Columns::A world of difference: Associate provost aims for more opportunities for students to get international exposure

since 12/15/98

Columns::February 11, 2002

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Campus News

A world of difference
Associate provost aims for more opportunities for students to get international exposure

By Beth Roberts
beth@uga.edu

Mark Lusk began as associate provost for international affairs on Oct. 1. He considers this an “interesting” time to be in

Mark Lusk

international education.

Columns: What effect have the events of Sept. 11 had on international education?

Lusk: It brought into focus something that had been diffuse. International education is increasingly important in the post-Sept. 11 environment. Some folks anticipated Americans would be less likely to study abroad and the United States would be less attractive as a place for foreign students. The preliminary indications are that that’s not the case--people have a heightened awareness of international events and a heightened commitment to study abroad.
The United States has always been the most attractive location for higher education, but there is increasing competition from Great Britain and Australia and even New Zealand. To remain competitive in the international education arena, the United States is going to have to make its academic programs affordable, because many of our students come from countries that are less developed than the United States and have difficulty funding their education.
Visas will be getting greater scrutiny than they ever have in the past and, frankly, we welcome that--although we don’t believe that the University of Georgia should be in the visa-enforcement business. That’s the government’s responsibility.

Columns: How can we make UGA more affordable for foreign students?

Lusk: We plan on looking to outside resources as much as possible--the Open Society Institute, the Department of State, and other agencies and foundations that support foreign student study in the United States.

Columns: Is that a new approach?

Lusk: The University of Georgia has historically been such a bargain that we haven’t felt the need to look for outside funding in support of foreign students. Moreover, our foreign students who are resident aliens and have graduated from a Georgia high school can compete successfully for the HOPE scholarship. But if America is to retain its competitive edge in international higher education we’re going to have to do more outreach and look for more funded opportunities. Students from abroad add an important dimension to classroom life for Georgia students.

Columns: What’s in the works for UGA students studying abroad?

Lusk: The university has almost 100 study-abroad opportunities, if you consider all of the short-term opportunities that we have. The part that needs expansion are the relationships with sister schools as exchange partners. Our short-term emphasis will be to develop additional exchange partners in several regions of the world, mostly based on student demand. The demand is for the English-speaking world and for Latin America.
The student who goes on a semester or one-year exchange has a qualitatively different kind of experience than a student who accompanies a professor on a short-term study abroad. Language acquisition and immersion in the culture are greater and students say, when they come back, that this was a life-transforming experience rather than an academically interesting and challenging experience--which they might say if they spent a month in France.
So we want to increase the ratio of students in exchange programs. We’re interested in arranging partnerships in Japan and with the non-English-speaking countries of Europe. I also look to Scandinavia. Everyone in those societies speaks English, so it’s a wonderful opportunity for students. While we expect them to acquire a working knowledge of the country regardless of where they go, many courses in Scandinavia are taught in English.
There are really two elements to the internationalization of the student body. The first, of course, is a language other than English. The second element, though, is cultural competence--the ability to navigate in another culture successfully, to understand what’s being said and done, the way people think and what they value, the way in which they behave, the way they transact business and so on.

Columns: Are there immediate plans for more residential study-abroad?

Lusk: The strategic plan of the university--and the president and the provost--are strongly committed to additional residential sites overseas. We have three in Europe--Oxford, Cortona and Avignon--in three different language regions, so the university is probably going to look for its next residential site in a developing country, ideally a Spanish-speaking country. Of the languages taught at the University of Georgia, Spanish is the most widely studied. Spanish is where our students have the greatest degree of competence and also the greatest demand. I envision a study-abroad site that goes across campus majors, that would attract students from fields that traditionally don’t study abroad as often--life sciences, physical sciences, agricultural sciences, and so on. We’re trying to reach out to the physical and life sciences and the professions as a market for study abroad. The business college has been very good at internationalizing its opportunities for students, as has the College of Education, but we need to do more. The student body has not been attuned to the importance of international education.

Columns: It’s a challenge to make it feasible for those students to study overseas.

Lusk: We’ve done a great job in the past few years with expanding study-abroad in agriculture. All agriculture is global today, with the international transmission of animal and plant diseases, with the importance of providing adequate nutrition for the world’s poor. We now have study abroad in vet med as well, and there’s now a course on international veterinary medicine.
With the expansion of study abroad at the University of Georgia, we’ve moved into the top 20 of U.S. research universities--the University of Georgia is number 15 in number of students studying abroad during the past academic year.

Columns: That is quite a change.

Lusk: That is really quite good, considering that we’re competing with universities that have a long tradition of study abroad.
It’s also a paradigm shift for the university system in the United States. Some of the smaller private liberal arts schools have had generations of commitment to study abroad. But for the large American public research institution--the University of California, the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia--this is an important departure from the past. It reflects not only the university leadership’s commitment to internationalizing the campus; the student body is coming out of high school with a more cosmopolitan attitude, with an understanding that--whether it’s Georgia agriculture or Georgia business or Georgia civic society--we are functioning within a larger context.

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