Currently, over 313,000 U.S. students study abroad for credit each year (Open Doors 2016); this is a 300% increase from twenty years ago. However, this figure still highlights that less than 3% of the U.S. undergraduate population participates in an academic program abroad. A proliferation of students studying abroad took place in the 1990s when higher education institutions began building and offering short-term, faculty-led programs. Fifty years ago, the typical study abroad student went to a private liberal arts college and spent a semester or a year abroad. Today, 63% of all students studying abroad go on short-term programs, followed by 34% on semester-long programs and 3% going for the entire academic year. Students at large state universities as well as community colleges are now the major demographic included in the short-term numbers. These shifts (from liberal arts to state universities as well as from semester-long to short-term) has sparked debates among institutions and educators about whether students on short-term, faculty-led programs can obtain just as much cultural competency as semester-long programs. Case studies from a short-term, faculty-led program to Ghana explore how U.S. students navigate “disorienting dilemmas” such as attending a bonesetter healing session, making friends with local counterparts, conducting health related field exercises in a peri-urban village and working on a service learning project. Ethnographic vignettes presented in this dissertation qualitatively capture the complexity students’ face as they struggle to learn about their new community in Ghana as well as themselves. This dissertation argues that U.S. study abroad students studying on faculty-led, short-term programs can obtain cultural competency abroad, and that qualitative, ethnographic research can be used to understand students’ of cultural competency on short-term study abroad programs. I suggest that transformational learning occurs when certain pedagogical factors are in place, such as faculty knowledge of the field site, structured writing assignments, and a theory/praxis engagement. I also demonstrate that anthropological theories and methods are useful frameworks for helping international educators develop and assess “high impact” study abroad programs. Finally, I argue that using qualitative, ethnographic data on study abroad outcomes directly and successfully contributes to the comprehensive internationalization of higher educational institutions.
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