"In study abroad, we have had an idea of a gold standard, which involves immersion of students into a host culture. "
Dr. Mike Woolf

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Dr. Mike Woolf

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PEOPLE WITH IMPACT INTERVIEW - Dr. Mike Woolf, President, Foundation for International Education

Dr. Mike Woolf is the President of the Foundation for International Education, a London-based non-profit educational organization providing customized partnership programs and individual student enrollment programs in London, Dublin, Madrid, and Tuscania for undergraduates. In the following interview, Dr. Woolf shares his insights on key components of great study abroad programs and the rampant hyperbole that often pervades the industry.

Q: What are the key features of an exceptional experience abroad from a student perspective?
Dr. Mike Woolf:

I would say that an exceptional study abroad experience has to involve students stepping out of their comfort zone, whether that be physically, intellectually, culturally or otherwise. That is when you learn things—I don’t believe you learn things by being comfortable or necessarily happy. I did some work with Nikki Christensen and Sarah Dumont recently—we gave a presentation titled Student Happiness: Why It Doesn’t Matter. Ultimately, it seems to me that ignorant people are unconditionally happy: as Bertolt Brecht wrote “The happy man is he who has not heard the disastrous news.” What we as study abroad professionals want is for students to be challenged and taken to a point where they are in a learning situation, and that is not always a comfortable place. In our field we are in a consumer culture, but there is a point at which we must resist that imperative and stop worrying about “happiness”. Of course, we want students to be safe and well, as health and safety are very important issues in study abroad, but we cannot coddle them too much, either. I think we forget that as well as being involved in an enterprise, we are first and foremost educators, making our prime responsibility to educate participating students.

Q: From a program provider perspective, what should be implemented to achieve that end?
Dr. Mike Woolf:

There are two very important considerations. The first is curricula. We need to break away from the promotion of study abroad as a set of locations, as if partaking in international education was based on choosing between a series of holiday sites. Instead, we should stress a demanding curriculum. At FIE, we are very keen on building curriculum around the disciplines of globalization, race, ethnicity and urban studies, subjects that are not only relevant to study abroad but also intellectually challenging for students. The other necessary consideration is to respect the experiential nature of study abroad. We should strive to take students out of the traditional classroom and introduce them into situations in which they are unfamiliar. After all, a classroom in London, Paris or Beijing is not much different than a classroom in Pennsylvania or Poughkeepsie. Experiential learning should be integrated into the program, whether formally through internships, research, or service-learning, or informally through other mechanisms. The bottom line, however, is that we should aim to expand and explode the boundaries of the classroom in study abroad experiences.

In study abroad, we have had an idea of a gold standard, which involves immersion of students into a host culture. This is how program quality is traditionally measured. I happen to disagree profoundly with that particular standard as immersion could be baptism or potentially be drowning. It seems to me that we need to be much more thoughtful when we say we want to ‘immerse’ our students in another culture. If you look at the models of anthropology, the model applied to studying in a culture outside of your own is that of a participant-observer. There are two sides to that coin—participant suggests an immersion or engagement model while the observer is a detachment model. If you thrust students into another culture without giving them the space and perspective required of an observer, you’re not doing them any favors. There is room for many models, and in no way am I promoting any one over another, indeed we apply both models in study abroad. However, it is crucial we consider proper methodologies that should be made available to students that enable them to study and reflect upon their experiences in another culture. When American students go abroad, they predominantly learn about being an American and the values and culture associated therein. That discovery is truly enhanced through peer group activity, and we have to build programs in a way that creates discreet space and facilitates peer discussion on this topic.

Q: We all agree that study abroad is important, but why do you think this is so? Would you consider study abroad to be more than ‘important’ but rather ‘necessary’?
Dr. Mike Woolf:

While I think it is important, I do not think it is necessary. It seems to me one of the big problems in study abroad is that we exaggerate the claims for what we do by utilizing a huge degree of hyperbole. This is one of those things. Is it necessary to study abroad to be an educated person? The answer is clearly ‘no,’ as internationally, many people that are highly educated do not have the option to study abroad. Study abroad is very much a Western European/American/Australian activity because you have to be able to afford to partake. That said, it is obviously, in my mind, highly important. But back to this notion of hyperbole in study abroad—we are landing ourselves with definitions that, in the end, will come back to bite us. The one that strikes me the most is the concept of the ‘global citizen.’ The idea is obviously an oxymoron—we are citizens of a country and we are not citizens of the globe. Very few people are citizens of the globe (except metaphorically) as it is impossible to be so since the “globe” is a very fractured and divided place. If we tell students that what we do is educate students to be global citizens by (for example) sending them to Paris for four weeks or even for a year, we are embedding failure in to the experience. Rather, we should be more realistic and say that the goal of study abroad is to create better educated citizens, and one of the ways to cultivate a better educated citizen is to experience another culture. We are burdening ourselves with these lofty hyperbolic statements that set us up for certain failure, especially in the case of the ‘global citizen.’ Another irksome and overused notion is ‘study abroad changed my life.’ The people that feel this way are well-meaning and that is wonderful for them, but there are some implicit problems in that assertion. Study abroad might have improved their Spanish language skills or influenced their outlook, but again, the hyperbole sets us up for failure. It constructs “abroad” as some kind of mythical place which exists to be “consumed” and to make young Americans feel better about themselves, when in reality, the object is to teach students something about another culture so they can be better citizens of their own country. It is only at the level of rhetoric that those exaggerated phrases make sense. And I’m somewhat embarrassed to find out that we use those phrases as well—my staff tells me we have to use them because everyone else does. But I don’t agree with those messages as they create an expectation of the activity that we could not possibly live up to.

Q: What operational improvements/study abroad industry overhauls are necessary to dramatically increase the number of students participating in international education programs over the next 5-10 years?
Dr. Mike Woolf:

Capacity is the primary consideration. One of the problems of the Lincoln Commission is that they basically said they want to expand into nontraditional developing locations and countries but they did not seriously consider capacity. For example, you cannot send an extra 500 students to Ghana without changing the infrastructure therein. We also need to think about models. My suspicion is that most growth will likely take place outside of the university sector, and we will need to look at innovative, creative program models that do not merely stress the notion of immersion, but also examine the creation of spatial reflection and the development of discrete space for US undergraduate participants. If any system is to grow to accommodate a million students, we also need to think about the fact that there will be more variety in the kinds of students that participate in study abroad. In essence, we will move from an elite educational model to a mass model. It is probable that , in those circumstances, student motivations will be less clear, and different pedagogies must be developed to address these populations. I am absolutely in favor of growth, but it must be intelligent, organic growth, especially focusing on inclusion of underrepresented groups as they are a particularly crucial element of expansion. Not to sound negative, but I don’t necessarily believe it is realistic to achieve growth to a million study abroad participants—the money probably won’t be there and the capacity won’t either.

Dr. Mike Woolf, President, Foundation for International Education
Dr. Woolf is President of FIE. He has held leadership roles in international education for many years with, among others, Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) and Syracuse University. He has written widely on international education and is sometimes active in his academic field of American Literature and cultural studies. Mike is an active member of EAIE, The Forum for Education Abroad and NAFSA. He has served on the advisory board of International Educator and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Studies in International Education. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of The Forum on Education Abroad. At FIE, Mike is responsible for the strategic development of the organization.

See an index of all the "People with Impact" Interviews

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