Professors Get Their Own Study-Abroad Programs

This article reports that at Rollins College, a liberal-arts institution, professors are paid to get away for overseas travel so that their students will learn to be more globally minded. The college's president, Lewis M. Duncan, has pledged to send every faculty and staff member with teaching duties abroad once every three years. Since 2006, 128 Rollins employees, about two-thirds of those eligible, have used the $3,000 grants to conduct individual research projects or to travel internationally with faculty-led groups to destinations including China, Ecuador, and Tanzania. Rollins is among a growing number of colleges across the country that are trying to create more-global campuses by cultivating a faculty of internationalists. Indeed, a recent report by the American Council on Education pointed to the expansion of support for faculty members to study or conduct research abroad, or to lead overseas programs, as a bright spot in colleges' otherwise uneven efforts at internationalization.