Best Practices Conference in June, 2001

Participants:

• Jolene Jacobson Barjasteh
• Rick Fairbanks
• Patrick Quade (Task Force member)
• Helen Stellmaker
• Anne Walter

Project Title: Designing a strategy for enhancing international components of on-campus programs; template for off-campus internships.

Project Description: Our team will have received preliminary data from an electronic faculty survey completed on June 1, 2001. This information will become the base line data for assessing the level and breadth of on-campus curricular offerings regarding international perspectives. The team will work with the data in an attempt to design a strategy to aid departments, programs and individual faculty members who wish to enhance the international components of their courses. We hope to identify a second consortia institution interested in a similar strategy.

A secondary task is involved with an on-going review of our Study-Service programs with the intent of developing a new model in new site (or sites) with a closer tie to the Center for Experiential Learning at St. Olaf. This Center has recently designed a template for developing off-campus study internships that we believe could be integrated into our new models for study/service. We will have a draft policy statement in this area prior to the June Conference and then would use the conference resources and time to develop more specific implementation measures. Again, we would look for other institutions engaged in the same or similar initiatives.

Participants:

Name: Jolene Jacobson Barjasteh

Title: Director of Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum (FLAC) & Associate Professor of French

E-mail: barjaste@stolaf.edu

Biographical Information: Jolene Jacobson Barjasteh earned her Ph.D. in 19th century French literature from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1984 and then accepted a position at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. In addition to teaching all levels of French language, literature and culture, she has led study programs in France and spent a sabbatical year in Egypt. General education, study abroad programs, and interdisciplinary studies are her main areas of interest.

Name: Rick Fairbanks

Title: Associate Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of Humanities

E-mail: fairbank@stolaf.edu

Biographical Information: Rick Fairbanks has been a member of the St. Olaf faculty since 1988 and was chair of the Philosophy Department from 1998 to June 2001. He is program advisor to St. Olaf Study Service programs in Indonesia and Korea. He serves on a task force working to develop new international service learning programs for St. Olaf.

Name: Patrick Quade (Task Force member)

Title: Director of International and Off-Campus Study

E-mail: quade@stolaf.edu

Presentation: "It Changed My Life": Strategies for Assessing Student Learning on Off-Campus Study Programs, Saturday, 9:00-10:30

Biographical Information: Patrick Quade has served as the Director of International and Off-Campus Studies at St. Olaf College since 1997. From 1968 until 1997 he was a faculty member and Department Chair in the department of speech and theater at St. Olaf. He is graduate of St. Olaf (BA in 1965), The University of Wisconsin (MA in 1968) and The University of Minnesota (MFA in 1972). He has led many student groups to off-campus study programs in London, Egypt, India, China, Hong Kong, South Korea. In 1976 and in 1980 he served as the London resident director for the ACM Arts of London and Florence program. He returned on April 6 of this year from a 5-week, around-the-world study/travel program for parents of St. Olaf students who have participated in off-campus study programs.

Name: Helen Stellmaker

Title: Coordinator of Advising and Student Activities

E-mail: stellmak@stolaf.edu

Presentation: Orientation and Re-entry at St. Olaf: A Developed Model, Saturday, 9:00-10:30

Biographical Information: Helen Stellmaker has been Coordinator of Advising and Student Activities since 1988. She was the SECUSSA Region IV Chair for NAFSA in 1995-96 and has presented in numerous Regional SECUSSA sessions. She edited the chapter on "Predeparture Orientation and Reentry Programming" in the NAFSA Guide to Education Abroad for Advisers and Administrators. Helen was the President of AAPLAC (Association of Academic Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean) in 1998. She has presented at the AAPLAC conferences for the past 8 years. Most recently she co-led a workshop on Orientation and Liabilities. She also served on the task force on re-entry for HECUA (Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs) and participated in the HECUA Fellows program in Quito, Ecuador. Helen has a BA in Education from St. Olaf College. As a student, she participated in a one-month program in East Germany and in the Global Semester (a 5-month academic program with one month each in Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Japan). She has also traveled in Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Russia, Latvia, Costa Rica, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador.

Name: Anne Walter

Title: Associate Professor of Biology

E-mail: waltera@stolaf.edu

Biographical Information: Most of my international experience has come in my role as a biologist. At the National Institutes of Health, for example, I was surrounded by colleagues of all nationalities and those contacts became the basis for travel to meetings or to work in Denmark, India, Israel, Poland, Sweden, Ireland, France, New Zealand and England. At St. Olaf, in my role as advisor for the Biology in South India program, a semester-long study service program, I have had the pleasure of helping students integrate their biological studies and knowledge into real world issues. This involves creating links here particularly with members of the departments of Sociology, Religion, Political Science, Mathematics, Women's Studies, English and Social Work. There, we have forged links with numerous NGOs, government agencies and citizens groups concerned with improving the health of India's citizens and environmentally responsible growth and development. I graduated from Grinnell College in 1973, earned an MSc. from the University of British Columbia in 1977 and Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from Duke University in 1981.