Managing Uncertainly: The Faith of International Exchange Program with Dr John Lucas

Speaker A: Welcome to the Education and Empowerment Podcast. In this show, our hosts explore success and advancement through education by interviewing today's top leaders in the fields of education, business and technology in order to provide insight into what it really takes to succeed. This show is brought to you by Forstay, a SaaS enabled online booking marketplace for student and intern housing. Forestay provides turnkey all in one cloud based accommodation software solutions for colleges, universities and organizations. Learn more at offcampus.4stay.com and landlords.forestay.com all right, let's get into the show.

Speaker B: Welcome to our podcast. Today we have the pleasure of hosting Dr. John Lucas, President and CEO of the International Student Exchange Programs. ISAAP Study Abroad is the world's largest community of more than 350 post secondary institutions in over 50 countries cooperating to provide affordable and life changing programs of studying, interning and volunteering abroad for a diverse student population. His previous leadership roles include Provost and Executive Vice President at the School for International Training, Associate Vice President of academic programs at IES abroad and center director in Barcelona and Alicante for CIE. He holds a PhD and master's in Spanish Linguistics from Penn State University where he was an Edwin Earl Sparks Fellow in the Humanities as well as a Master's in Management from SIT. Dr. Lucas is the past Chair of the Board of the Forum on Education Abroad and serves on the Advisory Council of the Global Leadership League. He publishes widely and has held adjunct faculty roles at Georgetown University and the Universidad de Alicante, Spain. He speaks Spanish, Catalan, French and German. And we hope that you enjoy Today's conversation with Dr. John Lucas.

Speaker C: Welcome to Education and Empowerment Podcast. This afternoon I have a pleasure of hosting Dr. John Lucas. Dr. John Lucas is an amazing leader in international education, someone who I'd like to aspire and continue to learn from. And his leadership has proven over years the incredible work that he does. And today, without further ado, we have a chance to hear from him directly. So, Dr. John Lucas, welcome to our show.

Speaker D: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here and to share some thoughts with you.

Speaker C: Excellent. I was wondering if you can maybe expand on your story leading up to, you know, your current tenure with Sepp and the work that you've done in the past that's worth mentioning.

Speaker D: Yeah, I think like many of our students, it's curiosity that drove me to study abroad and to continue that journey throughout my life. I grew up in Kansas, a landlocked state, you know, in the Midwest, but we had neighbors from Cuba and they were really Interesting to me. And I tend to like older people. And the grandmother who didn't speak English became a friend of mine at 80. She learned to speak English so that she could actually volunteer in the community center. So I would go and. And speak to her and help her when her family was. Was working, both doctors. And so that curiosity led me to just become really interested in the Spanish language and study abroad originally, uh, in Mexico and then later in Spain, and want to go back and do that professionally, I thought, as a language professor. And that's what I studied was my PhD in Romance languages. But I found that there's not a market for American professors of Spanish in Spain or in Mexico, unsurprisingly. And I landed on this idea that, well, maybe I could work in the field of international education and actually make study abroad a career career, which is what I ended up doing.

Speaker C: That's incredible. And you know, what amazes me is that every international educator that I talk to has an amazing story that prompts them to do the work that we do and international education, you know, it is that experience that changes you, and it has such a profound value and impact on you, on your community, on your country, or the entire continent. I was wondering if, for the benefit of our audience, you could expand a little bit into the idea of what is the value of the international education and international exchange programs. Is it diplomacy? Is it people to people, Exchanges? Tell us more.

Speaker D: Yeah, so I can tell you a little bit more. So isep, the organization I lead, has been dedicated to the direct enroll in the exchange model now for 45 years. And I think we've seen, and we'll talk about this later, that it's a really resilient model that has proven the test of time. But however you do it, right, whether you study abroad, short term, long term term, virtual, whatever, at a high level, there are some things, I think that are really powerful. And you kind of talked about them a little bit, this idea of the community and of giving back. In survey after survey, we find that people who go abroad, they remain engaged in the world and in international affairs. That's not surprising. But they also tend to be more engaged at home, wherever their home culture is. They tend to vote in elections more, they tend to contribute to charities more, and they tend to be more active in local affairs. And I think at the highest level, it is an activity that can be powerfully transformative, not only for the individual, but for the communities that they're a part of.

