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Office of the Provost
Office of the Provost

Mythbreaking: Education Abroad

In this edition of Mythbreaking, the Global Engagement team addresses some of the misconceptions surrounding education abroad. 

The University of Michigan has long been a leader in education abroad. Our schools and colleges offer an unparalleled range of international opportunities for students to engage globally. From study abroad programs to internships, from research to volunteer trips, more than 5000 U-M Ann Arbor students participated in experiences in more than 120 countries across the globe in the 2023-2024 school year.

While study abroad participation is rebounding and nearing pre-pandemic levels, the Global Engagement Strategic Plan, launched in 2023 by Vice Provost for Engaged Learning Valeria Bertacco, aims to dramatically increase and diversify student participation in international experiences over a five-year period. In the first year of the plan, new programs promoted early awareness of education abroad opportunities, diversified program offerings by location and format, promoted accessibility and affordability of education abroad programs, and enhanced pre-departure and post-experience support.

Yet, many students and their families remain hesitant to pursue education abroad, and these apprehensions are often grounded in persistent myths. To shed some light on the truths about study abroad, let’s dissect and debunk some prevalent myths and juxtapose them with the eye-opening realities.

 

Myth: Studying abroad won’t help students in their future careers. Employers don’t value international experiences.

Fact: Studying abroad helps students gain important skills needed in the 21st-century workplace. Some career-related outcomes of studying abroad include:

  • Increased Intercultural Understanding: In our increasingly globalized world, the ability to navigate different cultures and understand various perspectives is invaluable. Employers seek candidates who can operate effectively in diverse environments.
  • Broadened Worldviews: Living and studying abroad exposes students to different ways of thinking and problem-solving. This broadened worldview can make them more innovative and adaptable—a highly sought-after trait in any professional setting.
  • Better Contributors to Diverse Teams: The modern workplace often involves collaboration across international borders. Students who have studied abroad tend to excel in diverse teams, bringing unique insights and demonstrating cultural sensitivity.
  • Stronger Qualifications for Future Employment: Many employers actively look for candidates with international experience, as it signifies independence, initiative, and resilience. 
  • A Broader Range of Career Opportunities: Students who study abroad often find that their career options expand. They might build networks across different countries or discover new fields of interest through their international studies.

 

Myth: Studying abroad extends a student’s time to degree, preventing them from graduating on time.

Fact: Study abroad is considered a high-impact practice closely linked to student success. 

Both national and institutional studies suggest that studying abroad does not extend a student’s time to degree.

In fact, at the University of Michigan, undergraduate students who participated in an educational opportunity abroad experienced the following:

  • Higher Graduation Rate: U-M undergraduate students who participated in educational opportunities abroad graduated at a higher rate than their peers who did not study abroad.
  • Same or Slightly Less Time to Degree Completion: U-M undergraduate students who studied abroad took the same amount of time, or even slightly less, to obtain their bachelor’s degree than students who did not opt for an international experience. 

These trends persisted for underrepresented minorities, Pell grant recipients, first-generation students, and STEM students.

 

Myth: Studying abroad takes students away from their home campuses, negatively impacting their sense of belonging.

Fact: Study abroad programs are designed to foster community and ensure that students build valuable connections both during and after their international experience.

Some outcomes of study abroad which positively impact students’ sense of belonging include:

  • Building Communities with Diverse Peers: Far from being isolated, students who study abroad often form strong bonds with peers from their home institution and from other countries. These connections can last a lifetime and are instrumental in fostering global citizenship.
  • Increased Self-Awareness and Understanding of Intersecting Identities: Living in a different cultural context encourages students to reflect on their own identities and how they intersect with the world around them. This self-awareness is enriching and enlightening.
  • Deeper Relationships with Faculty: Many study abroad programs are led by faculty members. This close interaction can deepen academic relationships and mentorship, contributing to students’ personal and academic growth.
  • Continued Engagement with the Campus Community: Upon their return, students often find they have much to contribute to the campus community, bringing back new perspectives and experiences that enrich classroom discussions and social dynamics.

From the Desk of the Provost: October

Provost Laurie McCauley standing in front of the Michigan Union.

