Greenville College English professor Dr. Brad Shaw and his wife Georgann Kurtz Shaw, head of public services at the GC library, both left the college, and the country, during the 1997-98 school year, to travel and study abroad.

Brad was awarded a prestigious position with a federally funded foreign exchange project for teachers and professors, known as the Fulbright program. So he took a year-long sabbatical from GC and went to Norway, where he taught English literature at the University of Bergen. Georgann took a leave of absence from the library to accompany him.

The university, with its 18,000 students, is located in the beautiful and ancient city of Bergen on the west coast of Norway. Bergen is a city of seven mountains separated by fjords and lakes.

The experiences in Norway, however, were only part of their adventure. The Shaws eventually returned to the States, to their faculty positions at Greenville College. And the fall 1998 semester proved to be the first test of what they learned abroad.

The foreign experience "has changed my teaching," says Brad. On a philosophical level, he says he has "converted to internationalism," which means he has a much greater concern for educating Americans in the ways of the global community.

"Americans are naive and powerful, and the rest of the world has some negative feelings toward us," he explains. "We don't know anything about the world, but we own it. That's dangerous."

Brad is encouraging his students at Greenville to use their time in college to take on international experiences, such as spending a semester in another country. He is also re-examining some of his own educational values.

In Norway, as in most of Europe, the university system is based on classes which prepare students for a comprehensive final exam at the end of a semester. That means students don?t write term papers, take unit tests, quizzes, or prepare any of the "homework" assignments to which American students are accustomed. All of the Norwegian students' class time is spent gearing up for the final, which determines their grades. Norwegians tend to see a specific class as a "whole" much better than GC students, who often take courses that do not require cumulative exams. Brad was surprised at how some Norwegian students could make connections between information learned at the beginning of a semester and that learned at the end of a semester.

"It was amazing to me what they could produce in a final exam," he says. "I think there's a lot of value to comprehensive final exams."

For his part, Brad spent a lot less time there grading papers and a lot more time preparing lectures. In Norway, lecture-based classes are the standard. Because of his foreign experience, he says, "I'm much less hesitant to think that a lecture is a bad thing. Because I know lectures can work, I want to figure out how they can work in this [GC] environment."

He adds, "The year abroad for me was really good because it reminded me I am a scholar in American literature. Sometimes it's easy for me to forget this in the midst of all the good generalist work that I do teaching undergraduates at GC. It was exciting to dig deeply into my areas of research expertise and share these with international scholars and students in a variety of ways. The experience reminded me that faculty and students even from a little place like Greenville can have something to say to a wider audience beyond our campus. I'm trying to encourage my students and colleagues to think about what it might mean for them to be "scholars" beyond GC."

Georgann also spent some of her time in Norway in the classroom; as a student, not a teacher. She studied the Norwegian language with a host of other "immigrants" to the country. Her fellow classmates hailed from all over the world. "That was exciting to become close friends with and see people every day from different cultures," she says. Georgann also took care of the traveling arrangements while there. They took the opportunity to venture all over Europe.

Like her husband, Georgann said the international experience changed the way she thinks about things here at home. "I think I have a different perspective," she says. Specifically, she admires the Norwegians for their balanced approach to life. "I believe most Norwegians have a healthier blend of work, family, and leisure than most Americans. Norwegians have an amazing passion for life outdoors, and that's understandable given the overwhelming beauty of God's natural world everywhere you turn in Norway."

Georgann spent the majority of her time studying the Norwegian language and culture with people who were immigrating to Norway. "I developed a much more Global perspective," she relates. "I learned an amazing amount from my friends from India, Pakistan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Gambia, Romania, Germany, and Russia as we found ourselves together in a new place. Since a few of these people were refugees, places like Kosovo mean something very different to me now even though I've never been there."

It appears that GC students will continue to reap benefits from fresh international experiences like those of the Shaws.

Significant portions of this story originally appeared in the Greenville Advocate. Used by permission