Speaker C: That's amazing. Are there programs in your experience that have contributed to, you know, the intercultural understanding or cooperation between different countries or institutions. The ones that you'd like to mention and the ones that you think has the highest impact.

Speaker D: Yeah. You know, and again, this is also controversial in our field. Right. Because we're now moving into a space where there are all kinds of new models. And I honestly think innovation is great. But personally I do think that there are some skills that you really have to be face to face to hone in on and to develop fully. Right. A lot of communication, cross cultural communication has to do with non verbal communication. It has to do with things like distance and space and time. And some of those things are still really hard to model virtually. And so I think any experience that puts you in contact with the other in a kind of face to face way is really transformative. You and I both went to a graduate program that was transformative, the School for International Training, which has I think now more and more a virtual component, but they have in person modules. Right. Where we come together as grad students around case studies and we debate and our groups were intercultural. And in many ways they taught us as intercultural professionals to do what we want our students to do. Right. Which is to interact with one another and to learn from different viewpoints in the room. And that was transformational for me because that's the way that I have tried to do. International education is face to face. It's definitely an activity that requires us to really get to know one another intimately.

Speaker C: I think that's right. And you, uh, know, like we mentioned earlier, it's those stories that shape us, you know, who we are. And for me, as you said, you know, sit School for International Training. And my experience as a Fulbrighter was transformative for years. I mean international education past 15 years. And I always go back to the roots of where I gained those transformational experiences. Do you have any favorite stories from your bucket of different programs you're managing of any students or any communities that you thought worth mentioning?

Speaker D: Yeah, you know, with so many. Right. And I think I often think you could be an ISEP alum yourself because there many of them, you know, they go abroad and they take the skills that they learn and they put them into their career that helps transform their professional life and then they become entrepreneurs like yourself and they give back to the community. I can think of two really. Recently, Joy Donnelly, who was one of our students from Missouri State University, she went to the Universita Cattolica in, in Milan and studied digital media and marketing Communication. And unsurprisingly, she wanted to do more and wanted to get an mba. But rather surprisingly, instead of going back to the US and doing that, she went on to get an MBA in Paris.

Speaker C: Oh, wow.

Speaker D: And so that's exciting. And then she got a career in marketing American Express, which by itself, the fantastic story. What's even more fantastic is she's still in the early part of her career, she has created a non profit, she's an African American woman and she's created a non profit charity called Joy Worldwide. Look it Up, Contribute. It's a fantastic charity and what it does is it raised funds for other African American students who want to study abroad. And you can see the cohort she selected for the fall on the webpage. And you'll see, like many ISEP students, these students go all over the world and not just to traditional locations. So Joy is a person who's still early in her career and has a lot more to give and yet she's already created her own 501 and is already giving back. Right. So that's one example we just had at our board meeting. We always have a mission moment where one of our alums comes and speaks. And Michael Abalev, who has a background, and his family's Belarusian and has a background in Eastern Europe, he was beginning to think about going abroad around the time just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And he was really passionate and interested and concerned frankly about his family and the ties that he had in the region. He knew he couldn't study in Ukraine, but he wanted to study that conflict. And he ended up, because ISEP exchanges are all over the world. You know, we work in 50 countries, we have 350 members. He was able to study in Estonia, at the University of Tartu and at the University of Latvia and study peace and conflict studies and really understand some of these complex issues that also, uh, affect his own family. And so he did that work and then later went on to get an MA in military ethics. And he has a career in public service. He works at the National Nuclear Security Administration, helping to identify and secure sources of nuclear energy. I mean, so both of these students, you know, they took the skills that they learned directly into a career and then they gave back. Right. Either through a life, uh, of public service or founding their own charity. So. And there are so many ISEP students like them and, and as you can see, they kind of, uh, you know, remind me a little bit of you, you know, but very entrepreneurial, resilient, and people who really, I Think they remain curious about the world for their entire life.

Speaker C: Yeah. Such a good compliment, Dr. Lucas. And, uh, you know, I'm sure that, you know, our listeners all understand that, you know, all these exchange programs, you know, they were created for, you know, public benefit for, you know, promoting intercultural cooperation and leadership and, you know, enhanced understanding. But in recent years, I noticed that, you know, global events, you know, like pandemic or, you know, geopolitical instability or, you know, even elections, you know, in recent years have, ah, you know, big, big impact. You mind sharing your observations as to, you know, what type of uncertainties and, uh, instabilities are you noticing? I know that the IIE Open Doors report came out. You know, it seems, you know, incredible numbers. But what's behind those numbers? Tell us more about your observations, please.