One perk of working in the Ruthven Building is that you can walk outside and find yourself suddenly immersed in a sea of third-graders. Our proximity to the Museum of Natural History means that busloads of fieldtripping gradeschoolers are a regular feature of the administration neighborhood. These students radiate enthusiasm and curiosity. When you encounter them in all their wide-eyed excitement, it is a potent reminder that what we do on this campus can inspire that rarest of human emotions: awe.

This is why we are here: to give people of every age and background the chance to nurture their curiosity, dive into the world’s mysteries, and experience lasting epiphanies. As Shalanda Baker, our inaugural vice provost for sustainability and climate action, says, “Universities are amazing places to create paradigm shifts.” Whether you are faculty, staff, or a student, we are all part of a community that is charged with teaching and learning the mechanisms of critical thinking, doing groundbreaking research, and shifting paradigms, including our own. None of this is easy. Simply put, campus exists so that we can do these difficult things – together. 

I am heartened to see how much is happening on campus to honor that purpose. As we wade into election season during an already tense time in society, there are more opportunities than ever for us all to be inspired, involved, and informed. 

As we enter the final stretch of the U.S. presidential election season, you have many ways to engage with the democratic process. The new UMICH Votes website is a comprehensive resource where you can learn about voter registration, when and where to vote on campus, ballot proposals, and more.

UMICH Votes dovetails with our recently-launched presidential initiative, the Year of Democracy, Civic Empowerment, and Global Engagement. The initiative includes dozens of events, from public talks to workshops, from art exhibitions to dinners with strangers. 

Journalists Bret Stephens, Lydia Polgreen, María Elena Salinas and Stephen Henderson will be in discussion in the Wallace House Center for Journalists’ event, “One Nation, Divergent Views: Journalists’ Take On the Eve of the Election.” Former Governors John Kasich and Steve Bullock will have a conversation across the aisle about ways in which to have civil and civic discourse in an era of political divisiveness at an event next week. 

Faculty have opportunities to hone their skills for framing and facilitating high stakes discussions and making the most of “hot moments” in the classroom with training from CRLT and the Ginsberg Center. 

At the University of Michigan Museum of Art, an exhibition dedicated to human flourishing and art-driven dialogues, entitled Hey, We Need to Talk, brings a mosaic of approaches to the art of dialogue into one stunning location. One of these approaches is as old and traditional as civilization itself: an honest conversation over a great meal…but with strangers. 

You will notice a theme at the heart of all these varied activities, performances, and even policies: respectful, authentic interactions with friends, colleagues, and especially those we do not agree with, are central to accomplishing our mission. The opportunity to enjoy and learn from the amazing tapestry of humanity on our campus is immense when we can step, however briefly, outside our own experiences. This year, I am inspired by everything our community is doing to help us learn, listen, and create connections across boundaries of every sort. 

With the debut of Vision 2034, we are asking the world to Look to Michigan. In doing so, I hope we can look to one another – to find encouragement, inspiration, and even awe at what we can discover and create together. 

Warm regards,
Laurie

Making AI Work for Educators: a U-M Generative AI Update

by Bob Jones, Assistant Vice President of Support Services and Emerging Technologies for Information and Technology Services

Since the fall of 2023, U-M has aimed to democratize access to a transformative tool-set to enable innovation in a secure, private, and uniquely Michigan fashion.

Our GenAI platform is designed to meet the needs of most users with three distinct offerings. While these tools have received a lot of use and attention, many in our community are still waiting to explore whether these options might offer a supplement to their own teaching or coursework. To understand what is next, a brief review of our current offerings is in order.

The first is U-M GPT, our accessible natural language and text-to-image web-app. U-M GPT currently hosts the latest GPT Omni model, DALL-E 3, and an open-source alternative called Llama 3.

Our AI service with perhaps the most appeal to our educators is Maizey, a revolutionary tool based on an AI framework called retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Maizey is an environment designed to be an expert in almost any topic you desire, while also enabling you to define the behavior of the environment. Think of Maizey as a play of your own choosing, with the system prompt being the script for each character’s behavior. 

