Message from Interim Dean
Mark Schaub
When he came to speak to students here at GVSU in 2003, as we were still reeling from the 9/11 attacks and ramping up the war in Iraq, championship basketball coach (and three-time NBA champion as a player) Steve Kerr provided a poignant personal perspective on study abroad. Noting that Americans, including undergraduate students, were actively avoiding international travel during the War on Terror, Kerr advised our community that “Now, more than ever, is the time we need to be going out and understanding others.” Coach Kerr acknowledged that it was a group of terrorists who had stalked and assassinated his own father, Dr. Malcolm Kerr, while he was serving as the President of the American University of Beirut in 1984.
I’m grateful that GVSU supports intercultural and international experiences for our students. Much of that support comes in the form of faculty sweat equity. Committed, often heroic, faculty across this university dedicate themselves to developing and leading groups of students on study abroad programs every year. For them, it’s not a junket. Their round-the-clock work, on top of the countless hours of preparation and budgeting and recruiting, is not fully compensated. They do it because they experience first-hand the transformative power of the opportunity for students live in another culture.
The Padnos International Center is also committed to extending the opportunity to more and more groups of students. The PIC’s strategic plan has been to increase study abroad participation by underserved student populations, including first-generation students, non-traditional students, and students of color. Last year, with the support of the Meijer Office of Fellowships, GVSU was celebrated as number one in the nation in terms of federally funded Benjamin Gilman scholarships for military veterans to study abroad. That’s number one for institutions of any size!
Progress has been made in the underserved population of students of color, and in the 2018-19 academic year, 18% of GVSU participants were non-white. One of several success stories on this front was the student exchange program between GVSU’s TRiO program and our partner in Chile, Universidad del Bío-Bío. None of the students who traveled either way had ever been outside their respective country. The enthusiasm of these Integrative Studies students is captured in
this video.
Another Brooks College program targets yet another underrepresented population of students: NCAA student-athletes. The hybrid section of ITC 100 (Introduction to Intercultural Competence) allows these student-athletes to compete and train here in the USA for the first half of the Spring term, and then spend the last 16 days of the term in Spain, living with host families. After viewing
the video about that program, you will be moved to support the new
Irwin Club fund to make it possible for more student-athletes to take part.
In that GVSU visit, Coach Kerr told all students, faculty, and staff to stretch themselves, and go to the most “different” place they could imagine. The payoff, he said, is all the more significant. All Brooks College study abroad programs support these experiences, and all the Brooks College programs take students to incredible destinations: South Africa (WGS), Namibia (AAA), Ghana (Honors), Spain (ITC), Chile (INT), and Haiti (Honors).
-Mark