Speaker D: Yeah. There's so much there to unpack. I'll start with just a brief preface to say that ISEP was, was founded about 45 years ago. And. And it. It's a. It's a community of members. We talk a lot about a community. And. And it's an important part of the story of how do we deal with these conflicts, right? So Isa, you know, in that sense has a sense of commitment, right? Because if you're sending a student to me, I have to take care of that student because I'm also sending you students, right? And so we have, in a way that sociologists call it, uh, a shared fate, right? Your success depends on my success. So I also think, you know, this model is transformative for institutions because they help us see how the institutions rely on one another. So, you know, we think about COVID right? Our exchanges at isep, uh, depend on a balance, right? You've sent me one semester's worth or two years worth of students. I send you, etc, and it's like a giant poker game. And imagine, you know, the chips, you know, there's a fire and we all have to leave the. The game room, but all the poker chips stay on the table, all over the place, right? So we had to manage that. The story about how ISEP was founded is important because there was already trust and there were already relationships built, right? And so because of that, I trusted. You're going to maintain my balance. You're going to take care of my students if they can't get, right. So there was a lot of this sense of, uh, shared commitment and shared support. And so we've certainly saw that in the pandemic never cease to stop. Because we are mutual exchanges. We had students who couldn't get back to their home countries. And we're a small nonprofit. We're not in 50. I don't have staff in all of the countries, the 50 countries we work in. Right. So I had to rely on partnerships and relationships to care for students, and they had to trust that, uh, all help and support the students that I'm able to support and so on. So I think that's the most recent one. But goodness, I mean, I've been in this field for 25 years. So political unrest in Latin America, earthquakes in Nepal. We've been through bird flu, swine flu. Political administrations that are highly supportive and some that are very unsupportive of international exchange. And these programs have continued to be resilient because of, I think, the human drive to connect with one another and. And the curiosity for one another. And so, you know, we've gone through all of these things and look at open doors you mentioned. Right now we're in a period of isolationism. It's scary. There's a lot of uncertainty, global conflicts. Some call it the poly crisis. Right. Because there's all these crises at once. The environment, authoritarianism, the rise of isolationism, M. All of these things happening. Inflation, the economy, the poly crisis. Right. And yet look at the numbers, right? The highest number of international students in the U.S. u.S. Study abroad. At ISEP, we've exceeded our pre pandemic numbers. The field is getting close to the pre pandemic numbers. There's an amazing resilience in this field which is, I think, inspiring.

Speaker C: That's certainly very empowering to hear. So as we sort of, you know, observed as well, you know, there is fear, um, among certain institutions as well. Because, you know, when you're looking at these issues from a larger perspective, there is confusion as well. But at the same time, certain challenges that this institution faces to get elephant in the room. Do you mind maybe sharing some light into what are those challenges? You know, is it financial challenges? Is it like, you know, are we going to have disruption in revenue, or is it like, more a lot of program development that needs to happen? What are those challenges that, uh, institutions are facing and not supporting or lacking in doing more exchange programs and such?

Speaker D: Yeah, so sort of the immediate, uh, challenges right now, as we know, the new administration coming into power in the United States, the Trump admin. However people voted, has said that they want to transform the way that immigration happens. And in the last Trump administration, they did implement some policies that made it hard mostly to receive students, not to send them out, but to receive them in the US So I think we face some uncertainty right now around the visa process. But like, in 2016, we were able to continue receiving and sending students, but we had to do a lot of work with the administration and navigating in order to be able to do that. And we did win some court challenges on some things. So I think there are visa challenges. A lot of institutions are facing financial crises right now, and I think that is an issue we've seen. Many universities in the ISIP network have said that they are not yet fully staffed. They rely on partners like us to help support them because they aren't necessarily fully staffed yet. And that could be a challenge that we're facing. And certainly economics, you know, again, ISEP is global, so inflation's coming down in the United States. You know, as much as some folks feel the economy is still painful here, it's much, much worse. Right. Inflation's still very high in other parts of the world with other currencies. So we see Latin America and places like that where the cost is just really high to study abroad. And that's why M models, like the exchange model, where we do tuition, room and board swaps at ISEP, can be really helpful for students of, uh, limited financial means. Right. Because you're paying tuition, room and board in your own currency, in your own culture. But, uh, those are some of the challenges I think we face right now at the institutional level.

