Sometimes You Need to Leave Campus to Grow & Positively Impact Your Profession

Gary Rhodes
Associate Dean, International Education & Senior International Officer,
College of Extended & International Education
Director, Center for Global Education
California State University at Dominguez Hills

I’ve been attending conferences that focus on international education issues since 1986. While at the Terra Dotta University (TDU) conference in Las Vegas, Nevada a couple of weeks ago, I thought again about why it is that we attend conferences in person in this digital age.

I think this question becomes even stronger when thinking about the focus of the content at TDU. Terra Dotta software primarily exists on the computer platform. It may be set-up through your own campus servers or with Terra Dotta hosting services. However, it supports efforts to process information effectively for students who study abroad and international students who come to the U.S. while providing special resources for issues like risk management and safety for faculty, staff, and students who travel around the world for study, research, and other activities.

It is easy for managers to think that since Terra Dotta Software is a digital platform, all answers can be provided through e-mail, phone, or webinars. However, I think it was evident at TDU that there is something more that can be gained in meetings where direct interactions between people take place.

In a group setting, where people are engaged in a similar focus, both formal and informal interactions play an important role. It is clear that many of the sessions at TDU provided insights from Terra Dotta staff and Terra Dotta users about the most effective ways to implement the software to maximize potential benefits for your institution and its faculty, staff, and students.

However, outside of formal presentations, there is the ability to engage in dialogues about practical uses by different institutions. Discussions focused on what is currently being done, but also brought up new ways to enhance outreach, simplify the application and admissions processes, improve upon orientation, while-abroad, and re-entry support. Dialogues between users led to formal and informal discussions between Terra Dotta staff and the many college and university representatives at the conference.

My focus at TDU was outreach and obtaining feedback on the content that the SAFETI Clearinghouse of the Center for Global Education at UCLA has provided through the Terra Dotta Community Library (TDCL). Through the TDCL, we have been able to take relevant content and make it more easily accessible for integration into the content provided to students before, during, and after study abroad. I was able to present about the resources available and discuss ways they can be used and additional resources that we could develop or enhance for the TDCL. This includes content we’ve developed about issues including crisis management, alcohol awareness, and communication strategies during study abroad.

It is also important to have colleges and universities using Terra Dotta Software to share content they’ve developed on the TDCL. I think the discussion at the end of the presentation aptly provided additional discussion on the importance of sharing resources institutions develop so that others don’t have to start from scratch when developing resources that support their own study abroad programs. Feedback has provided us with suggestions about ways to enhance the resources in the TDCL and new ones we will develop.

The feedback provided at TDU and at other international education conferences is particularly powerful because it comes out of a concentrated period of time when both formal and informal interactions are between people who understand what we’re talking about when we say: “I work in study abroad or international education programs at my college or university.” Usually, we are surrounded with others who either work in our same office or don’t really understand what it is that we do.

However, when we are surrounded by others who connect to our work and can provide us with professional support on how we can do our jobs better, we grow professionally. When we are able to share what we’ve learned with others to help them do their jobs better, we grow even more. When we are able to go beyond day-to-day issues to talk on a deeper level about both what we do and why it is important and how we can improve efforts to deepen the effect or make others safe to help them maximize the benefits of international learning, we rise to an even higher level. That is when we are able to come up with the best ideas to make the most significant differences.

TDU is an example of a conference where high level discussions of new ideas and best practices can happen, and potentially make a stronger impact in the future. Events like TD, where people in the same field come together and meet face-to-face, are critical as we think of ways to move our work and the field forward.