Professional Staff 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 such strategy is to internationalize professional staff within our college.

Program Details

We created a study abroad program as a way to support the internationalization of our faculty, which began in Summer 2018. With the support from the Office of Study Abroad in the Diether H. Haenicke Institute for Global Education, we have now decided to extend this initiative to professional staff within the college and will implement the program in the summer of 2019.

The CEHD professional staff study abroad program gives our staff the opportunity to participate in a WMU faculty-led study abroad program for a minimum of one week. During their trip, they will participate in all activities related to the faculty-led study abroad program with which they travel.

Professional staff members can search the Broncos Abroad website through the Office of Study Abroad for a list of faculty-led programs, dates of travel and application requirements and deadlines. CEHD will provide each selected professional staff member with a scholarship of $2,000 to cover the recipient’s international airfare and other approved costs related to the program. Employees will be expected to apply for their employee benefit tuition waiver to cover the costs for tuition for the study abroad program.

Application

A Call for Applications will be announced in spring 2020. Any CEHD professional staff member is eligible to participate in the program. The application shall include such information:

•  What is the faculty-led study abroad program you plan to participate in?
•  What are your objectives for the program?
•  What do you hope to learn while abroad?
•  How will your study abroad program help enhance your work within the college?
• 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. The college will support two professional staff members each year.
2. Preference will be given to professional staff who are going to countries that they have never visited before.

Professional staff study abroad application