Speaker C: That's. Yeah, that's. And again, as I'm thinking about the challenges, too, I remember when I was actually completing my master's, there was a lot of discussion around, you know, how. Yes. I mean, you could wait for a good time to come, but you can also adapt and you can go abreast, you know, as they say. Right. With, uh, the trends and what's going on. Would it be worth mentioning on how these exchange programs pivoted, how they enhanced, you know, did they adapt? You know, was, you know, virtual exchanges, one of the sort of directions that these institutions observed and sort of programmed? What's your take on that?

Speaker D: Yeah, so a lot of things happened at isep. For example, when Covid happened, some of the things we learned we had to do was be much more simple. Right. So we have made our application process more simple, all of our policies less complex, so that if students need a refund or if, you know, if they aren't able to study abroad, they're able to defer to another semester. Right. We have an algorithm that helps place students. We had to make that much easier, more robust Right. So we've done a lot of those kind of things. Just make the process easier. Right. The m more barriers we put up in a complex world, the worse for our students and for us. So taking away barriers is really important. And I think other organizations have done that. I've talked to other CEOs and they're finding ways to make things easier. We did initially pivot and did offer fully online programs. We wanted to make sure the students who were in process during COVID finish and our members did do that. I have seen that with, uh, limited success. There are some providers out there who are doing internship programs and work based, fully virtual programs. And with our partner, the intern group, we offer some of those and I think those can be successful. Students are used to the idea that you work online. If it's got a career focus, I think it's successful. But it hasn't really worked yet in a way of substituting a full exchange. Other places we see a lot of interest in Coil, the collaborative online learning model. We do help train faculty, our member faculty, on how to do that. And uh, then we help them find partners because our network is so big. We could help you find an economist or a political scientist, biologist, whatever your field is. And we do train people on that. And those are helpful because the students have their in person interaction with their faculty member and then they have a global or international component. But people who've done research on this find, and if you talk to any faculty member who does Coil, the model is transformative, it's powerful. But then the students also want to meet the people that they worked with online and they want to go abroad. And so many of those are beginning to transform into Coil plus where you do the virtual component. And then there's some kind of short term in person and we are thinking about where does the virtual fit? And I'd be lying if I said I have the magical answer. I mean, we're still not far enough into the use of virtual programs to really even do a longitudinal study of the outcomes. Right. I think, you know, the field is still trying to figure this out and ISEP are in the process of creating our next strategic plan. One of the questions is, you know, where, um, does the virtual fit within the model? I think there's a lot of experimentation out there, but it is exciting. Innovation is always exciting because even with all this growth, it's still about 6% of US college students have an international experience. We're not able to fully track all of the virtual ones, but at least the uh, Face to face, the in person ones, it's still barely 6% or just under 6%, I think. So we still have a lot of room to grow. So I think this innovation is good. I personally don't see the virtual as a substitute for, but I see it as a complement to the work that we do in person. I think it has its place and we'll be looking at this and experimenting with different models as we craft our next strategic plan.

Speaker C: That's amazing. I was actually, uh, reflecting on my experience, which, uh, was@Iearn USA. It's a nonprofit based out of Upperside New York. I remember the conversations we were having on the whole idea of the virtual exchanges. The, the first ones that were started between New York and Moscow had a communications project where the students from certain classroom, you know, exchanged information with each other. And you know, even then and throughout, you know, these years, there's a big debate whether these virtual exchange programs are a replacement. I don't, I mean, my personal opinion on that is it's not a replacement. It's maybe a complement to the work that we're doing. Like you said, there's, you know, the collaborative aspect of it that requires the in person experience. Even different programs are designed in a way where you get specific training first online and then you complete the actual experience, um, on the ground or on site, which has completely different effect. Right. So throughout these years, I think our faith and our resilience, as you said earlier, has not changed. I want to double down on that a little bit, if you don't mind. And I'm sure everybody, we've all kind of experienced, uh, uncertainty in some ways way, shape or form, whether, you know, we're running, uh, a small organization or we're running a, uh, big organization or a team or even our family. Right. So I was wondering if you can maybe double down on the whole notion of faith, whether it's, you know, spiritual or, you know, the mission of these programs. Where do we stand with that? How do we manage that?

