On Campus Podcast – From Campus to Global Classroom: Health Essentials for Study Abroad

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1. Introduction and Disclaimer (00:00:06) Host introduces the podcast, its purpose, and provides a disclaimer about educational use and guest views.
2. Episode Theme and Guest Introduction (00:00:35) Host introduces the episode’s focus on study abroad health considerations and welcomes Dr. Chen.
3. Dr. Chen’s Background (00:01:05) Dr. Chen shares his expertise in infectious diseases and vaccine research for developing countries.
4. Value and Risks of Study Abroad (00:01:57) Discussion on the benefits of study abroad and health risks in developed vs. developing countries.
5. Health Needs for Students with Medical Conditions (00:03:40) Importance of planning for students with pre-existing health conditions, even in developed countries.
6. Travel Medicine’s Role in Global Health (00:05:54) Explains why travel medicine is crucial for student safety and welfare during study abroad.
7. Assessing and Reducing Health Risks Abroad (00:07:27) Evaluating risks based on destination, activities, and environment; planning for contingencies.
8. Contingency Planning and Safety Abroad (00:09:56) Importance of knowing local resources, US embassy locations, and having emergency plans.
9. Holistic Health and Safety Practices (00:11:15) Advice on sun protection, safe sex, and hygiene practices, including safe tattooing.
10. Vaccines and Preventative Measures (00:12:47) Overview of essential and often-overlooked vaccines, and strategies for preventing insect-borne diseases.
11. Balancing Recommendations and Student Autonomy (00:15:26) How universities balance health recommendations with respecting student choice and autonomy.
12. Pre-Departure Health Considerations (00:18:20) Additional preparations: travel insurance, document safety, and emergency contact information.
13. Barriers to Accessing Health Resources (00:21:01) Challenges students face, especially cost of vaccines/medications, and how universities can help.
14. Contingency Planning for Outbreaks and Unrest (00:26:37) How institutions respond to health or political crises, including program cancellations and risk assessment.
15. Ethical Responsibilities in Study Abroad (00:32:01) Universities’ ethical duties to students, host institutions, and local communities; cultural respect.
16. Post-Pandemic Innovations and Future Trends (00:36:33) Impact of virtual learning, outbreak prediction, climate change, and global shifts on study abroad.
17. Hybrid and Flexible Study Abroad Models (00:41:03) Emergence of hybrid programs combining short-term travel with virtual exchanges.
18. Best Practices for Campuses (00:42:34) Recommendations for campuses: dedicated study abroad offices, updated contingency plans, and global partnerships.
19. Final Thoughts and Ambassador Mindset (00:44:17) Encouragement for students to approach study abroad as purposeful ambassadors, not tourists.
20. Podcast Closing and Credits (00:44:50) Host wraps up, invites listeners to learn more, and gives production credits.

Ed Butch: Welcome to On Campus with CITI Program, the podcast where we explore the complexities of the campus experience with higher education experts and researchers. I’m your host, Ed Butch, and I’m thrilled to have you with us today. Before we get started, I want to quickly note that this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not designed to provide legal advice or guidance. In addition, the views expressed in this podcast are solely those of our guests. Welcome to another episode of the On Campus podcast. As we continue with the season’s theme of the engaged university, this episode talks about study abroad and the health considerations that students, families, and universities should consider. Today’s guest is Dr. Wilbur Chen, who serves as the director of the University of Maryland Baltimore’s Travel Medicine Program. Welcome to the pod, Dr. Chen.

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Thanks so much for having me. It’s a great day.

Ed Butch: Of course. I’m excited to talk about this. To get us started, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your background?

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Sure. I’m an adult infectious disease physician scientist, so that means that I both practice infectious diseases broadly, but also do research predominantly on vaccines for developing country settings.

Ed Butch: Very good, very good. Well, this is a topic that I really enjoy. I worked, when I was … I worked in higher education, I did a lot with international programming, so I’m excited to go through some of this. To start, I guess study abroad, we often see as one of those kind of highlights of a student’s college experience, but it does come with some unique health risks obviously. From your perspective, what do you think that universities should really prioritize when preparing students to study abroad?

