Introduction

[00:00:07] Steve MacDonald: Welcome to the Global Engagement Insights Podcast. I'm Steve MacDonald, the host, and today, we have a very special guest and topic. We have Mary Stegmaier from the University of Missouri. Mary, not only are you faculty, a political scientist by trait, but you've been an SIO for five years and run study abroad programs.

[00:00:29] Steve MacDonald: In fact, you've just got back from a program that I'd love to have you give us a little bit of the highlights on because today we're going to be talking about study abroad. Most importantly, we're going to be talking about how we keep students and faculty safe. What are the risk factors?

[00:00:46] Steve MacDonald: How do we ensure their safety? And how is data playing into all of that and making it important to ensure safety in this new day and age of data? Before we do that, underscore just a little bit more about your background and the overall importance of study-abroad. You're still glowing from your most recent trip to Central Asia, so maybe put a dab of that in there, too.

[00:01:15] Mary Stegmaier: Thank you for having me today. I'm Mary Stegmaier, the senior international officer at the University of Missouri. I'm also a political science faculty member, and my academic background is in comparative politics. I study international elections.

[00:01:33] Mary Stegmaier: My teaching and research background has prepared me well for being an SIO. I have taught courses specifically for international students, helping them learn about the American government. But I have also done research abroad. I have lived abroad in that capacity, also teaching English abroad long ago.

[00:01:57] Mary Stegmaier: I have led study abroad programs; as you just mentioned, I just returned from a two-week faculty-led study abroad program that I led to Central Asia to the country of Kyrgyzstan. The course topic is politics and society in Central Asia. For those of you who have not been to Central Asia, it's an amazing place for students to study. The culture and history are so different for American students. So, to spend time in an economically developing post-Soviet country with beautiful mountains, we had a chance to go hiking, but because there aren't so many study-abroad groups, we have unprecedented access to political institutions.

[00:02:46] Mary Stegmaier: We went to political institutions. We met members of Parliament, heard the Prime Minister speak in person, visited the U.S. Embassy, and spent an hour with one of the mayors. These experiences really opened our students' eyes to all their opportunities and new possibilities as they thought about their careers.

[00:03:12] Mary Stegmaier: We had a chance to visit with foreign service officers as well as some Peace Core volunteers while we were there, and in talking with the students afterward and also reading their travel journals, I can see that some of them are now considering these career opportunities as pathways for their post-graduation life. It s exciting to see that we can have this kind of impact on our students.

[00:03:40] Steve MacDonald: I think that kind of impact, and I'm sure so many people who are listening to this are thinking, that's why we're in this, that's the mission. That's the benefit. You and I were talking before about how students come back later in their careers and talk about how this was a seminal moment in their lives.

[00:03:56] Steve MacDonald: I think that's a good foundation for what we'll discuss here because I want to ask you two different questions. It's about the importance of study abroad to the university, the students, and the faculty. In a rating of 1 to 10, how important is this to the university, faculty, and students overall? Then, explain a little bit why.

[00:04:26] Mary Stegmaier: Here at the University of Missouri, we are the largest public institution in the state, and we want to prepare our students to be good citizens of our state of our country, but also of the world. It can be very focused and insular here, but getting our students out allows them to understand the world's challenges, how to interact with different people, how to be in uncomfortable situations, how to get outside of your comfort zone, and how to realize that you can be successful. You can be happy. You can contribute. You can meet new people in different settings, and we are humans who care about the same things. We care about our families, our friends, and the environment that we are in. It's an opportunity for them to learn about the big challenges that the world faces, not just how they impact us here in Missouri but how the decisions that we make here in our community and our country impact the rest of the world.

[00:05:26] Mary Stegmaier: Our students must have international education opportunities. One of those main opportunities is through study abroad or international internships. But of course, there are also ways that we can bring the world to our campus by having international students here who bring their perspectives to classroom discussions and extracurricular activities. But this is an important part of a university education.

[00:06:05] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. Very well said. This is the backdrop for where the rest of the podcast will go because now that we understand and all believe it's the mission or passion of how important it is to the university, the students, and the faculty. Now, I want to transition to how important it is to ensure faculty and students' health, safety, and risk aversion when they're traveling abroad. How important is that to the overall university?

[00:06:32] Mary Stegmaier: So, in my mind, the most important factor that we consider is health, safety, and security as we send students to different destinations and universities around the world to study. If we are not doing what we need to do to ensure safety, security, and health, then this undermines our efforts to provide an enriching academic experience for our students abroad.