Speaker D: Yeah, it's fascinating because, you know, also in my career and you talked a little bit about my background, I was a resident director overseas for 10 years. Right. So I also was a professor of intercultural communication. It's fascinating when you mention faith because it's a part of culture. Right. And yet it's one that's almost like a taboo. And as a professor, I'll say taboos are not a good thing. You know, things that are covered up or that are hidden that we don't talk about. Aren't necessarily helpful. And ah, many students come abroad, whether again, they have a humanist faith or they have a religious background, those things are important to them and they don't always have places to explore it. And I always encouraged in my classes for students, atheist, agnostic, whatever their faith, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever it was Buddhist, to try to identify another religious institution in the culture they're studying and explore it. You know, just go with a spirit of curiosity and observation and open mindedness and kind of try to see and learn or try to help students of a particular faith find and make the connections we talked about. Community and communities that are driven by shared values can be tremendously, uh, powerful, right? And I think, you know, if you think of our organization being values driven, right, it's multifaith or interfaith, we're non denominational, right? Anybody's welcome. But we do have faith in community, in collaboration, in creating diverse and inclusive programs. These are values that unite all of us, regardless of our background, our faith or non faith, right? And so I think these things can be helpful in reducing uncertainty. And I do think that religions is something, you know, that is an important part of a person's journey and their life experience. I mean, I can tell you a personal story with this that was fascinating. As the professor of intercultural communication when 911 happened, I mean, and this was hard, right? I was in Barcelona. Barcelona is a very multicultural city there, right? There's a Jewish community, there's a Muslim, uh, community, you know, obviously different Christian faiths and, and plenty of folks who are non religious, right? My students were really struggling. We had a professor, Xavier Collier, I'll call him out because he's a fantastic sociologist and, and a, uh, political scientist. And he said, you know, we need to go and talk to the Muslim community. And I said, you know, this could be very difficult, difficult. But he knew the imams because he'd studied. And he said, you know, they're willing to have a conversation. So we prepared the students, we said, look, this is going to be hard. This is a different culture. You have an opportunity here to talk about this painful experience from a place of curiosity, as long as it's not a place of anger, right? Any question they're willing to answer, right? And so they also had to take a risk. We're going to have all of these Americans come over. And the imams were gracious. We went to the Islamic center in Barcelona. Uh, they invited us to tea and people sat and they sat with a lot of pain. You know, there were some Tears. There were some hard questions. Some of those were faith based questions. Some of them were about politics. Right. But because of that, people were able to have a frank and open conversation with the other. And every student came away saying, you know, at least I feel a connection to these people. And there was a humanization of the other that I think was so important. And so I. For encouraging me to be brave. And we went together and we really prepared for this. But it's an example of how, you know, even conflicts that might be based on faith, if you can approach the other with curiosity and respect and dignity, that can be a transformational experience. Right. And we had students in the room from all kinds of religious backgrounds, and they were able to have this frank and an open conversation. So I think what I always say to students is, find your communities and your connections and your resources when you go abroad again, as you said, whether those are values that you may have, have humanism or religion that you may share and lean into those practices because they do help to reduce uncertainty. And we live in tremendously uncertain times. I know. You know, again, like I explained in that little anecdote, there have been times when working with interfaith communities has been really, really transformational and helpful. And I think it's important to talk about these things because it is such an important part of the human experience. I still am an advocate of. I know it's old now and it's dated, but William James, you know, the variety of religious experiences, I think it's an easy book to read and I think it's a good one. It's an incredible one, for sure.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: You remember, you know this one? Yeah. And, you know, when I talk to students abroad, some of them do mention their faith. You know, when I was in Barcelona, there's a Jewish quarter. I've taken Jewish students on heritage visits. We visited the mosque, you know, when we're in, particularly in Granada. I was just in Greece and talking to one of my students who wanted to explore. He was, uh, from a mixed family who came from Bali, but they were a Greek and an Indonesian family. So having two different religions, Orthodox and Muslim, within one family. And so he was talking about that and struggling with that and some of the conflicts. So when you give students a chance to open up, you'll find that this is a part of their experience too. Yeah.

