INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS (IP) The VMBS office of International Programs (IP) fosters as well as facilitates all types of learning beyond the borders of the United States including formal courses, field trips, collaborative research, clinical experiences in human and veterinary medicine, and more. Today’s world has globalized, and IP’s vision and mission are to encourage and guide students, faculty, and staff to find ways to internationalize themselves, their work, and their mark on the world. To do this requires focusing not only their technical and professional skills and knowledge but also, and perhaps more importantly, on their ability to learn from and work with colleagues and clients across political borders as well as cultural and linguistic divides. Thus, IP works both with members of our school and with international visitors, who could be students, faculty, researchers, clinicians, administrators, technicians as well as others. These visitors come to gain new clinical and research experiences, and simultaneously they teach and benefit us all by sharing their different skills and knowledge, their unique perspectives, and even foods and traditions from their homes without us ever needing to pack a suitcase. This unit is headed by Veterinary Pathobiology faculty member Dr. Linda Logan, Director of VMBS International Programs, whose primary aim is to provide guidance and support to members of VMBS in roles of all types so that they can create and access global opportunities that enable them to be better professionals and individuals all around. In June of FY22, Dr. Logan was joined by Dr. Laura Weber. Together they are working to expand IP’s reach and capacity to support all members of VMBS in their international endeavors, both on campus and abroad. In spite of COVID-19’s enduring influence around the world, student participation in programs abroad is rising again, as shown in Graph 1. In FY22, professional student participation in international experiences is back at pre-COVID levels. Traditionally the smallest group of participants in global educational experiences, in FY22 our statistics captures five graduate students who went abroad. Undergraduate participation in education abroad, generally the strongest, has recovered significantly but has yet to achieve the pre-COVID levels of FY19 and before.
Students in Costa Rica
Students in Thailand
VMBS Students Abroad
(totals in parentheses by year) 250 Undergraduate
Graduate
Professional
200 150 100 50 0
2016-17 (261)
2017-18 (284)
2018-19 (255)
2019-20 (87)
2020-21 (39)
2021-22* (190)
Graph 1. Totals of VMBS who have traveled abroad per classification, per fiscal year since FY17 (Note: The numbers for FY22 are preliminary as the official ones have not yet been released.)
2022 VMBS Annual Report • 43