[00:07:01] Mary Stegmaier: It would reflect poorly on our institution if we were being reckless and sending students to destinations that are really high risk without taking necessary precautions. So, at the University of Missouri, as well as many other large universities and hopefully all universities, a risk assessment is done for all study abroad destinations. We also do this for high-risk destinations where maybe our PhD students are going to do dissertation research or field research or students going to conferences abroad. So, if they're traveling on university-related business, travel, or study, we want to ensure that the students have what they need to be safe and that we are reviewing those destinations if they are risky places.

[00:08:00] Steve MacDonald: In a previous call, I asked you one more question: What is the importance of data in ensuring health and safety and providing risk aversion for the faculty and students? You said it was a 10 out of 10. Talk to us a little bit now about your data and why that's so important.

[00:08:21] Mary Stegmaier: It's a really important question because we do the risk assessments and make our decisions about running programs to particular locations or not, allowing students to do research in particular locations, or suggesting other options for them by reviewing data. We get data from a whole range of sources, including the Department of State and the CDC study abroad providers.

[00:08:50] Mary Stegmaier: Maybe the faculty member has been there, and they have on-the-ground information. We also visit many of our study abroad destinations to assess health, safety conditions, and precautions they have in place there. However, we also need to know where our students are traveling, and we have a travel registry where students register for any university-related travel.

[00:09:19] Mary Stegmaier: If it s a study abroad program, we're working with the program, the faculty leader, and our study abroad office to do that assessment. If students are going to do dissertation research, maybe they're going to Ecuador, then we would want to review that location and make sure that students are aware of the things they should avoid and precautions they should take. So, knowing where our students are going helps us assess the risk, but when there is a crisis or an emergency abroad, we need to know where our students are in the world. Who are the students and who are in that location that has been impacted by the crisis?

[00:10:06] Mary Stegmaier: Our travel registry where students register their travel and their itinerary is really essential in that process so that we know who's there, we have their email address, we have their cell number, and we have emergency contact information for them.

[00:10:25] Steve MacDonald: And that's real-time. If a crisis happens, you know exactly how many students you have, know exactly how to get ahold of them and know exactly how to get together with family members who might be in touch with them in other ways.

[00:10:38] Steve MacDonald: Talk to me a little bit about the role of data in assessing risk in crisis management itself. What are the best practices that you would recommend to other SIOs and leaders who are watching here as they think about how to prepare for this? How do I have the best practices in place to do this?

[00:11:00] Mary Stegmaier: We have two staff members in our international health, safety, and security office, which is part of international programs. They report to me but work closely with our study abroad team. They review the programs that we are running and the destinations where our students are traveling, and they do site visits, reviewing the Department of State, CDC, and all of those types of information. So, not just using one source, but also getting information from the traveling students as appropriate. So, when a student is going to a higher-risk destination, maybe it's a Department of State level three; this is something that we would review.

[00:11:49] Mary Stegmaier: Often, we would review with an entire STAR committee. It stands for Student Travel Abroad Review Committee. There's a key group of people on this committee. We have a representative from the General Counsel's Office. We have Risk and Insurance Management, Contracts Office, Study Abroad, myself, and we also have a couple of faculty members who have led study abroad programs. It's important to have faculty input into this because, at public universities, the faculty are the core part of the university.

[00:12:30] Mary Stegmaier: We also want to get their input into this program. Is it too risky, or could it run with certain precautions in place? Are those precautions reasonable to ask of, say, undergraduate students, or is it reasonable to ask a faculty leader to ensure? So, the STAR committee will meet, and then, if it's approved, specific guidance will be given to the faculty member or the student traveling about precautions they should take.

[00:13:03] Mary Stegmaier: There are a few other things that are important for risk and emergency management. One is that someone on our team who is trained always has an emergency phone. So, if a faculty member is leading a study abroad program and there's an emergency that happens, they can call the emergency phone any time of day, and it will get answered.

[00:13:29] Mary Stegmaier: You will have support from someone on our team who can help you ensure that you are taking the appropriate steps or handling the situation as best as possible. Related to that, we have emergency plans. So, if a student is sick and needs to be hospitalized, who needs to be notified?

[00:13:52] Mary Stegmaier: What are the steps in that process? As a side note, I've had a student emergency on a trip to a study abroad program. A student got very sick while we were visiting a museum. I'm not a medical doctor; I'm a political scientist. So, I did not know what was wrong with her, but she was in serious pain and going in and out of consciousness. So, the museum officials called an ambulance for us, at which point I was like, this is an emergency.

