Did You Drink the Kool-Aid?

by DA Global | Jun 26, 2023 | Articles

June 26, 2023

SUMMARY:

The following are testimonials from four universities about the realities of study abroad “post-pandemic.” As members of the Diversity Abroad Inclusive Education Abroad Community of Practice, we questioned our assumptions about our expectations regarding the “return of study abroad.” We realized that we had all “drank the Kool-Aid,” meaning we believed that study abroad would naturally resume and continue to evolve; specifically in terms of student advising and support, increased access for historically marginalized students, and mirroring pre-pandemic participation. Below you will find each person’s reflections on their current and past realities.

AUTHORS:

• Anna Biuso: SUNY Buffalo
• Caitlin Hatz: St. Lawrence University
• Courtney Kroll: University of Washington Tacoma
• Stephanie Ramin: St. Mary’s University

Courtney Kroll (University of Washington Tacoma)

Like so many colleagues in the field of international higher education, I was really looking forward to a sense of “normalcy” during the 2022-23 academic year, specifically when it came to the amount of students studying abroad. I was pleasantly surprised by the uptick in attendance at our information sessions and the rush of students starting applications. “Study abroad is back,” was the messaging I received from the education abroad field and I believed them. I drank the Kool-Aid. But I was wrong.

Pre-pandemic, we had around 150 students study abroad each year and our study abroad population generally mirrored our campus student population in terms of first generation status, ethnicity and financial aid eligibility (63% of our undergraduates identify as students of color, 54% as first generation, and 41% are Pell grant eligible). For the 2022-23 academic year, we will likely have around 63 study abroad participants. After my initial disappointment at seeing that our study abroad participation data was nowhere near “normal,” I realized that my original expectations were totally unreasonable. We know that the pandemic disproportionately impacted people of color and those from lower economic statuses. So many of the students I work with have several jobs, take care of family members, are struggling with housing and food insecurity, and have more responsibilities now than they did before the pandemic started.

UW Tacoma students are still struggling from the impacts of COVID-19 and I should have taken this into account from the start. My colleagues and I have done more targeted outreach, social media campaigns, class visits and info sessions this year than ever before, but it is still not enough. While I am relieved that 63% of our 2022-23 study abroad participants identify as students of color, which is representative of our student body population as a whole, I am still trying to figure out how to best serve my historically marginalized students when there seem to be even more roadblocks in their way than ever before.

Caitlin Hatz (St. Lawrence University)

Now, more than ever before, a light is shining on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in our field of international education. Since the wake of Geroge Floyd in May of 2020, campaigns calling for action directly ignited a fire in our field. While there have been pushes for DEI to marry international and intercultural learning in the past, this catalyst was the first time that such initiatives were reframing our work and our conversations. Every webinar, conference session, and publication was focusing on how to be more inclusive, how to provide diverse literature and course offerings, utilizing identity as a frame and creating a sense of belonging from advising to return. The energy was palpable and over the last three years new resources were developed, surveys were launched, training provided, and branding of our field as a diverse and equitable advocate was launched.

While I know initiatives take time to come to fruition, I must admit that with all of the efforts being focused into DEI work, I too, believed that the return on a more diverse student population studying abroad would be higher. I thought the discussions at our conference would be highlighting more gains in this area and more successful equitable outcomes for our students. I “drank the kool aid” in thinking change would happen faster in our field as a whole.

At St. Lawrence University, our off-campus study numbers have not yet hit pre-pandemic levels, with about 30-40 students less than “normal” years. Our office too has increased new programming and resources to reach more students, and have also changed our marketing and support strategies. Because our office didn’t collect all data on our students’ identity pre-pandemic, it is challenging to compare hard data on increased numbers of historically marginalized students now. However, anecdotally the changes are not vast and not what I was hoping to see based on initial student interest and new strategic efforts. Despite my initial projections, I am still hopeful to see increases and as higher education becomes the most diverse it has been yet, we must better recruit and support all students.