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Yeah, so I think that these study abroad programs are a great way for a person to learn about non-US experiences, cultures, morals, ethics, whatever. It helps to ground us as humans, and our interactions in the way that we think about our place in the world. That’s just my way of saying that these study abroad experiences are terrific. Now, some people will study abroad, and they’ll study abroad in a well-developed country, and you may go to the UK, London School of Economics. You may go to Paris or something else, and those would not have unique health risks necessarily. But, we do want to consider when people want to go to more developing world settings, where there will be less resources, that there will be potentially some medical risks and health risks. And some of them might be just if you’re going to a place that’s in the tropics, there are a lot of tropical diseases that we need to be aware of.

But there may be, if you’re in a place that doesn’t have good access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene, which again would be a low resource setting, then you may have other types of risks that you might need to be aware of. All of these things need to be considered. Now, even a healthy … Well, I’m sorry, a student who may have their own health concerns, which means that they have their own medical conditions as they study abroad, and even if you’re going to London, Paris, or somewhere else, may have some unique health risks just for themselves because they have a medical condition. And this is where I always remind students that they may need to identify a medical center, or a clinic, or a primary care provider to continue to provide for their health needs that would be unique to their condition.

And again, it might be because they had an organ transplant recently. They may have had cancer and are in remission, but are still requiring a lot of care afterwards. They may have type one diabetes or some other condition that again, requires that they may have to have unique care that’s very specific, and also, is time sensitive in terms of the timing of their follow-up. I think that those are things that again, students should be aware of, and also the campus that’s sending them should be aware of as well.

Ed Butch: Definitely, definitely. Thank you for that, definitely. And my first travel experience internationally was in undergrad, and I went to the UK, so that less risk type of place. But then, when I worked at Kent State, I actually helped develop a partnership with a partner university in Brazil. Obviously, there was a little bit more that I had to do to, before I went on that trip, because it is some of that tropical that you mentioned, and a little less developed water systems, and things like that, so I’m glad that you mentioned both of those things. Why, I guess, is travel medicine, since this is obviously an area for you that you study, why is it really an important part of global health, and what does that really look like in terms of that intersection with higher education?

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Yeah, when we’re sending students to other locations, these are students of a university, they’re paying for their experience in education, but I think also parents and the students are also hoping that they will have an assurance of their safety, their welfare, wherever it is that they are having that educational experience, whether it’s right on the campus or abroad. We want to be very wholistic in trying to evaluate what those risks are. Now on campus, those are fully thought out. We’ve got on campus police, we’ve got a clinic, we’ve got other resources provided right on campus, so it’s all easy to provide because it’s all there. Now, when you study abroad, we would like to have those types of same resources available. Some of them are provided virtually, and you can still connect with a resource officer on your campus even though it’s a 12-hour time zone difference, and that’s okay.

But, some of the things need to be right on site. And that’s basically saying, if the student has underlying medical conditions, we really want to make sure that they have the clinical resources, the provider, whatever services they need to be able to continue to maintain their health needs. We want to make sure that we reduce their risk in all the ways that we can predict. And that’s again, going back to the travel medicine part where we evaluate what that risk would be, where is it that they’re going, what are the types of activities that they will engage in? Are they going to be indoors virtually all the time, or a lot of it, is it going to be outdoors? Are they going to be doing some wildlife refuge work? Are they going to be doing some jungle excursion experience because it’s part of an archeological dig or whatever else, some other things where again, they’re going to be outdoors a lot?

And the reason why outdoors is because that’s where the insects are. And so, if you’re in a tropical area of the world, or even non-tropical where it’s just you’re in a temperate area with a lot of forest, you can still get ticks, and ticks also have infections as well that we want to consider. Again, are you going to a place that has poor sanitation, hygiene, and lack of access to clean water? Well, we’re thinking about ingestion-borne food and water-borne diseases that are very easy to get, especially over time. You’re going to be staying there for three-months, maybe up to six-months. That’s a lot of opportunities for you to be exposed to something, whether it’s by insect bite or by ingestion.

We want to make sure that we are aware of all this. Sometimes you’re at high altitude, there’s not a lot of cloud cover and you don’t realize how much sun exposure you get, and so you might get sunburned, and we want to reduce that risk, and also the risk of cancer. We’ll talk about just making sure that people are wearing sunscreen at all times and protecting themselves from UV light.

