ST. OLAF COLLEGE. A Path to Teaching that Runs Through India, Korea, and Hong Kong

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1 S P O T L I G H T P R O F I L E S: T E N N O T E W O R T H Y I N S T I T U T I O N A L P R O G R A M S 93 ST. OLAF COLLEGE A Path to Teaching that Runs Through India, Korea, and Hong Kong St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, proudly embraces both the educational and religious missions that its Norwegian immigrant founders had in mind back in the This four-year college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America seeks to provide an education committed to the liberal arts, rooted in the Christian Gospel, and incorporating a global perspective. It was first among four-year colleges in Open Doors 2002 for the total number of study abroad students; its 660 just edged two partner Minnesota colleges, the College of St. Benedict and Saint John s University, which had 657. Nearly two-thirds of each graduating class has studied abroad. St. Olaf is a leading producer of volunteers for the Peace Corps. With 3,000 undergraduates, it has produced numerous Fulbright scholars eight last year and six in 2001 and many future Ph.D.s. The daily college schedule includes a 20-minute chapel service each morning. Attendance is voluntary; fewer than half the students are Lutheran. St. Olaf may be the only college with a fight song set to a waltz. St. Olaf engenders strong loyalty. It just completed a five-year campaign that topped its lofty $125 million target by $17 million. One purpose for which the money was raised was to add $10 million to an existing $1 million endowment for study abroad. For the past quarter century St. Olaf has sent a select group of seniors off to student teach in English-speaking schools in India, South Korea, and Hong Kong. Some 175 students have gone this route since No one majors in education at St. Olaf, but the college has an approved teacher education program and offers the education courses required for licensure in Minnesota. Their plate is full, said Myron Solid, a St. Olaf professor of education who coordinates the licensure program. Many students now postpone their student teaching until the fall after they graduate. We call it the ninth semester, said Solid. This is the case whether the students plan to practice teach in inner city Minneapolis or suburban Edina, or whether their passport is stamped for India or Hong Kong. Outside the Nanjing Massacre Museum in Nanjing, China. (Photo by Teal Smith 04) St. Olaf s International and Off-Campus Studies staff, FRONT ROW (Left to Right) Roseanne Galegher, coordinator of student services, Helen Stellmaker, coordinator of program advising and student, activities, BACK ROW Jane Weis, office manager, Kathy Tuma, associate director, Patrick Quade, director, Barbara Walters, coordinator of budgets and project assistant.

2 94 INTERNATIONALIZING THE CAMPUS 2003 Jenia traveled through northern India after completing her teaching and saw poverty so desperate it made me nauseous. She came back determined to share those experiences with her future students. Enlightened Feet in a Buddhist temple in India. (Photo by Stefanie Graen 03) We don t just send them anywhere, said Solid, who joined the St. Olaf faculty in The college purposely has kept the overseas internship program small, placing students in a select number of schools with which it keeps close ties. When a student comes in and says, Can I student teach in London? we say, No, not through us, explained Solid. The schools are Kodaikanal International School in the mountains of southern India; Woodstock International School north of Delhi in the foothills of the Himalayas; the Hong Kong International School; the Seoul Foreign School, and, formerly, the Taipai American School in Taiwan. From both sides standpoint, the continuity is invaluable. There s good communication. We establish a site coordinator at every institution, he said. What do students get from teaching in North India that they wouldn t get in Northfield? Justin, who taught at Kodaikanal, described the experience this way in a student teaching log: I taught in as diversity-rich a setting as I will ever see. My students came from a multitude of backgrounds and...many different religions Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Islam. I was unsure at first how I would be able to teach effectively. However, I found that my students were eager to share... It gave me not only the opportunity to learn from my students, but also challenged me to think along new avenues, be flexible, and show sensitivity in my teaching. For some St. Olaf students, these practicums allow them to fulfill a dream of studying abroad that they were unable to find time for earlier in their college careers. For others, it might be the second or even third overseas experience. St. Olaf follows a schedule, with professors teaching courses in dozens of destinations across the United States and the world each January; this year s offerings include courses in China, Japan, Bangladesh, Greece, Italy, Ecuador, and the Bahamas. Solid said students often ask beforehand, If I do my student teaching in India, will I be prepared to teach in North Minneapolis? He assures them the answer is yes. The setting and the students are different, but the curriculum and schools are similar, the professor said. We re talking about an international student body, not necessarily all Americans. These are private schools, all started by Christian missionaries in the old days. The schools in Hong Kong and Seoul enroll a lot of students whose parents are Americans working there. Most of the faculty is American. In India, both the students and faculty are much more international. But in all these schools, the young teachers are facing students bound for college. St. Olaf leaves it up to students whether to seek the opportunity to teach abroad, but Solid and his colleagues make sure that those who go are academically strong and high potential teacher candidates. Each student works with a mentor overseas and often lives in that teacher s home. The St. Olaf students arrive in early August, attend new teacher workshops, and then teach until Thanksgiving. American principals generally regard the experience as a feather in the student s cap. Other St. Olaf students who are not planning on a teaching career nonetheless sign up after graduation to teach English for a year in Japan or China. St. Olaf has an exchange program with East China Normal University in Shanghai. Others teach in the Peace Corps or in the Lutheran Volunteer Corps.

