Building communities in study abroad. That was the theme of this year’s Guild Meeting. How do we build a community of faculty on center-based programs when faculty ties to institutions may be challenged by other priorities and commitments? Drew Faas from our London Center spoke about the role of core faculty in London and how they help to create a community within the entire Center. Alison LaLond Wyant presented on the role that faculty development seminars, which Arcadia held in 2017 for faculty members throughout Europe that focused on issues like developing learning outcomes and effectively using the city as part of a course.
The student role in the community was also covered by Tim Barton who talked about the tension present in students coming with their own communities and the balance between their desire for an experience with their own community of friends and Arcadia’s desire to have students engage in the broader community in which they are studying. Our colleague, Francesco Burzacca from the Umbra Institute talked about just how they intentionally engage students in the local community in Perugia with a particular emphasis on how students contribute to the community even though they are present for only a short period of time.
Andrew George our Director in London talked about our London Center and the community that is created among the students, faculty, and staff. He particularly highlighted just how students were engaged with different communities in London based on the program on which they were studying and where they were housed as well as their own personal areas of interest.
In the afternoon, Dave Rudd discussed the results of a survey which The College sent out to professionals in education abroad which looked at how The College is perceived by the international education community and John Fallon presented some key position statements which The College is working on around five areas: pre-program, orientation, accommodation. co-curricular, and diversity. We believe these statements take our mission and our hallmarks of teaching and learning one level further and allow us to center our own discussions as we continue to move forward. We look forward to making these statements public after our own review and editing period.
The final session was our student presentation. James Seiner a University of Michigan graduate who spent 6 weeks in summer 2017 doing research at the University of Glasgow on our STEM Summer Research Program. James did research on the mathematics of gravitational waves with Professor Martin Hembry. James gave an excellent description of his work as well as explaining the benefits of doing a research program abroad.