution has formally supported international educational opportunities for undergraduates though Cornell Abroad (https://www.cuabroad.cornell.edu/), the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies (http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/), and International Programs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (https://ip.cals.cornell.edu/about). Early in 2012, then President David Skorton challenged the university community to significantly enhance the internationalization of the undergraduate curriculum to assure that at least half of our students had a “meaningful” international experience before they graduated. As an International Professor I was pleased to see that this call resulted in a faculty task force, enhancement of the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs, the recent Engaged Cornell initiative (http://engaged.cornell.edu/), and the availability of funding for new courses and curricula focused international engaged learning. This is steadily increasing the number and diversity of opportunities to study abroad; including a service learning course I developed where students work with community organizations in rural Ecuador to promote sustainable development (http://cuabroad.cornell.edu/index.cfm?FuseAction=programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=10379.
But, let’s do the math. Cornell has a ‘capped’ undergraduate population of about 14300, so President Skorton wanted about 7000 to have gained a “meaningful” international experience by Commencement Day. Before his call to action it was estimated that about 25% of our students had “some type” of international experience as undergraduates; this means we need to add about 3500 students to reach 50%. Of course, transfer students, guaranteeing “meaningful”, and the fact that most students seek international experiences as juniors or seniors further complicate my simple arithmetic. But, I ‘m left wonder if we have the student body capacity to put that many more juniors and seniors on airplanes.
To my knowledge we lack an estimate of the number of our students hoping to study abroad, either for a semester or during winter or summer intersessions (i.e., demand side). It has been my experience that many undergraduates forgo studying aboard because of financial constraints; language concerns; on-campus curricular demands; and/or personal, campus-life, and social priorities. Most certainly, Cornell’s new internationalization initiative is increasing the options available (i.e., supply side), but I posit that we might be competing for approximately the same pool of students – rather than greatly growing its size. This is currently an untested hypothesis, but antidotal evidence is around. For example, as my Ecuador course grew in in popularity and student numbers during the past 3-years, enrollment in a similar course focused on Mexico steadily declined and likely will be discontinued next year.
In a world facing rapid changes no one can logically dispute the value of modifying college curricula to provide students with “meaningful” opportunities for the self-reflection and enhanced understanding of socio-environmental complexities that are associated with international travel and study, especially in developing countries. However, are we confident that ‘enough’ students are using and benefiting from the large and growing number of international study opportunities on my camps and elsewhere? I could easily argue that in a modern world far more than 50% of college graduates should have an international perspective on their chosen course of study. How do we reach so many students? I’ve been working for a number of years to approximate a “meaningful” international experience for those unwilling or unable to study abroad.
However, before summarizing a couple of approaches I’ve used to internationalize my courses I expect some of you are wondering what I consider to be a “meaningful” international experience. Well, it’s basically an Oreo cookie, but hopefully more healthy! Students and many service providers logically focus on the frosting – the in-country milieu. We can quickly list essentials such as travel and lodging logistics; health and safety; associated costs and the availability of scholarships; and in-country coursework, fieldwork, and extra-curricular excursions and adventures. In addition, I believe that pedagogies that emphasize ‘engagement,’ such as authentic/experiential and service learning, greatly enhance the relevance of international experiences, thereby leading to greater understanding, motivation, and professional confidence among participating students. This requires developing opportunities for students to engage in close interpersonal interactions with collaborating partners to gain accurate and insightful specifics about local culture and lifestyles, social and economic dynamics, governing structures, civil society, and/or environmental and sustainability issues. In non-English speaking countries, of course, the level and resulting take-home values of engagement is greatly dependent on the language skills of participating students.
To finish my analogy, I’ll sandwich the frosting between two critical on-campus elements, which further define “meaningful” – pre-experience preparation and post-experience reflection. Since most of our students study aboard during their junior or senior years, the initial pre-experience step is to help first- and second-year students scrutinize the variety of international opportunities available and identify those meeting their personal and professional goals. Then students need be given the guidance and time needed to adequately prepare for their chosen experience, such as through appropriate geopolitical, eco-environmental, and/or language study. The second step focuses directly on preparing students for the specific international experience, which includes details about the socio-environmental setting. This builds the knowledge, insights, and sensitivities that underpin a student’s ability to work and learn while immersed in another culture. For example, building-up to a 3-week January fieldtrip, my fall semester service learning course uses readings, multi-media, guest lectures, and facilitated discussions to gain a ‘sense of place’ environmentally and socially; the latter involves exploring and deconstructing questions of power and privilege, social responsibility, environmental responsibility, civil disobedience, and social equity specific to our study region in Ecuador. Of course, travel and health issues and safety logistics also need to be addressed before students leave campus.
As noted in Prof. Courtney Meyers’ Guest Blog in early February, post-experience relfelction is the “…trademark of service learning” – and I’d argue that it is absolutely necessary for fulfilling a “meaningful” international experience. Facilitated post-experience reflection allows students to assess what they have gained personally and professionally from the experience and how these insights will influence their futures. This is where students often emphatically espouse on the academic uniqueness of such “life-changing experiences” in helping them focus their lives and careers. Unfortunately, many international experiences, especially those developed independently by students, lack the opportunity for facilitated post-trip reflection.