[00:14:21] Mary Stegmaier: I need to call even though it is four in the morning in Missouri, and the phone was picked up immediately. It was so helpful because I was worried about the students. Now, we're off to a hospital. and don't know what's wrong with her.

[00:14:41] Mary Stegmaier: I had an interpreter with me as well, but just making sure that we were notifying the health insurance that we were in touch with our doctors here on campus to get some additional guidance. In the end, fortunately, the student was fine. They thought she had appendicitis, but whatever was wrong with her past after 24 hours, I know firsthand how important it is to have that support as a faculty leader on the ground.

[00:15:10] Mary Stegmaier: One other important thing for us is that we use Alert Traveler, which notifies whoever has the emergency phone when there is a really serious incident somewhere abroad where we have a student traveling. So, this could be a natural disaster or a terror attack, but we know immediately to check on our students there.

[00:15:35] Mary Stegmaier: That's another critical piece related to essential data for our emergency response.

[00:15:44] Steve MacDonald: So, one of the things that I want to make sure that we cover here is that you brought up that student's story. What are some other stories where the system and the data were critical regarding how you responded, how quickly you responded, how successful the response was, whether it's Pakistan or Afghanistan, or you've mentioned things about South Korean riots in Paris? What's another good example of how having the right system, process, and data in place is essential?

[00:16:19] Mary Stegmaier: In October 2022, there was a Halloween stampede, or a crowd crush, in Seoul, South Korea. The University of Missouri and I have very strong ties with South Korea, so I knew we had students there, and I saw this the moment it hit the news. I was also abroad at that time. So, right away, touch base, our travel alert was going off, but we touched base with our international health, safety, and security.

[00:16:49] Mary Stegmaier: They'd already issued check-ins to the students via email and text message. Our team also reached out to their host institutions for them to check on the whereabouts of the students because this happened late in the evening and students aren't always checking their emails or their text messages, but we also knew that our university leadership would want to know about the safety of those students and the local media, because of our really strong ties with Korea.

[00:17:21] Mary Stegmaier: So, we quickly heard back from almost all the students. One of the students was not responding, so we actually had someone on site to go to that student's apartment and the student was fine, just simply not paying any attention to the messages that were coming in and the concerns that people had.

[00:17:43] Mary Stegmaier: So, this is one concrete example of using our system, knowing who was in the country, what programs they were on to reach out to the students quickly and in multiple ways but also to connect with the host institutions for them to do their part. Because of that tragedy and that it really affected younger people, we had follow-up information for students about resources for support if they were experiencing grief or also anxiety about being in crowds after seeing this news or hearing this news while they were in the country.

[00:18:23] Mary Stegmaier: So, we have available counseling resources through our insurance, which all of our students going abroad have, and our counseling center. So, making the students aware of those resources is another important support part, but there are multiple examples. So, there were riots in Paris, and we wanted to check in with students and remind them to avoid protests and demonstrations to ensure they would remain safe.

[00:18:57] Mary Stegmaier: An earthquake in Japan impacted the mayor of our sister city. While we knew we didn't have students in the exact location impacted by the earthquake, we checked in and could follow up with our city officials to say our students were all safe in their locations in Japan.

[00:19:19] Mary Stegmaier: Emergencies can happen, like all different kinds of emergencies. These are all different situations and things that we might not have been able to predict, but we need to be prepared for them and have the information readily available with staff who are trained in these systems and in the protocols that we should be following.

[00:19:41] Steve MacDonald: I love how you've talked about being prepared. There's a step before all of this that we talked about, and that's fundraising for crisis management. So, you have the resources, tools, training, everything, the best practices you've been talking about here.

[00:19:59] Steve MacDonald: Tell us a little bit about your thoughts on the importance of promoting and marketing crisis management and getting funding for the overall program. As SIOs, you do that all the time. You never take off that advocacy hat.

[00:20:15] Mary Stegmaier: For me, we have been quite successful in highlighting different situations that have happened to our leadership where we have responded well, and that have turned out well, that our students have been safe, but emphasizing that we need the tools, and able to respond quickly to the media office to respond to parents but also, our parents and students want us to be sending students on safe programs. They want to know that we are monitoring conditions on the ground. We are following situations that are evolving in countries around the world, and being able to tell parents and students oftentimes, the parents are a little more worried about this than the students. But yes, we are watching what is happening in the Middle East and how that might spread. We are monitoring the Department of State warnings. These are the various sources of data that we use.

