Over There
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Now, more than 20 years after his semester studying abroad, Mark
Miller can say without exaggeration that his time in Kenya changed his life.
He already knew that he “hated hospitals” and wasn’t interested in clinical
practice, but this experience of the complex problems of healthcare in a developing
country showed him an area of medicine in which he might flourish. Miller’s
belief in the benefits of
international exposure is so firm that he is now involved—with fellow Amherst
graduate Pierce Gardner ’57—in a new NIH program designed to send
medical students to the developing world, so they, too, might consider careers
in public health. Miller credits the impetus for his life’s work to the
crucial combination of seven semesters of a strong liberal arts education—and
a key semester away from it.
Roughly 40 percent of Amherst students choose to study abroad, the vast majority
for a semester during their junior year. The programs available to them vary
considerably in their balance of academic and experiential components. For example,
Alyson Thibodeau ’04, a anthropology/
geology double major and an archeology buff since childhood, spent a semester
on an archeological dig in Belize. She went specifically for the on-site excavation
the program offered. Her days were spent mainly excavating Mayan ruins, work
supplemented with lectures by faculty members and visiting archeologists. Initially
she found it difficult to learn about Mayan culture and archeology through the
lectures, but partway through the program, it all began to make sense; the lectures,
informal conversations with researchers and the fieldwork in which she was participating
informed each other in such a way that she gained a much greater understanding
than if the pieces had occurred separately.
Alexandra Bloom ’04, who spent six months in Shanghai, chose to study abroad
because she wanted to experience another culture and another language. Andrew
Gillette ’04, a math major who spent a semester in Budapest, wanted
to go abroad without sacrificing the academic excellence he had experienced at
Amherst. He rejected the glossy program advertisements that seemed to offer fun
in the sun, choosing instead the thin, gray, photo-free
pamphlet that described his Hungarian program.
In approving each program, the college must weigh these various experiential
and academic elements, a task made harder by the fact that one can complement
the other, often in very beneficial ways.
Amherst President Anthony W. Marx is a strong proponent of international
experience, having gone to South Africa a few years after his college graduation
to work with the country’s leading educational organization. Later, as
a graduate student, he spent years in South Africa doing fieldwork for his Ph.D.
He says he initially went to South Africa because he decided “that it was
time for me to see for myself whether it was quite as straightforward a story
as I had led myself to believe. Of course, going there, living there and experiencing
it proved that
it was not quite as simple as I thought.” But while he appreciates the
value of experiencing another place, he is also mindful of the need for academic
rigor in overseas programs. “I do think there is a distinction,” he
says, “that academic credit should be for academic work, but academic work
can be informed by, engaged by, enriched by experiences….And [experiential
learning] is relevant to the curriculum, because students often find that their
experiences are what get them excited about their studying.”
Alyson Thibodeau is a fine example of this. Her archeology semester in Belize
was followed by a summer at a
geology field camp in Montana. Prior to her time abroad, Thibodeau says she was
a “typical” college student who tried to be organized but didn’t
always succeed. She discovered, with some surprise, that she functioned better
abroad than she had at Amherst. Of her first semester back at Amherst, she says
simply, “I’m a much better student.” While archeology was Thibodeau’s
primary interest, she also saw going to a developing country as an opportunity
to prove herself—to herself—and to differentiate herself from others
at Amherst. Deborah Gewertz, her thesis advisor, points out that many young women
use time abroad, especially in a non-European country, as a way to test their
independence. Nationally, two-thirds of students going abroad are women.
In our increasingly global world, study abroad has the potential for an impact
beyond the merely personal or academic. A panel recently convened by the Association
of International Educators said that America’s insularity was “a
national liability.” “We are unnecessarily putting ourselves at risk,” the
panel concluded, “because of our stubborn monolingualism and ignorance
of the world.” Ronald Rosbottom, the Winifred L. Arms Professor in the
Arts and Humanities and Professor of French and European Studies, concurs. “American
horizons are so narrow,” he says. “Anything to broaden the horizons
should be encouraged.”
In the past few years, Amherst students have studied in Russia, China, Japan,
Costa Rica, Chile, Zimbabwe, South Africa, India, Nepal and Senegal. Still, each
year 70 percent—a slightly higher rate than at Amherst’s peer institutions—choose
study in the more familiar environment of Europe. Part of the reason so many
students go to countries like Italy, Spain and Britain is that so many programs
are offered there (144 out of Amherst’s 241 approved programs are in Europe;
only seven are in Africa). A student who wants to go elsewhere, especially to
a developing country, may have to work harder, petitioning to get the program
accepted. In Professor of English Barry O’Connell’s view, “One
thing Amherst does badly is the sustained and sensible encouragement of students
going to difficult places.”
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