My Approach

I had no idea

My first meaningful experience abroad came at the age of 23. I had graduated one year earlier, with a degree in East Asian Studies, and I was excited to begin a year of teaching English in the remote northeast Chinese city of Qiqihar. My degree had equipped me with two years of Mandarin and a decent amount of historical knowledge. I knew I’d face some challenges, but I figured my academic background would help. Little did I know what awaited me.

Culture shock. Confusion. Frustration. Full-on amygdala hijack. And no support.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that crucible of a year provided my core motivation for equipping students with tangible skills for navigating differences across cultures. Over the three decades since that year, I’ve seen the difference that targeted, well-designed interventions can make in students getting the most out of their experiences abroad. I’ve also learned how universities aren’t set up to provide such interventions.

Universities specialize in knowledge. In Alfred Bloom’s terms, universities provide “cognitive” learning: knowledge and understanding. To succeed interculturally, students also need “affective” (emotional) and “behavioral” (skills-focused) learning. Think of it as head, heart, and hands — with universities only providing the “head.”

It’s not like international educators don’t know this. It’s just that we haven’t known where to turn.

Sound familiar?

Unfortunately, hard is normal when it comes to providing needed skills for our students.

Maybe we’ve taken a few workshops on intercultural communication. We try to get our students to come to our thoughtfully designed pre-departure orientation. We bribe them with food as we walk through a model or two, and maybe a simulation. Sometimes it works well, sometimes less well. In the best case, we give the students something helpful — but it’s not enough, and we know it.

While they’re onsite, all bets are off. Maybe we have a staff member in a bubble program who teaches a one-unit, elective course. Beyond that, little is available to students as they navigate all of the emotional and behavioral challenges of studying abroad.

Then they come “home”...except home isn’t home anymore, because they’ve changed. Again we lure them to re-entry gatherings with food and the promise of fellowship. But they’re too busy with schoolwork, jobs, and the rest of life.

To top it all off, our students aren’t given the chance to distill how their learning makes them more attractive candidates in the job market, and how to communicate this to hiring managers in ways they’ll value.

When all is said and done, study abroad and international ed professionals know two things.

First, we know we’ve done good work, slogging with our teams through all of the logistical, financial, risk-management, and other work to provide our students with life-changing experiences.

But we also know that so much more is possible for our students — and we’re still not sure what to do about it.

Maybe we try advocating for budget to hire an intercultural specialist. Except, they’re hard to find, they’re expensive, and they don’t necessarily add enough value to justify the cost of employing them.

Maybe we look around for online courses for our students. We don’t find many, and the ones we do find demand a lot of time and money, and don’t necessarily build the skills our students need.

Meanwhile, the powers that be keep asking us to prove the value of our work, to show that the university’s financial investment is paying dividends. We gather some testimonials, put them into a glowing report, and hope it does the job…and fear that it hasn’t, and that our budgets will be cut.

The work that we do with university students addresses all of these challenges.

Have a look at our offerings at BridgeLabs, or book a call with me.