There may be situations where they’re going to a country where there may be a little bit of political unrest, or social unrest, or some other things, so we want to make sure that we’ve got contingency planning so that they can make sure that they are physically safe. They may be going to a country that is stable, and during the course of those few months, that situation may change, and those are unpredictable, so let’s have a crisis contingency plan. Well, let’s maybe not call it a crisis, but a contingency plan for getting to a safe place, evacuation, whatever else. And those don’t need to be heavily fleshed out into uber detail for stable countries, but let’s just have planning in place so that they know exactly where the US Embassy is in country, who are the individuals that they can contact, those sorts of things. I think that, again, those are things that could be prepared for, and could be discussed during a travel medicine practice, or even other campus resources that the university provides.

Ed Butch: Definitely, a lot of really important points there. I think that knowing where the closest US Embassy is, I think is definitely very important. Having that information, having them put it into their phone, a piece of paper in their passport so that they have that information and the universities provide that I think is really important. And honestly, something I didn’t think about, the altitude and sun exposure, that was a really helpful tip I think as well, not something I definitely would’ve not necessarily thought about, so that was a really good one in there as well.

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Yeah, we want to prevent whatever cancers or other things. I’m not just thinking about infectious diseases, because I’m an internist as well, and I want to make sure that people are … Well, that they’re eating healthy, they are maintaining some exercise, keeping busy with their bodies, whether they’re on campus or abroad, but also making sure that we prevent future skin cancers, that they practice safe sex while abroad. There are some people who may want to get a tattoo while they’re abroad to have a souvenir. But, I would say that we would want to be selective and make sure that they choose a tattoo parlor that looks like that they are practicing sanitation and hygiene because we want to make sure that they sterilize their equipment properly. Otherwise, you could get inoculated with someone else’s blood without sterilization, and that could be a cause for getting hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or HIV, or perhaps another infection. Again, we just want to have safe practices wholistically while we’re abroad, and we’ll try to cover that during the travel clinic.

Ed Butch: Definitely. Great, thank you. You mentioned vaccines a little bit earlier, but I guess what vaccines or even other preventative measures are most commonly overlooked by students as they prepare to study abroad?

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Yeah, I would say I remind people, make sure that you’ve got your tetanus booster within 10-years. Some people have no idea of when their last dose was. Oftentimes, their pediatrician has taken care of it, but I just want them to have their immunization record so that they can actually verify that it’s been done. Again, the student may be going to a less developed place where they may not have thought about enteric diseases or diseases that you can get that are through ingestion and absorbed through the gut. And that might be like hepatitis A, which is from food or water, typhoid, which is from, again, food or water that can be contaminated. These are both, we have good vaccines for them, so we would want them to be prepared to receive those. There are insect borne infections, so if you’re going to the tropics, or the subtropics, or to other areas where you might encounter, you might have a lot of outdoor exposure. Then, we would be thinking about tick borne infections like tick borne encephalitis, or mosquito borne infections like Japanese encephalitis, yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya.

There are a lot of infections that we know that are transmitted by mosquitoes that also we don’t have vaccines for. We will talk about the benefit of perhaps sleeping under a mosquito bed net, and application daily of a good mosquito repellent. And perhaps if you’re, again, doing a lot of outdoors activities as part of that, maybe you would have some clothing that you wear outdoors that you would pre-treat with permethrin spray, which is a protective coating of insect repellent that remains on the clothing. And it’s typically good for five washes, so you don’t apply it every single time you go outdoors on a daily basis, but you would apply it routinely to that clothing, and that’s another insect barrier that prevents you from getting bitten. A lot of these strategies are things that we try to do to reduce the risk of that travel.

Ed Butch: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I’m sure as you talk about a lot of these things, you probably run into this a little bit, but I guess, how do universities really look at that balance of making these recommendations, but also then, of course, respecting student autonomy and choice?