Stephanie Ramin (St. Mary’s University)

The study abroad landscape at St. Mary’s University (San Antonio, TX) has likely been a bit different in comparison to my Community of Practice colleagues, as we are currently in the process of rebuilding our study abroad office from the ground up. Unfortunately, we have limited data on study abroad participation prior to my arrival at St. Mary’s last spring (2022), so we are essentially starting with a clean slate. But did I “drink the Kool-Aid” and believe that study abroad would ramp up at our institution when I started last year? I’d say I sipped it, at the very least. I certainly anticipated that our study abroad numbers would naturally start to increase now that the world was getting back to “normal” again. But also, we’ve hit the ground running with spreading the word about study abroad at our institution, have created an easier and more streamlined application process for our students through the implementation of Terra Dotta, and now have dedicated staff to support and be a resource to our students in their study abroad journey. So really, I think you could say I drank the Kool-Aid, but more so in thinking that all of these factors would spur an increase in our study abroad participation numbers.

Although the world is re-opening, the aforementioned efforts have been made, and students have been expressing interest in going abroad, the participation rates have not accelerated at the rate I anticipated: some of our proposed faculty-led programs didn’t enroll enough students to go abroad this summer, and there still isn’t much participation at the exchange level, either. Nevertheless, enrollments are increasing – slowly, but surely! At the end of the day, the biggest challenge in growing our numbers doesn’t appear to be strictly COVID-19-related, but rather that we need to revitalize a culture of internationalization and study abroad at St. Mary’s, in general. I am hopeful that because the world is re-opening and because our campus is becoming increasingly better-equipped to inform and support students about study abroad, that we will continue to experience an increase in participation rates as time goes on.

Anna Biuso (SUNY)

One of the most distinctive lessons I learned from the pandemic is that hope and denial often feel the same. I have realized that at each stage of the pandemic I used hope as an excuse to be naive about the realities of COVID-19 and the impacts of a global pandemic. I truly thought at the very beginning of the pandemic that we would not be recalling our students home globally. I then thought that the pause of study abroad would be quick (my previous institution was not able to send students until spring 2022). Then, “post-pandemic”, I thought that study abroad was “back,” that we would go about our lives and eventually get back to pre-pandemic levels of study abroad.

I definitely drank the Kool-Aid of study abroad numbers returning to pre-pandemic levels. However, upon contemplation, I’ve come to the realization, in certain senses the Kool-Aid is really Kool-Aid; In other senses it’s not. To explain, at my previous institution, we did see a return to near normal numbers of study abroad participants for summer 2023 and fall 2023. We found that once a sense of normalcy returned at home, students were excited and eager to study away. That said, the amount of care and time student advising consumed increased. In my former office, we were in a fortunate situation where our office was fully staffed and funded, and thus were more easily able to provide that level of care and student support. I do think that is a large part of why we saw our numbers of students abroad rapidly increase. However, I would say it is also in part because of the overall demographic of the institution: Only about half of students receive need-based aid, many students come from more affluent areas of the downstate region, and the majority of students are white.

Comparing my experience to that of some of my peers has made me realize that it’s not so much whether you “drank the Kool-Aid” believing that study abroad was back, it’s more about what was in the Kool-Aid. For many institutions and providers, their Kool-Aid was Kool-Aid: Study abroad is back with a force and while things may have changed in terms of the types of support students need, the numbers are there. For our colleagues at institutions that generally serve students with higher financial need, are minority-serving, or have a large proportion of rural or first-gen students, the perspective of whether study abroad is back or not may be drastically different because the pandemic disproportionately impacted these groups of people.

So, what now?

In order to better understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our student populations, we plan to implement one or more of the following at our institutions and encourage others in similar situations to explore these strategies:

• Offer identity-based preparatory workshops and advising tools to students during the recruitment and application phase of study abroad.
• Elicit survey responses or hold focus groups for students who started but did not complete study abroad applications. Explore new programming options as a result of our analysis.
• Offer more identity-specific resources on our websites.
• Reconfigure study abroad application questions, eligibility requirements, and processes to include early screening of applications to make sure we are reaching diverse and equitable outcomes.
• Review both qualitative and quantitative participation data.
• Involve campus units, departments and student groups for advising and marketing to target specific student populations.
• Take the time to better understand issues in our local communities near our campuses.
• Think about the changes happening in higher education in general.

These tasks will certainly help us better support students by remembering how the pandemic is still impacting their daily lives, choices, and long term goals. Rather than becoming deterred about not “bouncing back,” we plan to use this as an opportunity to better understand the students we serve and better prepare them for their study abroad experiences.

If you’re currently experiencing a similar reality in regard to study abroad on your campus, we hope that hearing our perspectives has provided you with reassurance that you’re not alone in this. We also hope that the above action items inspire you to take one or more of these steps at your institution if you believe they will be helpful to you, too. As they say…onward!