On “Service” and Relationships: 

While students often expect service to be doing something concrete and observable, the primary need identified by our hosts is to improve relations through intercultural understanding. This is much harder to quantify and observe and is an unfamiliar idea to many students. As a result, the preparation for the service on Pine Ridge must include comprehensive discussions of how our concrete service is secondary to our relational service:

It is really important for us to help people to understand the racial tension that still exists very strong out here. The more outside people we have come here and get past the stereotypes, then maybe they will have more respect and go back to their homes and tell people about the positive things that happened to them here. There is a very rich culture here, a rich spirituality, and we want more people to know about it. (N. Hand, personal communication, September 22, 2013)

Similarly, Steinman (2011) reveals that his host community (the Makah Nation of Washington State) prioritized the service as “being there” and listening to tribal perspectives. (Also see chapter 14 in this volume.)

A Student’s Summary of Her Own Learning:

When you spend time in a place like Pine Ridge, learning is no longer a matter of memorizing facts or analyzing a theoretical argument. You are instead learning from your core. You are being changed. And you will carry those experiences on as part of you. What I learned has gone on to shape who I have become and what I have gone on to do. Along with learning in a new way, I have also learned about my privilege and the responsibility that comes along with my education. . . . This is not something I could have learned in a classroom.

Putting the Local in Global Education (Publisher’s Description)

The position taken in this volume is that domestic off-campus study can be just as powerful a transformative learning experience as study overseas, and that domestic programs can equally expand students’ horizons, their knowledge of global issues and processes, their familiarity and experience with cultural diversity, their intercultural skills, and sense of citizenship.

This book presents both the rationale for and examples of “study away”, an inclusive concept that embraces study abroad while advocating for a wide variety of domestic study programs, including community-based education programs that employ academic service-learning and internships.

With the growing diversification—regionally, demographically, culturally, and socio-economically—of developed economies such as the US, the local is potentially a “doorstep to the planet” and presents opportunities for global learning. Moreover, study away programs can address many of the problematic issues associated with study abroad, such as access, finance, participation, health and safety, and faculty support. Between lower costs, the potential to increase the participation of student cohorts typically under-represented in study abroad, the lowering of language barriers, and the engagement of faculty whose disciplines focus on domestic issues, study at home can greatly expand the reach of global learning.

The book is organized in five sections, the first providing a framework and the rationale for domestic study way programs; addressing administrative support for domestic vs. study abroad programs; exploring program goals, organization, structure, assessment and continuous improvement; and considering the distinct pedagogies of experiential and transformative education.

The second section focuses on Semester Long Faculty Led Programs, featuring examples of programs located in a wide variety of locations – from investigations into history, immigration, culture, and the environment through localities in the West and the Lowcountry to exploring globalization in L.A and New York. Section three highlights five Short Term Faculty Led Programs. While each includes an intensive immersive study away experience, two illustrate how a 7 – 10 day study away experience can be effectively embedded into a regular course taught on campus. The fourth section, on Consortium Programs, describes programs that are either sponsored by a college that makes its program available to consortium members and non-members, or is offered by an independent non-for-profit to which institutions send their students.

The final section on Community Engagement and Domestic Study Away addresses the place of community-based education in global learning and provides examples of academic programs that employ service-learning as a tool for collaborative learning, focusing on issues of pedagogy, faculty development and the building long-term reciprocal relationship with community partners to co-create knowledge.

The book is intended for study abroad professionals, multicultural educators, student affairs professionals, alternative spring break directors, and higher education administrators concerned about affordably expanding global education opportunities.

Table of Contents:

Introduction—Neal W. Sobania

Part One: Framing Study Away

1. The Faraway Nearby: Making the Case—Neal W. Sobania

2. Matching Program and Student Characteristics with Learning Outcomes: A Framework for Study Away Curriculum Development—Mark Salisbury

3. Where Experience Meets Transformation—Amanda Feller

4. Evaluative Approaches to Study Away Programs—Mark Engberg and Lisa M. Davidson

5. No Common Ground: The Spectrum of Policies Related to Domestic Off-Campus Programs—Michael Edmondson

Part Two: Semester Long Faculty Led Programs

6. Global Issues Manifested in a Local Setting: the Arizona Borderlands—Patty Lamson and Riley Merline

7. Seeing Things Whole: Immersion in the West—Phil Brick

8. Sojourns in the Lowcountry: Gateway to Africa in the Americas—Jacquelyn Benton

9. Pedagogy into Practice: Teaching Environmental Design through Native American Sustainable Housing Initiative—Rob Pyatt, Jennifer L. Benning, Nick Tilsen, Charles Jason Tinnant, and Leonard Lone Hill

10. Preparing Students to be Workers and Citizens in a Global World—Connie Leboux Book, Jason McMerty, and William Webb

Part Three: Faculty Led Short Term Programs

11. From Immersion with Farmers and Autoworkers to Refugees and Immigrants: 40 Years of Transformational Learning—Jeff Thaler

12. Beyond Waikiki: Discovering the Aloha Spirit in Hawaii—Oumatie Marajh and Esther Onaga

13. GO Long or GO Short but GO: Study Way as Curricular Requirement—Scott Manning and Christine Dinges

14. “It’s so Good to See You Back in Town.” Participating in Makah Culture—Dave Huelsbeck

15. Practicing Life-Long Learning and Global Citizenship on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation—Kathryn Burleson

Part Four: Consortium Programs

16. Is Place the Thing? Integrative Learning in Philadelphia—Rosina Miller

17. Learning to Stand on Shifting Ground: the New York Arts Program—Linda Earle

18. Library and Museum Collections as Labs for Student Learning—the ACM Newberry Seminar in the Humanities—Joan Gillespie

19. Immersing Students in Conservation and Community: the Northwest Conservancy—Melanie Parker

20. “No Such Thing as Away”: Urban Immersion in the Upper Midwest—and Around the World—Sarah Pradt

Part Five: Community Engagement and Domestic Study Away

21. Essential Learning and Global Civic Engagement—Rachel Tomas Morgan and Paul Kollman

22. Faculty Development and Ownership of Community Engaged Teaching—Celestina Castillo, Regina Freer, Felisa Guillan, and Donna Maeda

23. The World is at the Campus Doorstep—Kent Koth

24. The Power of Place: University-Community Partnership in the Development of an Urban Semester—JoDee Keller, Rose McKenney, Kathy Russell, and Joel Zylstra

Afterword—Larry Braskamp

Acknowledgement

About the Contributors

Index

Editor’s Note: As frequently mentioned here, global learning does not require crossing a national border. Indeed, engaging thoughtfully across cultures is sometimes even more challenging at home, where biases and assumptions are entrenched over lifetimes and generations. The 2014-15 academic year began with Ferguson and ended with Baltimore; now we have Charleston. At globalsl, we find it more important than ever to include a focus on domestic cross-cultural cooperation, learning, and community-driven development.