Not surprising, students consistently report the success of the “Oreo cookie” approach to study abroad in enhancing their academic experiences. Likewise, disaster stories abound that can be traced to “cookie failure.” However, this comprehensive approach is also the “Gold Standard” with respect to faculty and staff time and financial costs to students and sponsoring institutions. Hence, courses that include international travel are difficult to initiate and often harder to maintain, especially in competitive settings where supply and demand are in flux. Hence, a ‘safer’ and less costly approach in time and money is to stay home! So, after this long preamble, I’ll close by providing a couple suggestions about Internationalizing Your Classroom Without Leaving It.
As researchers we commonly build networks of colleagues with whom we collaborate, individuals both on and off our home campuses. For those working internationally, this network is worldwide. While team-teaching is a common practice among on-campus colleagues, videoconferencing technology makes it relatively cheap and easy to team-teach across vast distances. Beginning in the mid-90s Cornell has offered the 3-credit Global Seminar (I was involved 1999-2015) – a dynamic, collaborative learning course involving five other academic institutions in Australia, China, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Sweden and collectively over 125 students each term. Annually, the multi-institutional faculty team identifies the theme for the semester (e.g., 2015: Building Sustainable Environments and Secure Food Systems for a Modern World) and develops an appropriate curriculum using Skype chats. During the semester, students simultaneously examine faculty-developed case studies on sustainable agriculture and environmental conservation (e.g., Water and Food Security, GMOs, Climate Change, Land Grabs, Indigenous Knowledge, Global Responsibility), each supported by information provided via a common Blackboard course site and culminating in a videoconference ‘stakeholder’ debate among student teams from each institution. Post-conference discussion boards further addressed issues left unresolved during the debate. To account for tuition discrepancies, the Global Seminar is offered independently at each school, and grading and supplemental assignments are left to the respective institutions, which eliminate inter-institutional comparisons and allow internal standards to be maintained. With the declining cost of videoconferencing only a few inherent challenges remain, such as time zone differences, non-responsive students (and faculty!), and the occasional technical meltdown at one of the schools. Despite these problems students consistently value the opportunity to discuss complex interdisciplinary global topics with an international student body. This provides a diversity of geopolitical perspectives on sustainable development and our students gain sometimes-abrupt insights into how the rest of the world perceives the ‘privileged stature’ of the United States in general and Cornell students in specific. Global Seminar is certainly not a semester abroad, but how close is it to providing similar learning outcomes?
I began teaching an upper-division 4-credit International Conservation course in 2004 and was soon frustrated by my inability to bring reality into the classroom. Like many applied science courses my students wanted, and needed, concepts and principles underpinning conservation science, but they were in the course because they wanted to do international conservation. Students happily suggested fieldtrips to Kenya or Costa Rica as breaks from Ithaca’s typical winters! Instead, I successfully used published case studies, team projects, international guest speakers, and Internet resources to approximate ‘real-world’ conservation, but a lingering feeling of irrelevance remained because the problems we addressed were always abstract (a.k.a., “book-learning”) and often contrived by me. Working with one of my then PhD students, Dr. R. Jamie Herring, in 2007 we hatched an idea to link students directly with practitioners working on ‘real’ conservation problems around the world, including the United States. This led to external support from various sources to develop a portfolio of collaborative, multi-media case studies focused on environmental conservation and sustainable agriculture, plus an innovative, open-access website, www.conservationbridge.org. Currently, additional ‘domestic’ cases are being developed in collaboration with Cornell Cooperative Extension.
As cases were developed, I began using them in my various courses: for TA-led discussions in an introductory environmental science course, as 3-week collaborative learning modules in the Global Seminar, and for a senior ‘capstone’ course where student teams work directly with collaborating practitioners via Skype and e-mail to address specific questions identified within their specific case studies. In all situations this has provided an authentic learning experience because students are addressing ‘real’ issues that affect ‘real’ people. The capstone course provides engagement and service learning opportunities for students and assists practitioners in addressing problems they are currently facing. Students in all courses consistently agreed that cases were valuable, improved their understanding of key course concepts, and increased their motivation (see below). I have no idea how these learning outcomes would compare with courses offering fieldtrips, but I do know this approach is cheaper and enhances access for a larger and more diverse group of students.
Increased interdisciplinary understanding
of sustainability
“We
discovered the link between environmental and social issues.”
“The
case was presented very pleasantly and it was fine, but looking more into it,
I realized there's a political issue here and I became
morally opposed.”
“[We had] biologists,
sociologists and economists working together.”
Increased in motivation
“The video makes it feel a little more real,
a little more engaging.”
“You
can see the people. You can see the landscapes. Sometimes that's hard
to extract from a journal article.”
“The
videos did a good job of bringing interesting issues in an accessible way.”
“We
are talking with real people who are facing these problems.”
“Meeting
the practitioner builds a greater sense of accountability.”
Increased self-efficacy and
influence their future course and career choices
“I
feel more confident expressing my opinion.”
“It
was kind of like eye opening.”
[Our team
realized] students can actually make a
difference.”
“It's
been great. [This class] made me realize what I wanted to do.”
“Strengthened
that feeling that I wanted to take more courses [in marine
systems].”
“I
recognize the importance of interdisciplinary studies.”
“I
was forced to learn more about the social sides of things.”
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