Lastly, we provide application program interface (API) access to our AI environment – we call this our GPT Toolkit. This is a great option for those wishing to create deep connections within applications, web, and data. Those using the API environment may be building novel applications, making new discoveries, or connecting systems to optimize and enhance data flow and outputs.

What’s New?

One of the most common pieces of feedback we received since our AI platform’s release came from faculty members seeking to use Maizey for Teaching and Learning who did not have a shortcode. This fall, we are proud to announce that every academic course in Canvas now has a $1,000 per course per term allocation without the requirement of a shortcode. In addition, every faculty member can quickly create a Maizey from their course context using the native Canvas workflow you have come to expect. To date, the U-M community has created over 3,000 Maizeys, and we believe, this semester, U-M will again lead the world in the responsible and ethical use of GenAI in the Teaching and Learning domain.

Maizey can now also see within multiple data sources, and creators of Maizeys can even reschedule indexing of information from each data source. Why is this significant? Because Maizey can be pointed to Dropbox, Google Drive, Canvas, and the web, all at the same time. Imagine the power of a GenAI environment that can grow as your data grows and be automated without human intervention. Maizey will serve as a librarian to ensure you always have the exact information you desire at your fingertips.

MiMaizey: A New Assistant for Students

We are very excited to have recently released the world’s first GenAI assistant for students at U-M. This assistant, MiMaizey, is a new technology launched in beta, which means it is a preliminary version made available to gather user feedback and identify areas for improvement. Since its launch, we have received amazing feedback that highlights where students want GenAI to operate, balancing the need for real-time information with generative feedback.

MiMaizey serves as an interactive environment where students can ask questions, benefiting from its extensive knowledge of U-M-specific information. Students can inquire about dining hall menus, course materials, study guides, campus resource locations, and more. If faculty members create a Maizey for their courses, students enrolled in those courses can ask detailed questions via MiMaizey. This new tool provides personalized responses and assistance, offering a unique and supportive experience for each student.

What’s Coming?

We envision a U-M where everyone has a GenAI assistant, unique to them, which can see, hear, and provide a contextual experience appropriate for their role. We believe in equal access and innovation. We believe that you will change the world by harnessing the power of GenAI and influencing the world around you.

As we look ahead, our vision of a personalized AI assistant for every individual at U-M is not just an aspiration but a commitment to providing an inclusive, supportive, and dynamic environment. We believe that every student, faculty, and staff member possesses the potential to drive innovation. By granting everyone the power to interact with and shape AI tools, we nurture an ecosystem where creativity can thrive.

Summer Photo Scrapbook

In the last edition of the Office of the Provost Newsletter, we asked our readers to help us build a scrapbook commemorating summertime, and you delivered! As we bid the season farewell and welcome fall, we hope you’ll enjoy this look back to trips abroad, weddings, and even a glimpse of the northern lights.

M-PACT announces five new faculty scholars

Q+A with Vice Provost Shalanda Baker

Shalanda Baker, vice provost for sustainability and climate action.

Shalanda Baker, vice provost for sustainability and climate action.

Shalanda Baker, vice provost for sustainability and climate action and professor of environment and sustainability in the School of Environment and Sustainability, began her tenure on Sept. 1, 2024. In this role, she will lead interdisciplinary engagement on environmental topics, explore opportunities to integrate sustainability within core curricula and support critical research that addresses the climate crisis.

The VPSCA also will advance U-M’s role as a living-learning lab toward climate solutions, in collaboration with Business & Finance, the Office of Campus Sustainability, Student Life Sustainability, the Graham Sustainability Institute, Michigan Medicine, and schools, colleges and units.

What drew you to this role?

SB: I’ve just had the privilege of serving in the Biden-Harris Administration, first as the country’s first-ever Deputy Director for Energy Justice in the Department of Energy, and then as the Senate-confirmed director of the Office of Energy Justice and Equity. My job was to ensure that the nation’s energy transition was just and equitable by rewiring the entire architecture of grantmaking and program design within the department. Throughout the course of my time in the department, I realized that the only pathway to a just and equitable energy transition was to actually contend with the various interlocking systems that produce inequity and injustice. In essence, the problem of an unjust energy system connects to multiple systems, and those systems have to communicate with each other in an interdisciplinary manner.

