Although the Los Niños de Oaxaca Project varies considerably from the traditional semester study abroad experience described in the international education literature, the planning and structure of this specialized project have ensured continued success consis- tent with the goals and mission of the university honors program for which it was designed. This approach reaffirms the conclusion drawn by Rosalie C. Otero in her discussion of faculty-led honors international programs where she notes that a strength of these kinds of programs is the degree to which they can be “customized both to the students and the honors program” (41). For the students in the Central Michigan University Honors Program, this customi- zation focused primarily on creating a program that matched cur- ricular requirements or emphasized service, a core value of the CMU Honors Program, and eased anxiety for groups of students with little or no previous international experience. The additional emphasis on recruiting first-year honors students emerged out of these goals but was made possible by the academic collaboration that ensured students from other areas of the university would bring complementary skills to ensure the success of the service activities. Although someone considering the development of a faculty-led international project might draw any number of different lessons from what has been shared, three specific themes deserve special attention because they are unusual in the study abroad field more generally.
The Special Challenges and Opportunities of Service-Learning Projects
In order for the most substantial intercultural learning to occur, according to Carolyn Haynes, students must actively and “meaning- fully engage with members of the host country” (21). As the reflec- tions from students participating in this project reveal, the daily work and activities required to serve in the host country provided both sustained and meaningful engagement in ways that many semester study abroad programs do not. Both in the direct service
to the children and in the work required to complete the service activities, such as planning a culturally sensitive art activity for a small group of children and then going to the paper store to buy the supplies, CMU honors students are engaged in situations that transform their identities into something much more than those of tourists. They may be outsiders, but they quickly realize the need to adapt to the norms of the culture and to respectfully support the efforts of the service site hosts who have devoted their lives to the care of the children the students soon come to love.
In this vein, faculty leaders of any kind of intercultural service project have extra responsibility to ensure that students are pre- pared to resist imposing U.S. cultural norms in the service activi- ties.5 A service-learning emphasis also requires substantially greater adaptability on the part of the faculty leaders because much of what happens on a daily basis at the service site is beyond the control of the leaders. In the end, though, as noted in the feedback from end-of-program evaluations and the narratives of the first-year stu- dents, the service activities enhanced both intercultural apprecia- tion and heightened students’ commitment to global service and civic engagement back home, suggesting that the outcomes from this kind of project may be multi-pronged in ways that other inter- national programs are not. Further, the depth of learning and out- comes are more directly tied to the service experience than to any other aspect of the course or trip. The intense immersion in and engagement with the culture that come from these experiences are consistent with Mary M. Dwyer’s research that shows that a well- designed summer faculty-led program can have as much impact on at least some dimensions of student learning as a full-term or academic-year program (161).
Collaboration Matters
The efforts required to successfully develop and implement a faculty-led international project are substantial, and the addition of a service component only complicates the relationships that must be maintained over time both on campus and with the interna- tional hosts. For this project, being able to recruit multiple faculty
members who are engaged, flexible, cooperative, and comfortable with cultural ambiguity, even if not experts in the culture, has made the continuation of the project beyond its original three-year plan possible. Shared ownership between an academic department and the Central Michigan University Honors Program has ensured strong enrollments and extra opportunities for both students and faculty that might not have otherwise endured. Respect for the wisdom and support of a stable international partner and the qual- ity of the transitional leadership process that has developed over time have also ensured that even as the leadership of the program changes, lessons learned about service issues and the course con- tinue to be infused to improve the project each year. Compared to the expenditure of time and money required to develop a new international program, efforts to build strong collaborations and shared ownership from the beginning have paid off and helped to create a self-perpetuating program as each cohort of faculty and students returns energized by the transformative experience and ready to recruit the next group of leaders and participants.
First-Year Focus
Finally, scholars like Robert Selby have emphasized the poten- tial power of international education to transform students and contribute to the growth of informed global citizens. As the work from this project has demonstrated, however, efforts to target and recruit first-year honors students may have special significance for intensifying the transformative potential of these experiences. An early meaningful international experience empowered these first- year students and encouraged their continued action as global citi- zens beyond what would have happened had their first study abroad experience occurred during the more traditional junior year. Con- sistent with the findings of Joshua S. McKeown and Duarte Morais and Anthony Ogden, this study found that a short-term, faculty- led study abroad experience may be the catalyst for creating the kind of life-altering outcomes that honors hopes to facilitate. As is true for this program, the potential value of this kind of faculty-led class is further heightened when most students have limited prior
international experience or have matriculated at a university where full-term study abroad programs are not normative for the student population.
conclusion
The major lessons and themes in the planning and review of the Los Niños Project were chosen primarily because of the potential for these lessons to translate to other honors faculty and staff who are considering the development of new international programs and activities. What is not noted here, therefore, is the myriad number of decisions that can directly influence the program out- comes, such as alcohol policy, formal curfew, minimum language requirement, structure of academic projects, and specific dates for the program, that faculty leaders must make each year for all study abroad programs. One thing that should be clear from the themes and lessons that have been shared is that leading a group of students on an international service-learning project is not for the inflexible or faint of heart because the experience is among the most stressful teaching experiences that faculty leaders report across their aca- demic careers. At the same time, the faculty leaders acknowledge that running Los Niños de Oaxaca is also one of the most mean- ingful and memorable teaching experiences of their careers. In the end, both the anecdotal observations and more formal reflections from the students confirm that while this program cannot save the children of Oaxaca, nor should it be expecting to, it can certainly provide experiences that transform the lives of the students who participate. As students from the very first cohort noted in their thank you card to the service host on the last day of the trip, “Vini-
mos a ayudar a los niños de Oaxaca. Al final, nosotros fuimos los que mas cambiamos.”6