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Yeah, it’s always a risk benefit. Part of it is just really identifying what are the risks of that travel? And again, the students travel abroad, even if they’re going to the same country as another student, the coursework that they’re doing, the actually activities that they engage in might be different, and there might be different risks that we would discuss in that instance, so it’s very much individualized risk. And then, we would talk about the benefit, and part of the discussion of the benefit, which is going back to student autonomy, is making sure that they truly do understand their risk and the benefit of vaccines.

And the reason why I mentioned this this way is because now currently, there is a lot of national discourse on questioning the value of vaccines, questioning whether or not these vaccines actually have risks in them, with them. And so, making sure that we actually discuss what is true about the benefit of vaccines versus what is some of the misleading or falsified information that might be disseminated that people hear these days. And again, we want to make sure that we counter some of what is easily disseminated right now to people, and discuss possible misconceptions, because student autonomy, again, should be about having correct information to make decisions.

If you have incorrect information and you make decisions on that information, then that’s not true autonomy. That’s really making poor choices. I guess, I just want to make sure that there is space for that discussion with the student. Some students come equipped, fully knowing, or may not know, and need to be educated. And so, again, we want to make sure that the university is creating that space, whether it’s through, again, providing those resources, and having that travel medicine practice visit or other things. But, we want to make sure that they are given good information.

Ed Butch: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we want to make sure that they have all the knowledge that they can going into it. You did mention a few of these like food safety, water quality, and things like that, but are there other health considerations that should be part of pre-departure training when looking at that wholistic student experience that you mentioned?

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Yeah, some students may want to purchase travel insurance.

Ed Butch: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Again, this might be for places where, again, less developed, or places that are difficult to access. It might be that it’s far away, and maybe an island nation in Oceana, and so just because of where it’s remote, but the conditions are very nice, perhaps they just need to have travel insurance just in case. And again, it’s very much individualized because some people perceive risk differently than other people. That’s one thing is that.

Again, for the student who has any underlying medical conditions, we want to make sure that they have a good full listing of their medications, and that they maintain them. All students should probably have scanned all of their essential travel documents, which means their passports, driver’s license, medical insurance information, whatever else, and maintain that somewhere safe as well, just in case if they lose some of that, if God forbid their wallet gets stolen, or whatever else, that they can recover that information. Having contact information as well for key people for if anything happens, so relatives and friends, just in case something happens, certainly. I think all of those would be inclusive in making sure that you’re well-prepared for that travel.

Ed Butch: Definitely, yeah. And I think writing down those phone numbers, because we don’t memorize phone numbers anymore, right, so having that in case you lose your phone can be very important.

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Right. Sometimes you might want to email it to yourself and put it in a folder, because if you lose your phone, you lose everything. You might’ve scanned it, you put it in your phone, but if you lose your phone with your wallet, then how are you going to recover it? Make sure that it’s electronic available, and somewhere else where you can access it from anywhere.

Ed Butch: Definitely. That’s for sure. All right, so what do you really see as some barriers that students may face when accessing some of these resources, and what are some things that universities might be able to do to help reduce those barriers?

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Yeah. I think that one barrier is awareness, but I think a lot of colleges and universities that do have a lot of big study abroad programs have a very good program for making students aware of all of these things that we’re discussing today, that they need to be prepared for. But, I think what colleges and universities oftentimes don’t have the ability to do is to reduce the actual cost of these vaccines and medications perhaps. And what I’m speaking to is maybe malaria medications, prophylaxis that a person might need if you’re going to a malaria endemic country, and going to have a lot of outdoor exposure where you get mosquito bites, which again, taking a malaria medication, some of them are cheaper than others, but there’s still a cost.

And there’s also the cost of these vaccines, which some of them are very expensive. They’re not covered by insurance typically. And so, unless the college or university has some sort of scholarship program or subsidization program, these are going to be out of pocket expenses for that student. And they, again, could be to the point where a student really can not travel, only because of the cost of those vaccines, or the cost of travel overall. I think that that could be a barrier. The value of the study abroad might be that moment for that student where they decide, wow, this is the career that I want to do on that experience.

I really want to make this a readily available experiential event for a student should they want to do it. But, it should be something where all students are able to access this, so in an equal way. And we would want to not only have it for the rich, or the persons who have the means, but we want to make sure that it’s available to all students no matter what their means are. Again, that’s not something that all colleges and universities can control, but it would be great if we can overcome that barrier. I personally try to reduce that myself by making my clinic as cheap possible. I run it as a not-for-profit.

