Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad

Christian faith and visual culture in Rome

Kirstin Noreen — 2026-06-16

Home to popes, final resting place of martyrs, and a crossroads of cultural exchange, Rome is a city whose unique history is closely intertwined with the development of Christian thought and practice. This team-taught, multi-disciplinary course uses the perspectives of art history, history, and theology to investigate how Christianity helped to shape developments in architecture and visual culture. As an intensive course taught onsite in Rome, students understand cultural heritage through a direct experience of the city. The course draws comparisons over time and across different faith traditions, so that students understand the changing urban fabric of Rome and its impact on individuals from the Early Christian period to the present. Students develop a greater respect for others through an understanding of cultural heritage and cultivate a deeper understanding of the Jesuit mission and identity of their university through a reflection on the roots of the Ignatian tradition in Rome.

Beneath southern stars: Reflections on science, culture, and transformation in Chile

Matthew Beaky — 2026-06-16

Chile: Southern Stars is an interdisciplinary study abroad program jointly offered by Juniata College’s Departments of Physics and World Languages and Cultures. Designed around the Forum on Education Abroad’s Standards of Good Practice, it integrates observational astronomy with Chilean cultural, historical, and literary studies. Students prepare through a semester of academic coursework before a two-week field immersion across Chile, visiting sites such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, Cerro Tololo Observatory, Gabriela Mistral Museum, and Humboldt Penguin Reserve. Fieldbased learning includes micro-expertise presentations, guided telescope observations, and reflective journals linking celestial phenomena to cultural narratives. Topics span indigenous cosmologies, resource politics, environmental conservation, and poetic representations of the cosmos. Emphasizing ethical engagement, inclusive pedagogy, and integrative reflection, the program fosters disciplinary knowledge, intercultural competence, and personal growth. Chile: Southern Stars demonstrates how place-based, interdisciplinary design can unite science and the humanities in transformative global education.

Highly impacting honors students in Panama: HGLO at the University of Maryland College Park

Kyle Kastler — 2026-06-16

Exploring Global Challenges and Solutions in Panama was developed to provide learners a deep global learning experience containing multiple facets of a high impact educational practice (Kuh, 2008) achieved through intentional assessment, thoughtful engagement with representatives of multiple local communities, challenging course assignments that encourage students to engage with the course location and perspectives represented, and ongoing learning for participants after the program is completed. Unique among global learning programs for Honors students in multiple ways, this program is intentionally designed to (i) engage a subset of Honors students interest to engaging in contemporary global affairs and issues in tailored experience; (ii) to take place in the Global South, allowing students to explore issues related to global accountability, interrelation, and social justice; and (iii) to use the SDGs as an interdisciplinary lens, allowing students to connect deeply with local issues in which that they have personal and professional interests.

Weaving worlds through community engagement: Telling stories of self for meaning-making in Thailand

Dane Emmerling — 2026-06-16

“Public Health, Entrepreneurship, and Food Systems in Thailand” exemplifies an innovative, ethically grounded, and academically rigorous approach to short-term education abroad. Students engage in interdisciplinary, community-based projects in partnership with Yunus Thailand, addressing public health and food system challenges while integrating experiential learning with critical reflection. The curriculum emphasizes inclusive and participatory design: students co-created engagement rubrics, scholarships removed barriers, and classroom practices honored diverse ways of knowing. Ethical engagement and reciprocity are foregrounded through the signature “Story of Self” assignment, which combines arts-based expression, spoken narrative, and collective witnessing to foster critical self-reflection, mutual vulnerability, and awareness of community impact. Continuous improvement is supported by iterative feedback from faculty, students, and community partners, informing both experiential and instructional components. By combining immersive engagement, structured reflection, and transdisciplinary learning, the program demonstrates how short-term education abroad can achieve transformative, inclusive, and ethically responsible educational outcomes.