Universities are amazing places to create paradigm shifts, and everything I knew about the University of Michigan led me to believe that the University of Michigan was better positioned than any university in the country to accelerate just and equitable climate action at scale. Its history of environmental and racial justice, as well as the hundreds of researchers and students already looking at issues of climate and sustainability through various disciplinary lenses make it an excellent springboard from which to think about structural change across our systems of health, energy, food, water, built environment, and economy. The exciting part of this job will be to create platforms and pathways for all of these elements to connect. 

How are universities uniquely positioned to move the needle on climate change?

SB: Universities are idea incubators. As a law professor, I got to witness students trying on and experimenting with new ideas. Nearly every day, I saw the proverbial “light bulb” turn on for students synthesizing information. Once that happened, our classroom became a site for collaboration and pushing the envelope. Students are ready to innovate on climate change and, more importantly, they’re ready to act on climate, which makes universities a great place to do this work. Universities are also excellent conveners and can establish relationships at the local, state, regional, and international levels. Of course, universities also house some of the best scholars and researchers across multiple disciplines who can be brought together to grapple with thorny, system-level problems, like climate change. 

Why was your role created and how is it positioned within the broader climate and sustainability leadership structure at the university? 

SB: The University has made climate change, sustainability, environmental justice and issues of the environment central to its vision and goals. You can see that through actual documents and commitments, such as the Vision 2034. You can also see that in places like SEAS, the School for Environment and Sustainability, which has served as a national leader in sustainability for years. About a year ago, the University further demonstrated its commitment to sustainability by hiring an inaugural Associate Vice President for Campus Sustainability within the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, Shana Weber. Last year Tony Denton assumed the role of Senior Vice President and Chief Environmental, Social and Governance Officer at Michigan Medicine.  My role was created to accelerate activity in the curricular and research spaces and to collaborate closely with Shana and Tony to advance our shared goals. It’s an exciting structure that allows us to touch upon every aspect of the university enterprise. My role will also help to amplify the excellent work already happening across campus and to help weave together the various threads of scholarship, teaching, and community-facing efforts into a beautiful tapestry of sustainability, climate action, and justice. It’s such an exciting time to be at UMich doing this work!

What is your strategy to get the university’s colleges, schools, institutes, and centers to collaborate on climate action and sustainability research and teaching?

SB: This is the hardest question! But it’s always top of mind. There’s already so much amazing collaboration already happening across the diverse research portfolios. I’m excited to roll up my sleeves to create a platform and structure within my new office to facilitate greater ease of access to teaching resources, curricular offerings for students, and research opportunities. I’m also thinking through ways to incentivize collaboration on teaching, research, and place-based community efforts, so stay tuned! To start, this year I’m leaning into the convening opportunities within the office, hosting town hall sessions with students, faculty, directors, and deans to really understand the barriers to collaboration, and get their best ideas on the ways this office can facilitate high-impact, transformative teaching, research, and community engagement. I also have the great fortune of working with the excellent Graham Institute for Sustainability, Matthaei Botanical Gardens, and Campus Farms teams as a part of my portfolio, and I’ll be leaning into their expertise as I launch a campus-wide effort. Finally, I’m really excited about the Capital Campaign! I think it will serve as a forcing mechanism to unify our sustainability community around shared principles and values to accelerate sustainability and climate action on campus.

To close out, what’s one fun fact about you?

SB: I’m not sure how fun this is, but not many people know that I was a four-year All American rugby player at the Air Force Academy and a member of the US Women’s National Team for about a decade. That was a long time ago, but it pops up here and there when people Google me to find my bio. It always catches me off guard at professional events or before a speaking engagement when someone asks me, “You played rugby?!” I still get a kick out of it. My current hobbies are more tame. On rainy days I’m likely to be found reading a book cover to cover or cooking something for friends from my collection of cookbooks!

U-M releases Campus Plan 2050 to guide next 25 years

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