I’m fortunate, because I can do that. I’m a state employee of a state university, which means my salary is already covered, and I don’t charge any of my salary, my time to running this clinic. All of the vaccines that we provide, we make the patient that comes in to be seen, they pay for the cost of the vaccine. Basically, it’s down to the penny. What I paid for it, we pass that to the patient, and we haven’t marked it up at all. And then, we have small fixed fees for the consultation fee, and then the nurse administration fee on top of the vaccine, because I do have to pay for the cost of the clinic to run the lights, the space that I use, whatever else. I have a medical assistant that works with me. We use an electronic medical record that is part of our shared faculty practice. Now, the clinic still runs as a … It’s basically run in such a way that I’m costing the university money, but it’s run with a value of educating the public.

Ed Butch: Yeah.

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Okay, so I say that because I try myself to reduce the cost of the clinic. Other universities and colleges don’t have the benefit of having a travel clinic right on campus. If you’re a smaller college or university, you have to send them out. And so, the community travel clinic around you might be run as a for-profit business. That’s unfortunate again, and that could be a barrier.

Ed Butch: And I know that in part of that you mentioned scholarships, and I think that’s hopefully one way that maybe study abroad offices, global education offices might be able to help students if possible, if they can do a little bit of fundraising around that area, is reaching out to alums of their study abroad programs and say, “Hey, can you donate a little bit to help those students that might need help in getting some of those costs covered then as well?” I think that’s a great way for universities to be able to do that. Looking at our world outlook, and I don’t want to say our world today, it’s kind of always been this way, but how do outbreaks in one region, whether that’s health related, or political related, or whatever it might be, how does that affect study abroad programming, and how do institutions look at that in terms of weighing the risk of cancellation of a program versus continuing a program?

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Yeah, this was relevant during the COVID pandemic, certainly. In 2020, where a lot of programs were deciding whether or not, and then when they decided, okay, well we should shut down, how quickly are we going to do this? And some of them had to really make it up as they go along, because these are not things that we typically think about in stable environments, and these outbreaks only happen every few decades. I think that we all need to have contingency planning in the background, whether it be on campus for a meningococcal outbreak, or a flu outbreak right on campus, or God forbid, active shooter drills, and those sorts of things. I think a lot of campuses are very attuned to contingency planning.

This also has to be for the study abroad programs, where again, we adopt a system of, okay, it’s green light now status for this country, or, uh-oh, we’ve approached these things, and now it’s a yellow light where we want to have some caution to look for what conditions. And then, it’s certainly a clear red light condition where again, we are going to start now wrapping up operations, or maybe turning these opportunities into the student is not allowed now to do the excursion into the forest, but they’re going to stay in the main city. They’re going to do all of their coursework, didactic work in classroom, but not have those other opportunities to be outside of the classroom while in those study abroad countries.

There may be some retraction of some of the experience. And again, it’s according to whatever the outbreak situation might be. And again, if it’s an Ebola outbreak in Central Africa or something else, again, that would be according to what those conditions would be. That implies that you would have the leadership in admin putting these contingency plans together with subject matter experts, so with someone who, like myself is an infectious disease expert and global health, but other people as well that would be in the room putting these plans together.

I think that, and again, how rapid you would close a program, again, would be according to the severity of the outbreak. It also, again, I mentioned earlier, is it might not be an infectious disease outbreak, but it might be another condition, and it might be, again, evolving social unrest. A lot of times, when there is an election coming up, or post-election in a country, there might be, again, some political unrest where, again, the election was perceived as perhaps not fair, or the outcome was not perceived to be the outcome of a large majority of the population, or maybe a minority of the population who is very vocal and active. And again, that might set up a situation that, again, we want to be watchful for.

