FEATURES

The Benefits of International Engagement

Joe Trumpey, Director of International Engagement

Focused international travel is exhilarating and challenging. Many times it can be life altering. The changes can be immediate and acute or sometimes slower and more subtle, but there are always changes. When you travel you see your place in the world more clearly – home looks different.

We have witnessed the benefits of students returning to us with so much to discuss, with newfound confidence and motivation. These international experiences not only enhance the students individually, but they also bring many new and important perspectives to our classes and campus.

A&D is now requiring a sustained international experience for all its undergraduates. And we are committed to working with each and every one of our students as individuals to find appropriate international experiences for them.

A&D faculty strongly support the new international travel requirement, recognizing that these experiences will provide vital knowledge to support subsequent research, global citizenship, and future international engagements.

Joe Trumpey

Jinita Shah (BFA ‘09)

Born and raised in Bombay, Jinita is a recent A&D BFA graduate who capitalized on the U of M’s international community to maximize her college experience.

I came to the U.S. during my senior year of high school after growing up in Bombay. I knew I wanted to do art, but I wasn’t sure what kind of work, so I liked the idea that at A&D I would have experiences with a lot of different media. The format of classes was surprising to me. In India the classes are huge, the ratio is about 100 to 1. At A&D classes are small and I got to know my professors really well.

In high school I knew that the U.S. was a melting pot, but in college it was a big part of my experience. My freshman year I lived with an American girl, as a sophomore with an African American, as a junior my roommate was mixed race, and now I live with a woman from Pakistan. In many ways my roommates were as much of a learning experience as my courses.

Because I’m almost an international student, I also wanted to keep in contact with people from my country. During my time at A&D, I belonged to a number of student organizations — the Hindu student council, the Indian American organization, the Indian dance team. All that was a part of having a great experience at the U of M. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect college life.

Jinita Shah

Dani Davis (BFA ‘09)

Dani’s international experiences included study in locations as diverse as Scotland and Vietnam.

In 2008 I completed a semester at Glascow School of Art studying painting. I loved it. They gave me a studio and said ‘produce some work and we’ll grade you at the end of the semester.’ It was great to have the freedom and the space they gave me. My painting definitely changed. I had London right there so I could go to museums. I had professors giving me new artists to look at. It was very inspiring. My work really blossomed there.

I also went to Vietnam with the GIEU. It was my first time in Asia with a group of students. We travelled around the country and learned the history, particularly about the Vietnam War, which they call the American War. I was able to help paint a mural at an orphanage. Culturally it was such an amazing spiritual experience.

Dani Davis

Candan Iscan

As an international exchange student from Bilkent University in Turkey, Candan’s study at A&D expanded her views on culture and art making.

Even before I got into a university, I was thinking of going abroad. A&D has an exchange agreement with Bilkent, so it seemed like the natural place to come. I’ve been here for two semesters. My instructors in Turkey were really traditional, but here I’ve been able to experiment. I made a portfolio during my time here. I started painting again. I had an exhibition in Pierpont Commons. I learned a lot of new techniques, including printmaking.

This is my first international trip. So, in addition to the educational differences, there’s a lot that’s culturally different. I realized that people in the U.S. are more afraid of touching each other. There’s not a lot of hugging.

While here, I’ve travelled to Chicago and Lake Michigan and I’m planning to go to New York before I go back to Turkey. I’ll have one more year of school when I return. After I graduate I want to do a master’s degree in Europe. I really like seeing different cultures and people. I might want to live abroad.

Candan Iscan

Ada Johnson (BFA ‘09)

Ada’s travels to Florence and Ethiopia helped energize her art making.

My trip to Florence during my junior year was so influential for me as an artist, because it was my chance to explore my artistic voice freely and to be in a very small school where they are committed to your experience for a semester.

This freedom was the most wonderful experience I could have before starting my senior year Integrative Project. It stripped away grades and the classroom setting. I was able to return to the dark room. I was able to do book making. I painted (which has been a secret love through these last 4 years), and I had the rich experience of taking a history class in a location where you can learn about something and then go see it.

Going to Ethiopia was also a transforming experience. We were travelling as a group of artists, visiting a place with such a rich cultural history and such an astonishing palette of colors. It motivated me to have a greater understanding of the global community and allowed me to be part of an intercultural dialogue that changed my worldview.

