Why More Students Are Choosing International Internships

International internships can be a profound turning point in your career path. Domestic internships can be instrumental in reshaping your career, but internships abroad, from business internships to journalism internships, are a quick way to invest in your life and career for long-term value that is immeasurable.

Students who experience the challenges of an internship in another country tend to quickly develop qualities of adaptability, problem solving and higher levels of confidence. They have the advantage of cultivating global professional connections and developing resumes that attract a greater breadth of job prospects.

Advantages of an Internship Abroad As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, more students are choosing internships overseas. For one thing, interning in another country is flexible and accessible almost any time of year, even for short durations less than a semester. An international education program can provide access to housing, on-site support services, and pre-departure services.

International education programs are also connected with high caliber small businesses and non-profits that offer internships for an economical price. Counselors can advise you on the types of companies and work you can anticipate, depending upon your area of study. Most significant is that you are often opened up to experiences and opportunities in markets that are otherwise more competitive in the United States.

The often unconventional and adventuresome nature of an international internship can be exciting, opening many students up to new career possibilities beyond typical institutional work. Further, graduates with a history of international internships attract higher salaries and tend to be favored by hiring managers who see the value in candidates who exhibit more flexible, multifaceted field experience. Employers also appreciate graduates who have ability to communicate and interact with other cultures.

Types of Internships Available Abroad International education programs have access to almost any type of internship in all varieties of study, from hospitality to social sciences to computer science. The disciplines of service you will encounter are similar to those available for domestic internships, but often you will be exposed to a wider variety of tasks, duties and responsibilities with the tendency of organizations overseas to be smaller.

Business internships overseas might for instance include areas of general business management, accounting, marketing, business administration or finance within financial institutions. However, you might find yourself immersed in the more organic problems of organizing the company's infrastructure.

Or, students who pursue communications or journalism internships might choose to focus on reporting, advertising or PR at a radio station, marketing firm or PR firm. But within an overseas setting, they could find themselves managing more complex projects or events, restructuring communication strategies or overhauling the company's public web profile or other PR.

An internship overseas makes sense as the economy becomes increasingly global. It can be an economical way to gain school credits and valuable experience that lasts a lifetime in many ways. It can be the chance to follow your dream.

Role of Computers in the Promotion of Environmental Education

Computers have caused a revolution in education, but the tremendous changes seen in the last decade may be surpassed in the next as those computers are connected in a global education network.

Teachers and high school students sample the water in Lake Baikal in Siberia while at other lakes around the world, other teachers and students take similar samples from local lakes and subject them to the same simple water-quality tests. Via their school computers, they exchange their results and their observations about how water pollution problems are the same around the world. They are part of a "global laboratory" project that includes scientists specializing in water pollution.

A similar computer network pins citizen activists, joined with students, teachers and scientists, in "sister watershed" groups throughout the world.

Amateur birdwatchers and biologists pool their rare bird sightings in a North American computer network that is linked with bird researchers in Central America and South America.

The differences between classroom and community education are blurred on the global computer networks. Voluntary organizations, government agencies, students and teachers are all involved in a real that has become, for many, a virtual classroom, without walls, and increasingly without borders.

Already, pilot projects have high school students sharing the methods and results from field studies of environmental quality, using computer telecommunication to leap national boundaries. Elementary school children share their life experiences end visions of the future the same way. Their messages to one another, passed with tremendous speed and shared simultaneously among many classrooms, provide strong, personal lessons in science, geography and human relations.

Environmental education curriculum development, pursued independently and often in isolation by teachers, school districts and universities over the past two decades, is now linked in a global forum that can respond immediately to the ever more complex and urgent environmental problems the world faces. Teachers the world over are connecting with their counterparts to discuss how they can do their jobs better. Co-ordination of international education projects is less burdened by the constraints of time and travel budgets as computer networks provide forums for collaboration.

The technology for this exchange takes advantage of the personal computer's ability to communicate over standard phone lines using a modem. The simplest networks connect personal computers in a "store-and-forward" system that echoes messages from one to the next, until all have copies. These least-cost networks are linked to larger, faster computers that act as central information storage banks and relay stations. They in turn exchange information with one another and tap the power and data in computer systems at major research and educational institutions.

