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For many years, at the College of Business and Public Administration of California State University San Bernardino, we focused on managing the logistics and the arrangements for study abroad on our own, with a view to making our programs most affordable and enriching. We had dialogs with several study abroad providers, but all of them offered very expensive short-term programs focused primarily on the executive MBA market. These providers excelled in providing an exclusive experience for an exclusive and privileged group of students.
Our focus was to provide an inclusive experience for an inclusive group of students, irrespective of their socio-economic and generational status. We have always targeted both undergraduate and graduate students, and have loved to include both business and non-business students in our programs. This allows business students to benefit from the reflective perspective of the liberal art students and from the analytical perspective of the science students, while developing confidence in sharing their own perspective across disciplines. We found no study abroad provider who could support our vision and mission of broadest inclusion and greatest impact.
With our in-house efforts, we achieved success in raising study abroad participation rate among our 4000 + students in the college of business and public administration to nearly 10 %, from almost zero, over a five-year period. Our goal has been to double that percentage, to meet the 20 % target established by President Obama as necessary to help sustain the leadership role of the USA in the global economy. However,
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Our focus was to provide an inclusive experience for an inclusive group of students, irrespective of their socio-economic and generational status. |
because of the resource constraints, it was difficult for us to make any further progress. As we added more and more programs, managing logistics took even more time, even though we needed to devote more efforts in educating our overwhelmingly first generation students about the value of studying abroad. We finally decided to slow down, and double up our efforts to look for a like-minded strategic partner.
CSU San Bernardino Partners with ARAMFO
In 2014, we were fortunate to find ARAMFO – a foundation committed to promoting affordable and engaging short-term study abroad experiences ARAMFO is able to do so because of the range of partnerships they have formed with local partners in nations around the world; the partners who
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understand the nuances of their local markets and are able to find high value lodging, transportation, and program manager gems. After a thorough vetting process, we decided to run a pilot of conducting all our study abroad programs for a year through ARAMFO.
During the year, ARAMFO staff worked closely with our faculty and staff to consider our specific needs – our learning objectives, our academic calendar, and our faculty expertise. They worked flexibly and professionally, with an eye towards the highest levels of academic standards. They gave shape to the ideas of our faculty across disciplines by arranging valuable field visits, expert dialogs, and courserelated cultural excursions that met faculty vision of a highquality, transformative student experience. ARAMFO responded quickly when faculty asked for changes. They also offered valuable support in recruiting and advertising the program.
From an administrative perspective, it was very refreshing that we could depend on ARAMFO for arranging all the logistics, and pay for the entire program using a single invoice, instead of dealing with cash advances or reimbursement for numerous receipts.
As we worked through our relationship, our faculty recognized that it will be best if they worked as collaborators. We wanted our faculty to be able to use their expertise and outreach to make special connections with chambers of commerce, universities and local experts, to complement the efforts of ARAMFO. ARAMFO respected our decision and accommodated our requests and meeting schedules. We learnt
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