3 S P O T L I G H T P R O F I L E S: T E N N O T E W O R T H Y I N S T I T U T I O N A L P R O G R A M S 95 Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum at St. Olaf St. Olaf College has set an example for colleges eager to try Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum (FLAC). The concept is straightforward: the college has redesigned a number of courses to allow students and faculty to do some work in Chinese, French, German, Norwegian, Russian, or Spanish. These are not language courses but regular history, religion, political science, and economic classes that are normally taught only in English. Thanks to the cooperation of St. Olaf s humanities and social science faculty with its language professors, the FLAC component allows students to do extra work in the language of the country they are studying. They read primary materials in that language and spend an extra hour in class each week with a faculty member who speaks the language. For their efforts, they receive a separate grade and extra credit and the faculty get extra pay. The target of these FLAC courses is not the language major already taking advanced literature and history courses in French, Spanish, German, or another language, but those who have just completed the intermediate level of a language (which usually takes four semesters). The college advertises these courses as an ideal way to prepare before you go abroad or to apply what you ve learned abroad when you return to campus. St. Olaf was a pioneer in the FLAC movement, launching its program in 1989 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It later received additional recognition and seed money from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, part of the U.S. Department of Education. At St. Olaf, faculty members have added FLAC components in Chinese, French, German, Norwegian, Russian, and Spanish to courses in history, religion, science, and other subjects. Since its inception, more than 350 students from a variety of majors have taken a course with the FLAC component. If they take two such courses as one in four students does they earn an Applied Foreign Language Certificate. The FLAC program at St. Olaf is supported by an endowment of its own that generates $40,000 a year. Four courses were offered last fall, two over the January interim and seven this spring. They included courses on imperial Russia, modern France, Chinese civilization, Lutheran heritage, chemistry (with a German component), contemporary Latin America, and modern Scandinavia. Jolene Barjasteh, an assistant professor of French, regularly teams with history professor Dolores Peters to teach a course on modern France. A third of students customarily sign up for the FLAC component. Barjasteh said an hour a week isn t enough to make a significant difference in the students proficiency, but it whets their appetite for the language and gives them a leg up in the rest of the course. They feel much more confident. They tend to do better on their papers and in the Englishlanguage classroom discussions, said Barjasteh. The fishing village of Staithes, England. (Photo by Jessica Mott 03)

4 96 INTERNATIONALIZING THE CAMPUS 2003 Tea plantation workers in Munnar, Kerala, India. (Photo by Julia Jackson 03) For a role model, St. Olaf students can look to their president, Christopher Thomforde, an ordained Lutheran minister and scholar who with teammate Gary Walters made the cover of Sports Illustrated in February 1967 during their days as basketball stars at Princeton University. Thomforde passed up a shot at professional basketball to study Chinese at Middlebury College, then spent two years teaching at a university in Taiwan. St. Olaf, said Thomforde, is a place that seeks to nourish a sense of commitment and service not only within the United States but throughout the world.

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