All Posts Tagged With: "Study abroad"

A.R. Elangovan shares his secrets to successful teaching

A.R. Elangovan, Victoria

Many teachers say that education is their calling. Professor A.R. Elangovan, of the Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria, has literally written the book (well, journal articles at least) on callings.

Naturally, his research caused a re-evaluation of the way he teaches Organizational Beahviour and leads as the International Programming Director of the school. Students have noticed, and so have colleagues. Elangovan is one of 10 new 3M National Teaching Fellows who have agreed to share their secrets to success.

Elangovan’s style might not seem radical, but if every business leader was taught the way his students are taught, it could have a profound impact on the world.

The Indian-born professor’s style was perfected a few years ago when he working on a paper with a religion professor about that elusive type of employee who doesn’t differentiate between “living life and earning a livelihood”—the type of employee who has found their calling.

Naturally, Elangovan turned the mirror on himself.

He realized that one’s calling does not have to line up with a job title—doctor, firefighter, singer or priest. A calling can be a core value adhered to in whatever you do—9 a.m. to 5 p.m. included.

“It took me a few years thinking about and doing research on this topic to finally realize that the essence of me, what’s driving me, is a very firm belief that everybody deserves a life of dignity,” says Elangovan. “The moment I started thinking like that, I changed what I do in the classroom.”

Most of Elangovan’s MBA students will one day be bosses. By helping their employees adhere to their core values—their callings—organizations are more likely to succeed. The job of a business teacher is to give students the confidence to build “enlightened workplaces,” he says.

To do so, he needed to move beyond simply imparting knowledge and encouraging students to apply that knowledge. ”I’m no longer just a teacher,” says Elangovan. “I’m a vehicle with morals, ideas and answers. I’m willing to step into [students’] worlds, which are full of doubt and messiness, and answer when they say ‘what would you do in this situation?’”

Other professors feel they must steer clear of articulating the path they would take in a particular situation, lest they impose their values on students. Elangovan doesn’t maintain that distance.

“I have to have the courage to say, yes, this is what I would do,” he explains. “I give them the ideas and concepts, but I don’t hide behind the ideas and concepts.”

Another way that Elangovan is pursuing his calling is through his role as the International Programs Director. He’s an evangelist for seeing world through different eyes “and having all your assumptions shaken.”

Canada is dependent on trade. It’s also a country where the most talented often grew up in another cultural context. Those are the types of ideas business leaders can see with international study.

They’re also the types of ideas that can lead business leaders to choose the path of greatest dignity for their employees—whether in Canada or in factories on the other side of the Pacific.

Elangovan’s goal is for 100 per cent of his students to spend a semester in a foreign culture. Only a small proportion of students ever study abroad, but at his school, 73 per cent now do.

Elangovan is living up to his calling, so that his students—and their employees—might live up to their callings too.

Tuition is a deal. School spirit is an experience.

School spirit at the University of Minnesota by Mulad on Flickr

For Manitoban students, international study doesn’t require a transoceanic flight.

Manitoba has a 20-year-old reciprocity agreement with the State of Minnesota and at least 21 Canadians are currently studying at campuses of the highly-regarded University of Minnesota.

Continue reading Why Manitoban students are studying in Minnesota

Students who study overseas drink more

Students who go abroad while in college are likely to increase or even double their alcohol intake while they’re away, a new study has found. Drinking increased most dramatically in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the study by researchers at the University of Washington found. Students reported drinking more when they perceived their travel companions were drinking more heavily, and those who planned to make drinking part of their cultural immersion did so.

The study published in the current issue of Psychology of Addictive Behaviours looked only at drinking habits of students who went abroad from the University of Washington, but UW graduate student Eric Pedersen said he would expect to get similar results at other universities. “I don’t think this is just a UW problem,” said the psychology student, who noted, however, that his study sample included more women than the national average for studying abroad and the students he looked at were more diverse ethnically than the national average.

His research did not pinpoint why students drink more while they study abroad, but the results don’t necessarily indicate binge drinking. Pedersen says a drink or so each night with dinner could add up to the 10 drinks a week European visitors reported on average. “In general drinking is an issue on college campuses. When you take that and put it in a foreign country there’s potential for more consequences,” Pedersen said. He noted, however, that most students who study overseas, including those who drink, do not get in trouble while they’re abroad.

Of the several thousand University of Washington students who study abroad each year, 177 answered a questionnaire before they went away and when they returned. On average, those students doubled their drinking while abroad, but most cut back to an average of three to five drinks a week when they returned to Seattle. A subset of students who travelled to the Middle East and other places where drinking is not as prevalent reported their intake decreased while abroad.

Students who were less than the legal drinking age in the United States increased their drinking while abroad by about 170 per cent, the study found. The overall increase was about 105 per cent.

Henry Wechsler, a lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health, who was not involved in Pedersen’s research, said the finding that location is an important element in shaping drinking behaviour is consistent with his department’s research. “We found that college students in the United States tend to drink at the levels of young people in the states where the colleges are located. What seems to be added here is that being away from the home environment of the college may create a ‘spring break’ atmosphere,” he said.

Since an increase in college student deaths related to drinking in the late 1990s, more research has focused on student drinking. This study points to more areas that need to be examined, said Bob Saltz, senior scientist of the Berkeley, California-based Prevention Research Center. He was not associated with this research. Saltz said the next step is to use this information to find ways to prevent students from getting in trouble with drinking while studying abroad. He said several recent studies have found success at decreasing student drinking while in the United States.

He would like to hear more about these students and their drinking: Were they having a beer with lunch or a glass of wine with dinner, or was it something more?

The Canadian Press