Beyond the classroom: The benefits and drawbacks of implementing a faculty-led, study abroad program in Chennai, India

Ashley Cureton — 2026-06-16

Due to graduate students’ growing interests to engage with global issues, more graduate programs are interested in implementing study abroad programs into their curriculum. This article focuses on the benefits and drawbacks of implementing a faculty-led, short-term study abroad programs (FLSTSA) in India. First, this manuscript describes how a U.S.-based university and an India-based college developed a connection that led to faculty and student exchanges across both institutions. Second, this paper shares best practices for implementing this experiential course, such as developing strong local partnerships with consistent check-ins, creating supportive networks among faculty, staff, and students to manage program logistics, and establishing clear expectations for all participants and institutional partners. Third, this paper addresses potential challenges and considerations, including pre-departure logistics, such as visa procurement, travel costs, institutional financial policies, and in-country obstacles related to environmental conditions and local travel logistics. Concluding, we recommend developing transformative FLSTSA programs that enhance graduate students’ intercultural competencies.

Beyond international tourism: Meaningful pedagogy in short-term study abroad in Jordan

Marina Johnson — 2026-06-16

This paper explores the design, execution, and pedagogical impact of a short-term study abroad program in Jordan, focusing on the intersections of history, urbanity, and performance. Through site visits to Petra, Jerash, and Amman, students critically engaged with how antiquity informs contemporary urban development and cultural narratives. Using a mixed-methods approach—including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and student surveys—we analyze the program’s evolution between its 2022 and 2024 iterations. We highlight three key pedagogical themes: creating a cohesive research-driven curriculum, moving beyond a “customer service” model of study abroad, and balancing classroom and fieldwork experiences. By centering local expertise, fostering intercultural engagement, and incorporating Arabic language study, the program challenges traditional study abroad paradigms. This paper contributes to broader discussions on short-term study abroad as a site of critical inquiry, demonstrating how carefully curated programs can cultivate meaningful, transformative learning experiences beyond tourism.

Facilitating student access to global internships and study abroad: The value of high impact practices

Estrella Rodriguez — 2026-06-16

This case study documents student feedback on financial challenges and some of the benefits of a global internship at a large study center. The global internship experience was part of study abroad initiatives in Spain led by a large research university in the state of Florida over the summer months. The case study reviews students’ input on financial opportunities offered by the institution. It also presents student views on the linguistic and cultural advantages of the global internship experience. Adapting from Tiv et al.’s (2022) Systemic Framework to an internship setting, we argue that the impact of the experience on student interns is moderated by interpersonal, ecological, social and temporal factors. Pedagogical implications are provided to inform study abroad academic leaders and to encourage student participation in future global internships abroad.

What’s New: 2026 Education Abroad Teaching and Learning Toolbox

Patricia Lin-Steadman — 2026-06-16

In this 2026 volume of the TLT, we are pleased to publish four Program Models and three Case Studies, including the winners of The Forum on Education Abroad’s 2026 Award for Excellence in Education Abroad Curriculum Design, Dr. Amy Frazier-Yoder and Dr. Matthew Beaky from Juniata College (see their program model in this volume).

On behalf of The Forum on Education Abroad, we would like to thank the following members of the 2025-2026 Teaching and Learning Committee. Their generous contributions of time and expertise helped make this resource possible:

Briana Casey, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Charlene Chester, Morgan State University
Courtney Kroll, McGill University
Helena Kaufman, Carleton College
Liz Thompson, Jackson State Community College
Madalina Akli, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Scott Schlimgen, Academic Initiatives Abroad
Sonalina Sapra, School for International Training
Todd Goen, Global Puzzles, LLC

We are also thankful to our partners at Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad for lending their platform for publication of this Teaching and Learning Toolbox. This platform permits each entry in the TLT to be assigned a permanent Digital Object Identified (DOI), making them searchable and indexable across a wide array of scholarly databases and search tools. Finally, we appreciate the time and effort contributed by members of the Frontiers editorial team.