Ada Johnson

Caitlin Kleiboer (BFA ‘08)

Caitlin used study abroad to hone her interests in photojournalism and public health.

My first international experience was when I traveled to Ethiopia with U-M’s GIEU – Global Intercultural Experience for Undergraduates. That year I also received the Kelly McKinnell Memorial Award and used it to extend my stay in Ethiopia and do a more directed study on the health system.

The trip absolutely affected my creative work. For years I had been interested in international photojournalism but that was my first real experience with the field. I learned to communicate in the presence of a language barrier, to do research on a city or hospital, and to gain access to places where I had been originally told cameras weren’t allowed.

My time in Africa also solidified my interest in Public Health. I saw first hand the value of helping to educate people about disease, access to clean drinking water, and preventative medication.

Since graduation, I have taken an Americorps position in Grand Rapids working at a free clinic, Catherine’s Care Center, organizing health fairs, helping to create immunization clinics, and writing grant proposals. And, while I plan to come back to U-M to attend the School of Public Health with a global health concentration, I have not given up photography. My goal is to work abroad in the health field and create extensive photographic studies of the places where I work.

Caitlin Kleiboer

John Walters (MFA ‘10)

A&D’s graduate program now offers graduate student funding for individual international travel. In 2008 John Walters traveled to Chile and Thailand.

As an object maker examining the creative process, I am interested in the environmental and human impacts that result from my work. In 2008 I traveled to Chile and Thailand to research these issues. I frequently use bronze in my sculptures and Chile is a country with a major investment in copper ore extraction. I felt that if I was to continue to use this material, I needed to know the effect that it had on the local populations where it was mined.

In witnessing the importance of mining to Chile’s economy, and the impact of the leaching process, I began to think about the relationship between mining waste and other waste materials. This changed my creative practice. I started working with agricultural waste products and waste oil.

In Thailand I also researched working processes, studying a manmade basalt casting technique invented by the Thai monks who were founders of the monastery where I was staying. In addition, I researched lava casting, and completed a large beeswax figure of one of the founding monks.

I’m in Cuba for Summer 2009, investigating Cuban traditions of innovation in the face of scarce capital.

John Walters

Emily Orzech (Graduate Student, MFA ‘10)

Emily used international study and work experience in China, Bangladesh and India to explore how we view group and personal space.

My father is an East Asia specialist, so I’ve been travelling to Asia since I was five. My college thesis work was a series of prints based on my response to both the Tibetan and Chinese visual cultures. While at Michigan I spent over a month in China, followed by three weeks in Bangladesh. In China I interned with Redgate Gallery in Bejing and I lived in a complex of artists’ studios. Travel to Bangladesh built on the creative experiences in Bejing.

Culturally, India was a new experience because, as a woman alone I always had to find someone to go out with me in public. This was a huge change from China where I was completely independent. I returned to the US with a new interest in making work that examines how people occupy spaces, and the class divides that can determine where you can move. I began to visit Detroit and to think about describing Detroit spaces. Both Daca and Beijing have wide roads, large crowds, big buildings. In Detroit the experience is very different, with space defined by the distances between things, rather than by the crowds.

I’m going to London and Italy this summer with a Smucker Wagstaff grant. For me Europe is incredibly foreign, while China is not. This should offer a good counterpoint and I’ll be there for the Biennale.

Emily Orzech

Elisabeth Strunk (MFA ‘06)

Elisabeth’s A&D graduate student travel to China grounded her work, after graduation, as a teacher in Beijing.

During my first year as a graduate student at U-M I travelled with my graduate cohort to Beijing, China for six weeks. The resources given to us as graduate students were invaluable. We were able to absorb Beijing on our own terms, yet we had access to university facilities and professors. We also mounted a group exhibition. Because we were funded for the entire trip, students could let go of financial concerns and concentrate on the experience. This is a rare way to experience another culture.

After graduating from U-M, I moved to Shanghai for two years to teach digital photography and visual composition to an international group of students. I would have moved to Shanghai even without the earlier trip, but it would have been more stressful and I might not have been able to jump in so readily. And, having two different experiences of the same country also offers perspective.

Now I’ve returned to the U.S. And while my life is virtually borderless at this point, I plan on spending the next year in Pittsburgh, PA freelancing and continuing to work on my current body of work which is focused on themes of mapping, identity and dislocation— themes easily linked to my travel experiences or my current life as a nomad.

Elisabeth Strunk