In many ways this vast new sea of information presents its own challenges, often akin to "drinking water from a fire hose." The enormous glut of fact and opinion is impossible to take in, and has forced those who would taste its power to devise new ways for organizing and sampling the information flow.

Electronic mail services and computer "conferencing" let students and teachers communicate with each other privately, or publicly as members of large discussion groups. Computer conferences are organized much like those where people meet face-to-face, except that the meeting rooms are inside each participant's computer. Computer conferences transcend time zones, since participants review and comment on each others' written postings as their time and interest allows. Everyone gets to read and think about questions or statements posed in a conference, and everyone has a co-equal opportunity to reply.

Computer networking is making classroom walls disappear. Real environmental problems are entering the classroom with immediacy via computer nets, and students are jointly seeking understanding and solutions with scientists, citizen activists, journalists, government officials and community leaders of all kinds. While access to computer networks is still remote for most people on the planet, it is becoming more and more available to the gatekeepers and opinion-leaders who help shape common understanding of the global situation. The increasing abundance of the multiple information sources available via computer networks, if viewed as a well-stocked marketplace, may also stimulate demand for more and better goods by the world's information consumers.

Citizen participation in the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), for example, has been ccoordinated via computer networks on seven continents, giving NGOs access to complete text of the preparatory committee documents, and providing public forums for news and issue discussion. This availability of information has a dramatic effect on how an event such as UNCED permeates the mass media everywhere.

Underlying the often chaotic view presented by the mass media, structures are developing to channel the new rivers of information to empower this and coming generations to deal with the issues it describes. A variety of efforts at computer networking for environmental education provide some great models. At the root, these efforts are all based on the same notion: that environmental problems must be viewed with a global perspective, but responded to by individuals acting locally, in their own communities or homes.

All of this new technology is not without cost, and the developed countries are clearly ahead in providing computer access for education. But even in the United States, where computer telecommunication is becoming commonplace, profit rather than educational reform is a dominant force in determining who gets access.

The harsh reality has motivated citizen computer networks to band together in the international Association for Progressive Communications (APC) to make computer network access broadly available. The APC hosts several promising educational efforts on its partner computer networks that now extend to more than 90 countries around the globe. These services may be tapped by anyone with a personal computer and modem, often via a local call, at costs roughly equivalent to a newspaper subscription or monthly telephone bill.

The education projects offered on the APC networks are examples of how low-budget computer communication can fit into community programs and classrooms.

Online Master's Degree Programs Are A Great Option For International Students

The United States has appeal beyond being a democracy and its reputation as being the land of opportunity. Even with the economy in a slump, America has hosted more international undergraduate students than any other nation. Now, a new study shows that first-time international graduate student enrollment is on the rise again as well.

According to the study from the Council of Graduate Schools, student enrollment among international students attending graduate schools for the first time increased by 3 percent between the fall of 2009 and the fall of 2010. Most of the increase was seen among international grad school students from China and the Middle East, an announcement from the organization noted.

The 2010 increase came after a Council of Graduate Schools survey last year showed international student enrollment numbers were relatively flat, an announcement from the organization noted. While enrollment among first-time international graduate students increased over the past year, the organization notes, the overall increase among international student enrollment in grad schools was the smallest since 2006. This has to do with the fact that different degree programs take different lengths of time to complete, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.

The Council of Graduate Schools is a member-based organization that works to advance education at the graduate level and to encourage a demanding learning environment within graduate schools. Graduate programs in the United States are different than those overseas in that they combine research and classroom work and that students are evaluated based on classroom participation, exams and papers. Graduate students in the United States can study at government-funded public universities and they are typically more pricey, private universities, some of which are religious.

Grad students in the United States typically attend school for nine months out of the year, during spring and fall semesters. They accumulate academic credits for their work.

Information from the Council from 2009 shows that, while the number of graduate students increased by 4 percent from 2008, offers of admission dropped by 3 percent. The number of students from India and South Korea who have been applying to grad schools in the United States has been on the decline.

International students can also take part in online degree programs offered by grad schools. The website for one university in upstate New York contends that distance learning provides graduate school students opportunities to participate in classes that might otherwise be unavailable to them because of their location. With online degree programs, students participate in coursework from wherever they have Internet access and whenever they schedule their studies.

