Connecting the Dots: Sustaining Self, Staff, and International Education Amid COVID-19

In the middle of a semester during which study abroad programs were canceled and international office staff alternated days in the office, Sara Easler, PhD, grabbed her staff and headed for the woods.

More specifically, staff in the international programs office at the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business went on an optional, socially distanced camping trip as a way to recharge and reconnect with each other this fall.

“Everyone had their own space, but it was a way for us to see each other and have some fun,” says Easler, Haslam’s director of international programs and study abroad. “We had a great time—we hadn’t laughed together in so long. It took the pressure off. We felt we could do this.”

To be sure, 2020 has been a year unlike any other for international education—and for the people who support and sustain it at all levels. Rapid, and often complicated, measures to safely bring home study abroad students in the spring have given way at many institutions to empty campuses, limited or virtual programming, and uncertainty about when travel and other activities will resume. Few of these factors are within the control of international educators, and these new circumstances are challenging to navigate. 

“As the months evolved, everybody realized we were in a much longer-term situation,” says Carola Smith, MA, dean of educational programs at Santa Barbara City College in California. “But we have to get out of this reactive space and move toward a more proactive way of