CRAFTING ASSESSMENTS: A STRATEGIC APPROACH TO STUDY ABROAD
Nanette S. Levinson
Associate Professor of International Relations
School of International Service
American University
Washington, DC 20016-8071
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Introduction
The U.S. congress has declared 2006 as the year of Study Abroad. On college campuses,
administrators and faculty are increasingly grappling with how they can ‘internationalize’
their campuses. In international affairs schools and political science departments in
colleges large and small, students who do ‘study abroad’ are providing anecdotal
evidence on how these experiences were either highlights of their undergraduate or
graduate study or how such experiences, indeed, changed their ways of thinking about
themselves, their studies, and the world in which they live.
Yet even today, as Gillespie pointed out in 2002 when she reflected on the implications
of September 11, 2001 for study abroad experiences, “formal assessment of study abroad
programs lags behind the assessment of other kinds of programs on college campuses.”
As the Year of Study Abroad begins and as discussions of ‘internationalizing’ campuses
continue, there is still a need to focus on assessment of study abroad programs, especially