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This chapter focuses on the University of Cincinnati (UC), named by the 2016 Princeton Review as one of the “Nation’s Best” institutions for undergraduate education (Robinette, T., 2015, August 4. UC continues streak of recognition as one of nation’s best universities. Retrieved from http://www.uc.edu/news/nr.aspx?id=22016), and their commitment to growing international experiential learning opportunities for its student population in accordance with strategic plans and focused administrative goals. One department identified by UC for strategic growth of international experiential learning opportunities is the Division of Experience-Based Learning and Career Education. An International Experiential Learning Committee (IELC) was formed to help study, crystallize, and move forward these university initiatives.

The purpose of this chapter is to present a model to support a humanizing approach to international education that is sustainable and facilitates respectful service, scholarship and teaching. University faculty engage internationally through teaching, service and scholarship. All three require faculty to possess strong trusting connections to the international community in which they operate. Literature suggests that the impulse to initiate service learning and scholarship with communities foreign to the faculty too early can be detrimental. A deep relationship between the faculty and community built upon trust and mutual respect is the key to successful internationally situated service, teaching and scholarship. However, such relationships require time to develop and many universities cannot support faculty toward developing international relationships. The Deep Field School presents a way of blending teaching, service and scholarship in a way that supports the nurturing of long-term relationships. The Deep Field School is an internationally situated short-term faculty led study abroad that operates with a commitment toward the long term and closely adheres to the humanizing principle that learning is a process not an outcome. A deep field school operating in Peru is presented as a case study along with guidelines for development.

A study of community college students enrolled in a for-credit study abroad program in Costa Rica sought to identify the experiences that influence intercultural competency growth during study abroad trips and to learn how the experiences influence the development of global leadership competencies. The results led to a modified global leadership development expertise model for understanding the process of global leadership development in student populations. The study revealed a key link between antecedent characteristics of participants and their transformational ability during the study. The study also revealed that there are types of transformational experiences that, when experienced sequentially, can maximize transformational potential and the development of intercultural competencies.

This chapter reports on a study abroad course, where up to 15 registered students complete domestic (in a midwestern American state) and international (in Athens, Greece) service learning,¹ while applying a social work perspective on the global refugee crisis. It highlights the importance of obtaining external funding to support students financially, the significance of university-wide collaborations, and ways to include larger numbers of culturally diverse (non-White) and fiscally underrepresented students. Feedback from survey participants suggests that further subsidies and scholarships would improve accessibility for fiscally underrepresented student groups. ²

Pre COVID-19 there were a growing number of opportunities for study abroad across higher education in the United States, (Rosch & Haber-Curran, 2013; Martinez, 2012). This paper aims to examine phenomena surrounding outcomes of student abroad experiences while centering students’ leadership learning. Centering leadership learning as a framework, findings indicate participants in the study grew in the of areas of leadership efficacy and capacity through the short-term study abroad.

US universities are increasingly addressing issues of equity and social justice through global learning programs with international partners. Growing numbers of universities now prioritize the development and implementation of international programs such as study abroad, and service learning to fulfill components of missions and visions focused on educating global citizens. This chapter discusses how global citizenship goals intersect with social justice education through global learning programs such as study abroad and global service learning. It also describes the conceptual frameworks that inform teaching and learning in this domain and highlights current examples of partnerships and overseas institutions that focus on goals of social justice and developing the global citizen. Finally, this chapter will discuss future challenges for US universities in further developing international partnerships for social justice.

At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, an annual short-term, research abroad non-credit program was created in 2012 as a core component of the undergraduate research initiative that achieves learning outcomes in a meaningful way. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In order to describe, and analyze the short-term research abroad activity, an instrumental case study design was created. The instrumental case study was chosen as a means of allowing the facilitators/authors to communicate how they attempted to assure that the program was educative. In order to determine if the program was in fact educative and that it met its goal of being an effective research experience the authors utilized two additional research methods. The first was a document analysis of the participant’s research artifacts. Each participant was required to communicate their findings by writing a paper that was submitted for publication to an applicable research journal.

The study found that an experiential education as a pedagogical framework coupled with a short-term research abroad activity can lead to a substantive educative experience, where the authors described and analyzed attempts to ensure that the short-term research abroad program was educative, it also describes the educational assessment findings which describe what was found when the authors tested whether they, in fact, met this goal.

During the design phase of the short-term research abroad program, the authors turned to experiential education as a principle for how they would ensure that the program was grounded in an acceptable educational theory. Experiential education is a widely accepted educational practice used in experiences such as co-ops and internships, study abroad, undergraduate research and service learning.

To frame the short-term cultural research abroad program as something from which student could learn the authors utilized the National Society of Experiential Education’s (2013) list of eight principles of good practice. In order to safeguard that an activity is educative, an assessment or an evaluation of a demonstrative artifact is essential. In assessing the final artifact against a rubric or some other non-biased or less biased criteria, an educator can ensure that the student has gained new knowledge in the form of student learning outcomes (SLOs). In addition, the educator can use the results of this assessment to modify many different aspects of the experience ranging from the timing, the modality, the pre-work, even the learning outcomes themselves.

Given financial and curriculum inflexibility of some students, Universities and faculty could achieve attainment of research-based, program agnostic, SLOs by offering short-term study abroad alternatives to the traditional semester or year-long experiences. With graduates looking to enter the job market where businesses are more globalized and executive’s recognition of a need for more international experience, carefully constructed short-term study abroad programs are meaningful avenues to build those credentials.

Such offerings can be constructed as customized experiences to achieve highly integrated skills across all degree programs.

This paper summarizes the findings of the empirical papers in this volume and outlines future research directions for global leadership in general. We summarize the state of global leadership development in universities and recommend design criteria for these efforts. Given the popularity of study abroad as an integral component in many global leadership programs, we highlight common challenges for study abroad programs and the importance of taking an organization development approach. We conclude with future directions for global leadership development research in university settings, most of which emerged from the featured papers on this topic in this volume of Advances in Global Leadership. It is our hope that this chapter serves as a primer for both university program directors and researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role blended learning plays in expanding study abroad opportunities.

The approach utilized involves providing a synopsis of research dealing with study abroad and its benefits, particularly for student populations likely to comprise a significant portion of the distance learning market. Perspectives on the benefits derived from incorporating distance learning into short‐term study abroad programs are then discussed based on the experiences of a business college with a significant enrollment of online students.

This paper highlights the flexibility afforded by online education in fulfilling academic content requirements, showcasing blended learning as a strategic complementary input in content delivery. The enhancement in study abroad options afforded offers the potential to introduce international business experiences to student populations historically underserved.

Blended learning facilitates the inclusion of online students, enhancing the financial viability of study abroad courses and programs.

Blended learning facilitates the inclusion of online students, expanding study abroad opportunities to student populations historically underserved.

Conceptualizing blended learning as a facilitating device for study abroad is a contribution to the literature; research surrounding the nexus between online learning and study abroad is embryonic. Within this nascent area, this paper also provides value in offering suggestions for future empirical research.