Earlham College | News from Public Affairs

Earlham students climb religious shrine in India

Earlham students involved in last fall’s inaugural semester of the South Asia Program climb the steps leading to a religious shrine in India. Reaction to the new international offering was so enthusiastic, the program already has been renewed for the 2006-07 academic year.

On the eve of celebrating 50 years of off-campus programming, Earlham has been named a recipient of the prestigious Senator Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization from NAFSA: Association of International Educators. According to a national jury of college and university professionals involved in international education, the College’s creative study abroad strategies cast it as a “profile of success” for higher education worldwide.

Adding to the excitement, says Patty Lamson, director of Earlham’s International Programs Office (IPO), is the U.S. Senate declaration of 2006 as the “Year of Study Abroad” — meant to encourage all U.S. citizens, higher education institutions, businesses and government programs to promote and expand international education opportunities.

Named for the late Democratic senator from Illinois, a crusader for international education throughout his career, the Simon Award annually recognizes innovative programming that helps college students to know and understand a broader world. Past recipients include Yale, Duke, Colby, Colgate, UCLA and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Earlham is the first independent Indiana college (Indiana University was cited in 2003) and the first institution among the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) to be honored.

Also being recognized by NAFSA this year are internationalization efforts at Arcadia University in Pennsylvania and Minnesota’s Concordia College, as well as Earlham’s Midwest neighbors Michigan State and Purdue universities. Presentation of the Simon Award will be made during NAFSA’s annual conference May 24 in Montréal, Québec. Earlham also will be featured in the organization’s report, Internationalizing the Campus 2006, to be published later this fall.

At Earlham, internationalization “is a fabric touching all disciplines, all levels of the curriculum,” says Newell Pledger-Shinn, assistant to President Doug Bennett and director of special initiatives for the College, who prepared Earlham’s Simon Award nomination essay. At Earlham, he wrote, “internationalization is not simply an opportunity offered to some; it is an experience shared by all. Every Earlham student is asked to have a deep encounter with a culture or people not his or her own.”

Earlham emerged from a strong set of candidates for this year’s award, said the NAFSA judges, based upon impressive evidence of the College’s international diversity, beginning with the facts that 10 percent of all Earlham students and 15 percent of the faculty are international in background.

“That’s really important to keep in mind … that it’s about all aspects of international education,” says Lamson, referring both to Earlham’s approach to engagement with a changing world and the Simon Award. While overall international enrollment at American colleges and universities has dropped the past two years running, over the same period Earlham set consecutive records for international students coming to campus. In 2005-06 the College hosts 128 foreign students representing 52 nations.

At the same time, the College can boast of more than 70 percent of its students and 60 percent of its faculty having participated in off-campus study. Nearly 80 percent of incoming students indicate that they selected Earlham, in part, because of its international program opportunities.

“This is a really sweet time for us,” Lamson says of the College and, particularly, her colleagues in IPO. “The Simon Award is especially enriching because NAFSA is the industry standard in terms of professional groups in international education. To get this kind of recognition for the hard work that we do is terrific, and I mean for all of us.”

Officially the College traces the beginning of its history in international education to 1946-47, when motivated by its Quaker values of peace and social justice and committed to seeking reconciliation and mutual understanding with Japan following World War II, Earlham began its first scholarly exchange with America’s former enemy. (The seeds of this program were sown years earlier during the war, when — as illustrated by 1999 alumna Katie Yamasaki’s mural “From Camps to Cranes” that hangs outside the International Programs Office — the College became a refuge for many Japanese-Americans who otherwise would have been interned by U.S. Armed Forces.) Today, reports Lamson, the College’s multiple programs involving Japan are “doing very, very well,” as are practically all of its other traditional study aboard offerings — even as time and cost pressures intensify and students consider a greater-than-ever range of alternatives providing an international experience.

In recent years, in fact, as Earlham extended its international reach by adding a number of popular May Term programs, Lamson admits there was concern that the more convenient time commitment of a four- or five-week international option in late spring might depress student interest and participation in more conventional, semester-long opportunities available during the normal academic year.

But, Lamson is “very pleased to know that participation in our semester-length programs has continued on at its normal, healthy rate.” The “flocking” of Earlham students to international May Terms, she confirms, has not happened.

“Again, I think that’s something that sets the College apart. Our students and faculty appreciate the value of being exposed to all different sorts of things — new languages, a different architecture, other kinds of music or art — over a longer period of time,” says Lamson. She is just back from a visit to Goucher College in Baltimore, Md., where with her husband, Professor of Spanish and Mexico Program director Howard Lamson, she was invited to share with Goucher administrators some of Earlham’s experience in international education. Goucher recently announced a new requirement that all of its students take part in foreign study prior to graduation.

“The key is interested faculty,” explains Lamson, “and sometimes luck helps a little, too.”

The latest opportunity for Earlham students to interact with peoples and cultures not their own is the College’s South Asia Program, introduced in the fall of 2005 under the leadership of Associate Professor of Economics Rajaram Krishnan. The 10 students who traveled with Krishnan to Chennai (formerly Madras) for the launch of the new program also visited Sri Lanka, less than a year after the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated large portions of that island nation, killing more than 6,000. Many Sri Lankans the students met, especially the children, were “an amazing testimony to the human spirit,” reflected Krishnan at the time.

“That’s what it takes” to be successful in international programming, Lamson says, “a faculty member who is involved, who has or knows how to make the necessary contacts, and who believes enough in his or her proposal to stay committed throughout the two-to-three-year process it takes to get a new program approved. In this (Krishnan’s) case, we had a faculty member who also had a personal connection to the area, which was just invaluable.”

Already the South Asia Program has been renewed for 2006-07, says Lamson. Associate Professor of English Kari Kalve will head the program next fall.

Also continuing is Earlham’s East Africa/Tanzania Program, which until recently was still the College’s Kenya program. When escalating political and civil unrest made visiting Kenya problematic in 2003, Earlham IPO planners and program leaders coordinated in mere weeks a new program of studies and cultural immersion in neighboring Tanzania. The serendipitous change has proved immensely popular with Earlham students, dozens of whom have, among other life-shaping activities, since ascended to “The Roof of Africa” — the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

“With Tanzania we were very, very fortunate,” Lamson says. “It was a very challenging time. But again, people believed in the program, in what we were trying to do and, really, in themselves.

“Earlham is such a supportive place, right from its very core. If people here want something to happen, it will happen. And this is the result. Tanzania has been a great addition to our international programs.”

Contact:
Patty Lamson, director of international programs
765/983-1424 — E-Mail Patty

Newell Pledger-Shinn, assistant to the president and director of special initiatives
765/983-1645 — E-Mail Newell