There may be instability even in the financial markets. And so, again, there might be a currency that begins to crash or something else. Again, just all of these world things, which is again, I think part of the study abroad experience is we’re realizing that many of the luxuries and things that we enjoy in the US may not be realized as true luxuries, and that we take for granted some of the stability that we experience. And so, when we study abroad, we realize that a lot of the things that we assume are always there, are actually held up because of long-standing infrastructure and investments that civil society has made into the financial structure, into the governing, into the policing, into all this other stuff, and also, into the medical systems and the ability to maintain infectious disease and outbreaks. All of these things I think are part of that experience as well that could be valuable. But, of course, we still want to have the student be safe.

Ed Butch: Yeah, yeah. I really like that you’re bringing up a lot of these other aspects, because when we think about global health, oftentimes I think we only think about the medical aspects. But, these other things really are important to a student’s physical health and safety, so I really enjoy that you’re bringing up a lot of these things. What ethical responsibilities … We are a CITI program, and so we like to think about ethics. What do you think that these ethical responsibilities that universities have to their students, to host institutions, and to the local communities where they’re actually sending these students as well?

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Yeah, I love this question actually. I think about this all the time as well. The foremost thing is that when the student is going, that they maintain respect for all the things that they’re engaging in, realizing that they are inadvertently being an ambassador for the US, and their own institution that they represent, so their college and university. Realizing that the country that they go to may have a different set of central morals, ethics, cultural acceptabilities, those sorts of things. Just broadly, it might be okay to wear t-shirt, shorts, and open sandaled sandals on campus, because it’s hot. But, there are some countries in which proper attire is long pants, not showing your ankles, not showing your shoulders, so wearing longer sleeves, but it is hot, so you want to wear breathable clothing.

Again, wearing attire that’s respectable, perhaps covering your head, or not covering your head, or other things, again, might be, again … And we want to maintain that, even though it’s not our own way of normally wanting to dress in what we feel as so-called comfortable, but maintaining that we want to be respectful to the people around us. And so, we’re the ambassador as well. We want to, again, put the college, university, and the US in the best light. And so, we want to maintain an ability to do that the way that we communicate. Do you shake hands or not shake hands? Do you hug or not hug? I don’t know. Some cultures you maintain eye contact, some, it’s actually offensive to stare in someone’s eyes.

Again, I just want to have people be very open-minded, and be very accepting of what the social norms are. And that would be a way of, again, the ethics is really just kind of maintaining that ability to understand what is normative in that culture, and adapting to it, and maintaining an ability to exchange information in a way that works for both societies. You’re representing the US society of course, as you study abroad, but understanding what the society that you’re visiting also maintains as normal, and to have that exchange in a way that, again, is beneficial for both parties. Again, we’re trying to build bridges between these countries as we study abroad. I oftentimes think about the fact that we do not want to have the colonizer attitude when we go to a country.

Ed Butch: For sure.

Dr. Wilbur Chen: We do not want to come across as I’m from the US, and this is the way that I do it. You need to adopt to me. Your norms don’t agree with me, and I’m going to make you agree with my norms rather than … Again, you’re the guest. We want to maintain that respect as a guest. I think that that’s what I think about a lot when I travel, and I meet with my own foreign colleagues, that I want to be a blessing to them, and also have a good exchange.

Ed Butch: That’s for sure. Yeah, very important points there for sure. And that ambassador, that thought of being ambassador, I think is extremely important. You did mention COVID a little bit ago. And so, as we’re looking at this post-pandemic world, which I guess is odd to say now we’re five-years out at this point, I guess, what changes or innovations do you think that we’ll see as universities start to approach travel medicine for students and faculty in maybe different ways?

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Yeah. Well, I think virtual learning has of course made leaps in advancement to make it possible so that we can have virtual classrooms where you don’t have to physically travel to the other location and still have good exchanges, although there’s really not a complete experience, of course, with the virtual learning. But, I think that that could be a way where we can also have a lot of the learning continue even after the travel for you to continue to have an exchange with those colleagues perhaps that you built a relationship with abroad. That would be one thing. I think innovations in terms of just our ability to predict outbreaks hopefully will continue to improve. That depends of course on in-country surveillance, which means that those countries who are not able to invest in the infrastructure of their medical systems and surveillance systems will always be less prepared than the countries that are able to make those long-term investments.

