There’s an article in Peer Review, a publication of the AAC&U that caught my attention recently. In “Transforming the Study Abroad Experience into a Collective Priority” Ross Lewin, Director of Study Abroad at the University of Connecticut advocates for a more holistic approach to the study abroad experience. In recent years there has been a growing emphasis on including some sort of experience abroad in undergraduate education, in response to the challenges of the global age, but Lewis raises concerns that the way these experiences are too often conducted does little to equip students to better compete of function as responsible citizens in the global age. Indeed, too often study abroad is little more than a vacation in some friendly European capital or seaside town. The solution, he argues, is to make the study abroad experience a collective priority.