Faculty Study Abroad Program

"Globally-engaged" is one of the gold standards of Western Michigan University. This standard calls for us to “develop learners and leaders who are locally oriented and globally competent, culturally aware and ready to contribute to world knowledge and discovery”.

To align with the university’s strategic priorities and gold standards in global engagement, we must adopt and implement a number of international engagement strategies in order to create a learning environment that is conducive for our students to develop global competencies. One of such strategies is to internationalize our faculty.

Program details

We developed a CEHD faculty study abroad program as a tactic to internationalize our faculty and started it in Summer 2018. We will implement the program again in the summer of 2020 during the months of May and June. The faculty members in the program will have the opportunity to stay overseas minimally a week to ten days. During their stay, they will be asked to conduct at least a workshop or give a seminar to the faculty and students at a partner institution.

We will create a list of international institutions that are willing to collaborate with us on this initiative and host our faculty. Faculty members who are interested in participating in the program can choose a host from either the list or a personal source. While the college will pay for the international travels of each faculty member in the program (no more than $2,000), the partner institution will be responsible for covering all the local costs, which include lodging, meals and local travel and sightseeing.

Application

A Call for Application will be announced in January 2020. Any CEHD board-appointed faculty member will be eligible to participate in the program. The application shall include such information:

• Where (the partner institution) are you going to stay to complete your program?
• What are your objectives for the program?
• What do you plan to do while abroad (e.g., research activities)?
• What do you hope to learn while abroad?
• How will your study abroad program help enhance your teaching and research?
• How will you share what you learned during the program with the college and university community after returning from the trip?

Program implementation timeline

1. We will support six faculty members each year.

2. Preference will be given to faculty members who are going to countries that they have never visited before.

Faculty study abroad application