But again, surveillance will help us with outbreak prediction as well. Another thing that I’ll mention just as we’re in this post-pandemic world, or we’re just basically in the 20 thousands, and going on in this century, climate change, global warming, the changing weather patterns also have changed where some of the weather is less predictable, where we have larger swings in weather, whether it be drought, extreme drought or extreme rainfall, or wind, hurricane, monsoon, whatever you want to call it, we might have extreme swings now. We might have gentler winters and then followed by extreme winters, whatever it is. A lot of this is also going to perhaps affect that travel abroad. And again, those are things that we need to keep abreast with. And again, right now, political alliances of countries are changing, shifting, and have always been doing that for centuries, millennia.

Ed Butch: Right.

Dr. Wilbur Chen: But, they continue, and we watch them evolve. And again, some of it with the information exchange so quickly, decisions are being made through social media sometimes, and that means that conditions can change, or even misinformation can be exchanged so quickly now. I guess, it’s just we need to remain flexible. We also need to remain in a way where we are able to evaluate all of this exchange of information, or the conditions quickly, and in a way that makes sense. Not to be alarmist on one hand, and also not to be soothed and comforted into a situation where, again, all the signs are showing that maybe you should evacuate, or maybe you should be concerned, and you are basically putting your head in the sand, and not reacting to the situation. Again, we want to be able to react to those real world situations.

Ed Butch: Yeah. And your first point that you brought up there with online learning made me think and go back to an earlier question where we talked about reducing barriers to some students and things like that, and maybe coming up with something where two faculty colleagues from different countries have a class together that they’re doing, and it’s via Zoom every week, or something like that, so that students are able, who maybe can’t afford to do a full study abroad experience, could still have that experience in interacting with maybe a class from another country, or something like that as well.

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Yeah, yeah. I think, again, these study abroad experiences can be very powerful, but the power is also not just … And some of these study abroads could be as short as one-week, two-weeks, oftentimes are a whole semester, or a whole year abroad. And as we move into the hybrid where there’s virtual versus whatever, there may be, again, where in previous years, it was an entire semester abroad to have that experience.

Ed Butch: Right.

Dr. Wilbur Chen: But, we might be moving toward where you go out for two-weeks, you establish that relationship, and then, you come back, have some virtual exchanges, and then you go back for another two-week or four-week experience, and still get the same experience, but shorter durations of time of travel. Again, that might be appropriate for some settings. Again, I think higher education wants to be able to be flexible to make the learning experience just as valuable while creating an experience that really is educational.

Ed Butch: Yeah, for sure. As we wrap up here, if you were to recommend one or two best practices for campuses to adopt right now that maybe they aren’t doing, what would those be?

Dr. Wilbur Chen: Yeah, I think that if the campus doesn’t have a office that is dedicated to study abroad, foreign travel, and those resources, then certainly, they would want to invest in that. And if they do have them, then they want to think about, what are the additional things that could be done to really bolster the office, and the experience, which is maybe, again, coming up with those contingency plans, dusting them off, and refreshing them with the newer information that we have.

Also, it might be establishing more of these connections with foreign universities, colleges, or other nonprofit organizations, or what have you, for the exchanges. Again, I completely agree with the notion that having a out of the US foreign experience is an extremely valuable experience to have, to understand our place in the world, and that wherever it is that a person lands with their career, that there is a place in the world that they are, that they could have an impact. And so, I want them to think about not just their local community, but also their global community.

Ed Butch: Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation, some really important points that I think you brought up throughout, so I really appreciate it. Any final thoughts for our listeners today?

Dr. Wilbur Chen: I don’t want students to think that when they’re going abroad that they have the attitude that they’re going on holiday, but that it’s really that exchange of knowledge, and that, that’s going to be the most valuable part, and that as they do that, that they are an ambassador for their university and college. Not having the idea, again, that they’re on a holiday, that they’re on a vacation, but that they really want to take this attitude that they are really there for a purpose.

Ed Butch: Well, thank you so much again. I really appreciate it. I invite all of our listeners to visit citiprogram.org to learn more about our courses and webinars on research, ethics, compliance, and higher education. I look forward to bringing you more expert guests to discuss what’s happening on campus. Special thanks to our line producer, Evelyn Fornell. Production and distribution support provided by Raymond Longaray and Megan Stuart.