How is Education Abroad Related to the College-University Mission Statement?

It is important to draw justification for a study abroad program from the college/university mission statement. Look for excerpts from mission statements and senior level administration for internationalizing the curriculum, developing students with a global perspective, preparing students for a global workforce, etc.

Write a mission statement for study abroad that makes it a priority to integrate international education services into the foundation of the college/university mission. A study abroad office mission includes an academic enhancement role and student support services. It is essential to include with your mission statement, some measurable intended outcomes for study abroad. Your statements of intended outcomes will guide your policies and practice.

It is also important to understand that every institution invests dollars and staff in endeavors that support and enhance the institutional mission and outcomes. Just as we see different levels of support for campus housing on various campuses, we also see different levels of support for international education.

Study abroad has long been considered an elective or "luxury" experience and thus has not been tied to the core values (and therefore finances) of most institutions. The closer you correlate study abroad with institutional priorities, the more leverage you will have in gaining support for your endeavors.

An example of a campus mission statement that is easily identifiable with education abroad.

Mission Statement:

We educate students to put the liberal arts into action as citizens in a global society.

And they go on to describe their core values as:

Academic Excellence, Diversity, Equity, and Shared Governance, Education of the Entire Person, Adherence to Common Ethical and Moral Standards Community Service and Global Citizenship, Environmental Stewardship.

This makes it easy to integrate study abroad into the core values of the institution.

Another example of a university mission statement is:

Our mission is to educate and nurture students, to create knowledge, and to provide service to our community and beyond. Committed to excellence and proud of the diversity of our University family, we strive to develop future leaders of our nation and the world.

However, some university mission statements require a little more work to integrate international education into the core values. For example consider the following mission statement

Our mission is to discover, create, transmit, and apply knowledge to address the needs of individuals and society. This mission is accomplished through instruction, which communicates the knowledge and values and imparts the skills necessary for individuals to lead responsible, productive, and personally satisfying lives; through research, scholarship, and creative activities, which advance knowledge and enhance the educational process; and through public service, which contributes to the solution of societal problems and enriches the quality of life in the State.

And yet other university mission statements do not lend themselves easily to integrating international education as a core value.

Our mission as a multipurpose public institution is to develop educated persons of inquiring, creative, and disciplined intelligence to be competent in careers that are fulfilling and to be socially responsible contributors to society. This University strives, therefore, to graduate people on the bachelor's and master's level who have had sound education in the arts and sciences and relevant specialized training built upon that base.

A study abroad office mission statement can also come in many diverse forms and visions. The following mission statement is an example of a diverse vision:

The Office for Study Abroad promotes opportunities for global education to all eligible students in order for them to gain an understanding of other countries, regions, languages, and cultures through direct overseas experience.

Some universities have taken the approach of being very explicit about their connection to the institution's core values:

In support of the University's mission to "promote the process of lifelong learning from both global and integrative perspectives," the Office for Study Abroad offers international education opportunities to students through the University's overseas study centers, international exchange partners, and affiliated organizations. As an extension of the University's academic program, we promote academic excellence and provide access to high quality international education programs in expanding geographic destinations to serve a diverse student population representing a wide array of academic disciplines. As educators, we facilitate the academic, personal, professional, and intercultural development of students through the programs and services we provide.

And one more example of a carefully crafted mission statement that not only integrates international education into the university core value, but also sets criteria and objectives for policy:

We are a world leader in research, teaching, and public engagement. Many hands - at home and abroad - make it so, and many benefit. Study abroad is one of the ways in which our students and others build and benefit from our University's international engagement.

Our mission is to provide and facilitate a range of study and education opportunities abroad consonant in breadth and quality with on-campus curricula, offered for short or long duration according to curricular objectives and in consideration of students' obligations, at a range of costs and with opportunities for scholarship or subvention such that study abroad opportunity is available to all students in good standing. Attention to students' health, safety, and well-being abroad underlies all other considerations.

Our intention is that through study abroad we and our partners prepare students for global citizenship, guiding them to a greater understanding of world and domestic cultures and encouraging them to share that understanding with their hosts abroad and communities at home; that students gain or enhance area, linguistic, subject, and cultural knowledge and competence; that students contribute to their host communities; and that students emerge wiser and more engaged citizens