Speaker C: And it shapes a lot of who they are and who they become and positively contributes to, uh, a better society, as you said. 9, 11, and all of these big events, even the Boston events that Happen. Right. Every place, you know, every community has its own struggle and pain. But as long as you can, you know, sympathize with them and you, uh, know, make sure that they open up and they, you know, help in discovering how to come out of that, you know, issue they face and they build, you know, resilience that helps them, you know, manage that. I've. I remember, you know, myself when I actually came into sit. I've struggled to find a place to live, and that impacted me and I opened up and I realized that it's actually not only a struggle, but it's. It's a passion that kind of became a big thing. And, you know, we then kind of turned that into a big venture, you know, forestay. And every story matters, you know, in that. And, uh, you know, if there was no face, then there wouldn't be a future. I think we can, you know, sort of segue to the future of our conversation. What is the future like? You know, we just had election results and a lot of the conversations we're hearing today, oh, you know, what's happening the Trump 2.0 will mean, or, you know, there's a, ah, conversation about international education in Canada and there's Ireland and there's, there's all kinds of, you know, questions that we're exploring. But what does the, the future look like for international exchange programs?

Speaker D: Ultimately, I do have tremendous faith in the human spirit and in the capacity, uh, of people to be generous with one another and in our ability to see the humanity in one another. And, and that's why I think this field will continue you ultimately. Right. And it's interesting you referenced. You and I are both at the pie, live here in Boston. And it's a great conversation because it's very high level. It's not too much in the weeds. Right. It's very strategic. And, you know, we are looking at. It's. I'm not going to be Pollyanna. There are some real challenges, no question. Right. And we are going to face, you know, we've talked about that. You know, Canada with visa restrictions, Australia. Other places, we've talked about the financial crisis, crisis under Trump. You know, they've said they're going to be changes to visa policy that will impact us. We are prepared at ISEP that we're going to have to pivot and be very flexible because we don't know what the policies are. Right. But they may require us to help and support our students coming into the US in different ways that we don't anticipate. So that's real. None of that is going to go away soon. At the same time though, if I take the step back. And again, it helps being old, right? I mean, I've been around a while. We have been through so much, you know, even in just the last, last 15 years, you know, my career goes past 25. But if you just look back the 10 or 15 years we've been through different political administrations, we've been through some really, you know, painful, I think visa and the Muslim ban, these kind of things that we dealt with. We've been through the pandemic, other kinds of, uh, uh, if they weren't global, but regional pandemics like birth flu, avian flu, et cetera. Right. And yet, you know, here we are with the Iie showing that the numbers of international students are rising in the US and that the number of study abroad students continues to grow. There may be some dips, there may be some real challenges over the next four years, but it's not going away, I don't think, in any case. And so overall, I think the future for international education, I'm seeing lots of innovation now. You know, we, we're seeing it at the pie, as you mentioned, virtual short term, um, some of that's innovation. By going back to our roots, very experiential learning that's focused on career outcomes, everybody of all parties can agree we want students to have strong skills to prepare them for a global future. Right. That's uncontrovers. So we're, we're going back, we're innovating and we're also going back to our roots, the core of the field, our experiential learning. We grew out of that. Right, right out of a desire to implement experiential learning models that go back to the 60s and 50s. Because of this, I am overall very positive about the long term future. Even if in the short term we may see some real bumps and some dips and some of that's going to be really unpredictable. We just won't know until we see. But I do think overall the field will continue to grow and I'm confident we will be sending and receiving students and students will want to engage with world no matter what.

Speaker C: When you're looking back at your, uh, work with isab, um, and you know, the changes that are coming in the future of international exchange programs, what innovation do you foresee on a student level and an institution level? Maybe you can spare a piece of advice for educators and students who might be listening to this episode.

