When it comes to studying abroad, Emma Swift always hopes that students will experience a little bit of “critical discomfort.” Safety and support are crucial, of course. But as the director of UVM’s Office of International Education, Swift knows that the best learning happens when there’s some friction. “It helps them see things differently, to take a different perspective,” she said.
American students often flock to European cities like Florence or Barcelona, and they usually have wonderful experiences. But because they're surrounded by many other U.S. students, critical discomfort is harder to come by.
That’s not the case in Ho Chi Minh City, where UVM just established a new partnership between the Patrick Leahy Honors College and Fulbright University Vietnam. The bilateral exchange will send two Honors College students to Ho Chi Minh City, and two FUV students to Burlington for a semester each year.
“It’s really exciting to me, the notion of getting more students over to Southeast Asia,” said Swift. “That’s not a destination we send very many students to right now.”
Fulbright University Vietnam is the nation’s first private nonprofit college, founded by the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program, a partnership between Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City. Modeled on the American liberal arts college, the school welcomed its first cohort of undergraduate students in 2019.
FUV currently has about 800 undergraduate students and 150 grad students. There are 11 undergraduate majors, ranging from applied mathematics to human-centered engineering to gender and sexuality studies. Instruction is in English.
Ian Grimmer, Associate Dean of the Honors College, said he’s impressed with FUV’s academic rigor and solid support structure. He also noted that the institution shares a deeper connection with UVM: a certain long-serving Vermont senator.
UVM’s Honors College was named for Senator Patrick Leahy, who cast the deciding vote to cut off funding for the Vietnam War in 1975. In the decades since, Leahy has worked to help repair the relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam: spearheading efforts to remove landmines, clean up Agent Orange, and expand healthcare for Vietnamese people with disabilities.
“He’s really well known and revered in Vietnam,” said Grimmer. “So, when we presented this idea [of an exchange] to Fulbright University Vietnam, they were excited about that.”
It’s a good fit, too, for the Honors College, whose curriculum, Grimmer noted, emphasizes civic engagement and global impact. The Honors College is “opening ourselves up to the world at a time when I feel like the U.S. is kind of going in a very different direction,” said Grimmer.
The Honors College already runs study abroad exchanges with University College Maastricht, in the Netherlands, and Ashesi University, in Ghana. A new Honors College exchange with NUS College at National University of Singapore is in the works.
More ways to go international
Beyond the Honors College, UVM students have many opportunities to study abroad — and a whole lot of them do. About 25% of UVM undergraduates study abroad, according to Swift. “We do extremely well compared to national averages and are hoping to help that number grow with some targeted program development.”
UVM manages three different kinds of international educational opportunities: bilateral exchanges, like the one with FUV, in which the institution sends and receives students in equal balance; UVM Semester Programs, outbound-only programs for a cohort of UVM students; and UVM Travel Study Programs, which are faculty-led, credit-bearing programs that usually take place over school breaks.
Students also have the option to participate in programs not managed by UVM.
UVM currently has 26 Exchanges and six Semester Programs — including a new one at the University of Tasmania, as well as existing programs in Ireland, New Zealand, South Korea, Barbados, and South Africa. UVM faculty run 15-20 travel study programs per year.
Keeping the experience affordable for students is a priority for UVM. The Honors College pays for plane tickets for students participating in its bilateral exchanges. For the Semester Programs, UVM students can use all their financial aid and pay the equivalent room rate wherever they’re studying.
The experience, of course, can be priceless.
“One of the biggest promises of a liberal arts education, I believe, is that students come to see themselves as citizens of the world,” Grimmer said at a ceremony at Fulbright University Vietnam last spring celebrating the new partnership. "They develop the capacity to move beyond familiar ways of seeing and become open to perspectives that differ from their own. Few things cultivate this quality more powerfully than the experience of studying abroad. Developing new opportunities for our students has been an important priority for our university.”