[00:21:22] Mary Stegmaier: This all takes staff time, and it all takes systems to compile the information so that it is usable for us to make decisions. Looking back to just before the pandemic, we already had one staff member, our international health safety and security officer. So very grateful for that. Shortly before the pandemic hit, we didn't know the pandemic was coming, but we were able to hire an additional staff member for that team.

[00:21:56] Mary Stegmaier: So, when the initial news came out of parts of Asia, this new virus existed. We already had two people who were trained, and for us as a campus, having two well-trained, respected, very capable staff members in this round to help us make decisions about when to bring students back from study abroad because the COVID conditions were getting worse over time and then also to handle information about their quarantine requirements when they return to Missouri, answer parent questions, all of this.

[00:22:29] Mary Stegmaier: It was critical but also essential as we began to reopen study abroad. We conducted risk assessments for different locations around the world regarding medical care and COVID conditions. All of this seemed like a decade ago now, but COVID taught us all a lot about international health, safety and security, and best practices.

[00:23:03] Mary Stegmaier: I'm very grateful that we were well-prepared and well-staffed at that time.

[00:23:10] Steve MacDonald: If you had a simple recommendation to other leaders, international education leaders, SIOs, and associate vice provosts that are out there and managing their study abroad programs today, what would be your recommendation to them to make sure that they are running best practices?

[00:23:30] Mary Stegmaier: I think NAFSA has some excellent health safety and security resources for study abroad programs. Barbara Lindeman, who is our director of international health safety and security at the University of Missouri, is very active, has worked in this field for many years, and is well respected regarding health, safety, and security abroad,

[00:23:52] Mary Stegmaier: There are different networks; the pulse network, for example, is where people in the field can get data and information about safety and security in a particular destination. So, I think that is one thing, but having a dedicated person is important if you are large enough university or sending enough students abroad, or at least part of a person's time that is devoted to monitoring where students are going that they're completing, their travel registry information with all that information that you would need in an emergency and that person has the time to do, some of the checks with the State Department, with OSAC, with the CDC, and site visits destinations that their students oftentimes, are visiting.

[00:24:49] Steve MacDonald: Let me ask you a question; you'll love to answer. What are you most proud of about running the study abroad program and keeping faculty and students safe?

[00:25:01] Mary Stegmaier: I am most proud of the fact that over the past few years, especially since the pandemic, we have really focused on expanding study-abroad opportunities to less common destinations.

[00:25:18] Mary Stegmaier: We have increased study abroad opportunities in parts of Asia, not just my Kyrgyzstan program, but more programs in Japan and South Korea. We've launched more African programs in South Africa and Latin America. So, this works to diversify the student's experiences abroad, but it also attracts different types of students than the standard Study abroad programs going to Europe, whether it's London or Florence or Madrid, all great destinations and perfect destinations for certain students, but some students want more challenging programs.

[00:26:02] Mary Stegmaier: They want to go to destinations that are more different from the United States. Some of them want to go to destinations that they relate to in different ways, whether it's their cultural heritage or their desire to feel what it's like to be in a country where they are a minority.

[00:26:21] Mary Stegmaier: Expanding these study-abroad opportunities means providing our students with a better international education experience. Related to that, we have made great strides in expanding opportunities to first-gen college students, specifically, also working with our first-gen office on campus so that students have the tools for financial planning and that they know that this is something that is for them, that we can run affordable programs, interesting programs that they are excited about.

[00:26:59] Mary Stegmaier: They can go on any of our programs, but sometimes, certain groups of students also feel more comfortable going on a program that is really tailored to them and their interests.

[00:27:13] Steve MacDonald: We've covered a lot. If there was one takeaway that you wanted anyone watching or listening to this podcast to remember, what would that takeaway be?

[00:27:22] Mary Stegmaier: Emergencies and crises can happen at any time, any place in the world. Our students, parents, and communities are expected to trust us to make responsible decisions. It would reflect poorly on us if we acted in ways that could be perceived as irresponsible. So, making informed decisions will help us all ensure that our students are rewarded with successful international education experiences worldwide. That's our goal as SIOs when it comes to study abroad.

[00:28:02] Steve MacDonald: So much wisdom. Thank you so much, Mary, for coming on and sharing. It would help if we could all hear from our peer community on best practices and what we're doing and putting into place to keep our students and faculty safe.

[00:28:15] Steve MacDonald: If people had questions afterward, would it be appropriate to provide a link to your profile on LinkedIn so they could reach out?

[00:28:23] Mary Stegmaier: Yes, of course. Happy to connect with people. Thank you.