Speaker D: Yeah, that's a tough one, right? I mean a lot of things. I do think the way that we, I just heard this in the last panel and it's true. I think the way that we manage our educational systems has got to change and be more flexible. You know, I think Jill Blonda, uh, just declared war on the credit hour. Right. This fixed idea that, you know, we have to follow. And, and that is a real problem when I look at students and we, we saw this in a student panel yesterday that I, the students said, oh, it's hard because this class doesn't count, or this, there's not enough credit hours or, you know, and a lot of it's process stuff that we actually control. We can make that better. Right? We can't make the global uncertainty go away. We can't waiver wand and fix the visa, but we can fix the credit hour. We can fix transfer of credits. Uh, uh, we, the higher education sector can do these things. And I think that's something we're going to have to do. And we're seeing micro credentials, short term programs, modular programs, all of these things which are pushing up against the rigidity of our systems and challenging the rigidity. And I think we're going to see some of that turn into a, uh, more flexible approach m be more outcomes driven rather than focused on ticking boxes and ending numbers of credit hours. I certainly hope that's the case because ultimately what students get from these experiences are the global skills, the resiliency, the capacity to think, uh, creatively, all of those kind of skills. And that's what matters, not how many credit hours you've got. And so I think we're going to continue to see ways in which we challenge the rigidity of systems. And I think that's healthy.

Speaker C: Wow. That's very empowering and very inspiring to hear that. And I appreciate the practical observations there for sure. As we conclude this episode, uh, what are your biggest takeaways? Where is the sentiment among educators? What's our biggest takeaway in this work?

Speaker D: Yeah, you know, we mentioned some key concepts. Right. We talked about resilience, we talked about community, and we've talked about collaboration. And I think this is true for the sector and I'm hearing this across the board. Right. We do have that shared fate. Right. We rise or we fall together. And there is a tremendous spirit of collaboration in this field, which is very healthy. And I'm close to personal connection to the president of nas, you know, to Melissa Torrey is at the forum. We have new leaders coming in, Claire Overman at aiea. And these are all people I know personally to be frank and open and collaborative people. And so when I look at all of the folks in the international education in the U.S. at least this is true in EAIE, and it's true in API as well. We're looking at people who are collaborative, who are innovative, and who are willing to work with one another. And I think that bodes really well. We have a great sector of people who want to make this world a better place. And ultimately, we share the same value. So collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. Listen, you know, take any meeting, take any call with your colleagues. I mean, I certainly will. Because at the end of the day, we are much more collaborators. We're competitors in any sense. There are, As I said, 6% of students who go abroad. We want to make that 96. Right. Not going to do that by fighting with each other. We've got to work together. And with the new administration. Right. There are people like NAFSA that have skills in advocacy, the alliance for International Education Exchange, they're going to reach across the aisle and find ways that even if it's a small space at the beginning, to work together. And we're going to get behind and push and support those organizations. Right. Because they're helping us. So collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. And then my message to students or those of us who work with students is, you know, reassuring. I love the fact that my team does appreciative advising, which, you know, is about building a relationship with the student.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: Let them express their fears, create a space. You know, it's okay to be scared and to not know what's going on and where do I fit in the world, or to feel maybe overwhelmed or anxious about all of this stuff. And that can either paralyze you. Right?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: Or it can stimulate you to be curious about the world and want to find your place and do something about it. Right, right. So we have to let the students understand that this is okay and that these questions and these fe. Okay. And help them transform them from a place of paralysis into a place of curiosity.

Speaker C: That's amazing. And if people want to learn more about the work that you do and contact you and, you know, learn more about iseb, what's the best way to find you?

Speaker D: Yeah, you can always find us@isepstudyabroad.org and you can find me John Lucas at LinkedIn, and you'll find me at a lot of the conferences around the sector and around the industry. But I look forward to meeting some of your listeners and to uh, again working with my colleagues to continue to advance our share shared values in this field.

Speaker C: That's amazing. Thank you so much for taking time to introduce the amazing work that you do and inspiring us. And we definitely, uh, benefited a lot from this episode and I hope our listeners will as well. Until next conversation. I thank you very much. Dr. John Lucas thank you.

Speaker D: Thank you so much.

Speaker C: Take care.

Speaker A: We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Education and Empowerment Podcast. This show is brought to you by Forestay, a SAS enabled online booking marketplace for student and intern housing. Forestay provides turnkey all in one cloud based accommodation software solutions for colleges, universities and organizations. Learn more at offcampus.forestay.com and landlords.forestay.com.