I am writing to respond to your article and editorial regarding my office in the Oct. 25 edition of The Eagle. Having spent many hours of my time being interviewed by your reporter, I have to say I am disappointed in the "spin" The Eagle chose to put on these two reports, which focus on the results of your most "unscientific" survey (by your own admission) of a very small proportion of AU students.
Not knowing what the parameters of your survey were, it is difficult to say what your respondent sample size was, but our best estimate is that it was well under 10 percent. This is in contrast to our own AU Abroad evaluations, which are made available online to all students abroad toward the end of each semester, and to which we receive a response rate of well over 50 percent. The questions on our evaluations cover all aspects of students' experiences abroad. While respondents do also express to us some discontent with the bureaucracy of studying abroad - which is only to be expected - overall comments about the process tend to range from neutral to positive, and the complaints we receive are placed into their larger context, a context I had shared with your reporter. It is a shame in my view that The Eagle did not see fit to share this context with its readers.
When AU students study abroad, every academic and administrative office at the university is affected in some way. One of the main jobs of my staff, therefore, is to coordinate our students' study abroad experience with all these many other AU offices. Accomplishing this requires us to set up special systems that lie outside the norms of the university's on-campus activity. It's a labor-intensive process, and one we hope students never actually notice. However, because studying abroad has to be handled differently within the AU bureaucracy, there is always the chance that errors will occur. We are also admittedly sometimes hindered by receiving incomplete or even incorrect information from our partner institutions overseas - this has, for example, been something of a chronic problem with one of the universities mentioned in your article. We try our best to prevent this, but often it is out of our control. That is the nature of international partnerships.
And there are certain things my office cannot do for students - for example, providing academic approval of their courses abroad, a duty that lies correctly with AU's academic units. It is clear from your article that my office does need to do a better job explaining to students what AU Abroad cannot do for them, and why. We will be taking steps to ensure that our students have a better understanding of the reasons for some of our bureaucratic procedures, which do, in fact, exist for their own protection.
Truly effective communication with our students is always a challenge. The article mentioned that given the number of our programs, it is impossible for our advisers to keep in their heads all detailed information regarding every program and partner institution. This is not a "failure" of my office - on the contrary, it is not their job to do so. Our job is to assist our students in discovering what they need to know, and my advisers do just that - they advise the students on the basics of their options, and then they work with each student individually to ensure that their advisees can and do obtain all the information they need to have a successful study abroad experience. Advisers then spend a great deal of time and effort providing necessary pre-departure information on a range of topics (academic, cultural, personal), in written and verbal forms, individually and in groups. One of our main problems, in fact, is not that we give students too little information, but rather we give them too much. It is impossible for students to keep all that information in their heads. We are therefore always trying to identify ways in which we can be more effective in transmitting all this information to students and helping them to remember that the answers to most of their questions as their semester abroad progresses is often readily available in the reams of information already in their possession. My staff and I will gratefully receive suggestions from students as to how we can improve in this area!
We always have an open door policy in the AU Abroad office. Last year, our records show that over 2,000 AU students met with a member of my staff, and we hope that number continues to increase. I encourage any AU student to contact us directly with any comments they may have about studying abroad.
Sara E. Dumont Director, AU Abroad, Abroad at AU
