My observations on the Chang-Lan Fellowships began with my questioning whether experiential learning was even relevant today, given dramatic changes in technology, globalization, and financial pressure on colleges. But reaching out to the more than 60 fellowship alumni made me realize experiential learning still has a powerful role. In fact, I\u2019m even more convinced that we should be doing everything possible \u2013 particularly in our current crisis \u2013 to ensure experiential learning not only survives but expands.<\/p>\n
A brief history of the Chang-Lan Fellowships <\/strong><\/p>\n In 1996, my late mother, Judy Chang Wenderoth, and I set up the Chang-Lan Endowed Fund<\/a> at Carleton College, in memory of her parents and my grandparents, Drs. Sing-Chen Chang (\u5f20\u4fe1\u8bda) and Chien-Wei Lan (\u84dd\u4e7e\u851a), who came to the U.S. in the 1940s. The Fund supports independent undergraduate student fellowships and has two key requirements: projects must be experiential in nature (versus formal academic study), and Fellows must share their experience with the larger community upon return.<\/p>\n We wanted more Americans to better understand China, which we believed would become increasingly central in the world. But we were worried about the race to specialize in our studies and work, so we wanted the fellowships to encourage curiosity and exploration outside of one\u2019s major, drawing students who never had thought much about China.<\/p>\n My mother, an architect, believed learning often came from doing and exploring, not solely through traditional academic study. So, we hoped the fellowships would generate personal contact with Chinese, which might lead to memorable stories, fresh perspectives, and closer relationships.<\/p>\n Past fellowships have included David Riedel\u2019s retracing and re-sketching of the 1934 Barbour expedition of the Yangtze (2002); David Jinkins\u2019 journey to understand changing worker culture in Manchuria through bathhouses and noodle shops (2003); Nicki Catchpole and Molly Patterson\u2019s examination of the transformation of teahouses (2004); and Pierce McDonnell\u2019s exploration of how China understands and presents its maritime history (2018).<\/p>\n Past Fellows have shared their experiences publicly at Carleton, and today can reach an even wider audience through the internet. For example, Pierce McDonnell\u2019s presentation<\/a> at the San Francisco Maritime Museum; Erik Lagerquist and Nyla Worker\u2019s website<\/a> to share solar insights; and Christian Heuchert and Alan Zheng\u2019s recorded discussion<\/a> on tourism in pastoral Gansu communities.<\/p>\n Conversations with Past Fellows: Benefits of Experiential Learning<\/strong><\/p>\n Stepping back on campus, I was struck by change. One hundred students, about five percent of Carleton\u2019s student body, is mainland Chinese, versus zero percent when I graduated. History, which I studied, has plummeted in popularity, replaced near the top with computer science, the closest to a pre-professional major you can get at a liberal arts college. Tuition and fees have skyrocketed ($65,000 a year today, versus $17,000 in 1990). And, of course, the campus is wired with technology: resources around the world are available with a few keystrokes.<\/p>\n When you\u2019ve got Chinese voices on campus, and you can WeChat video with Sichuan villagers from tiny Northfield, Minnesota, do you really need to send students to China? When there\u2019s immense pressure to land internships to secure well-paying jobs to justify tuition, is there still a place for off-the-resume exploration?<\/p>\n Reaching out to alumni who received fellowships as early as 2001, I came away with a much better understanding of how experiential learning addresses these questions:<\/p>\n 1) Experiential fellowships foster independence and confidence<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n How easy it is to forget what it was like to be 20. Fellows said they grew immensely from designing their projects and executing them themselves, abroad.<\/p>\n Kyle Schiller, who explored Buddhism by visiting temples across China with Adam Rutkowski in 2017, said he matured quickly having to travel on his own. His fellowship spurred further desire to contrast China with Japan, where he went the following year. An engineer at Airbnb, Schiller credits the fellowship with giving him confidence to pursue diverse interests in learning, innovation, and improving global health. Rutkowski worked on energy sustainability at Otherlab, liquid thermodynamics at SpaceX, and will soon start a PhD at Princeton.<\/p>\n In 2001, Sarah Karbeling traveled with Akiko Nakano down the Yangtze to understand the human impact of the Three Gorges Dam. A high school physics teacher in Iowa, she said that summer gave her a strong sense of independence. That\u2019s something I heard from many women, who received more than half the Chang-Lan Fellowships, and from science majors, who often have brutal major requirements that afford little time to go abroad.<\/p>\n David Riedel, who re-sketched sections of the Yangtze, credits his fellowship with helping him see where art could lead him. The Chang-Lan boosted his application to Yale\u2019s School of Architecture, which led to a career with Kohn Pedersen Fox in Shanghai. Now he is cofounder of AI SpaceFactory in New York, which develops advanced construction technologies for space exploration.<\/p>\n With parents and our educational system \u201csnowplowing<\/a>\u201d the way for today\u2019s youth, it\u2019s easy to forget that most learning comes from forging out on your own, going in new directions, and making mistakes. Fellows emphasized how their independent, in-person exploration of China accelerated that process.<\/p>\n 2) Experiential fellowships widen our perspectives, challenging what we\u2019ve read and been fed.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Remember your first trip to China? All Fellows grew up with the internet, but stressed the importance of seeing China with their own eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re living in an echo chamber, with the internet reinforcing our beliefs, with much of it misleading information,\u201d Anthony Wong told me. \u201cSo, I tell younger people today that it\u2019s more important than ever to go out and see for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n Wong, a banker and now regulator at the Hong Kong Securities and Exchange Commission, received a fellowship in 2005 to explore Chinese identity, contrasting overseas Chinese communities (he is from Malaysia) with his distant relatives in Fujian.<\/p>\n Karbeling, the high school physics teacher, admits that she doesn\u2019t do much related to China these days. But those conversations with displaced villagers helped her reconcile what she read at home and saw in the news, a human element she can even bring into discussion about physics.<\/p>\n Pierce McDonnell, a math and history major, combined his passions in shipping and history by working at the Shanghai Maritime Museum. He didn\u2019t just explore the archives and exhibitions but also worked alongside museum staff and hosted Chinese visitors. That provided multiple perspectives on China\u2019s maritime history, gave him a lifelong contact with the director there, and deepened his interest in the travels of Zheng He.<\/p>\n Sharing their experiences upon return forces Fellows to make sense of their experience, both in their own minds and to people back home. Using multimedia, story, and analogies to connect with their audiences, all said they saw their home country in a new light. Many grappled with differences between what they experienced and what they had read, studied, or assumed. This year will be particularly interesting, as the college awarded fellowships to two mainland students, a first.<\/p>\n 3) Experiential fellowships lead to jobs, foster long-term success.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cSuccess\u201d is dependent on how you define it. But contrary to turning them into wandering poets, Chang-Lan Fellows said the experience aided them professionally.<\/p>\n Nicki Catchpole had to postpone her fellowship due to the SARS outbreak in 2003. She said her conversations in Sichuan over tea made her more adept at conducting research, and helped her land her first job upon graduation. That eventually took her back to Asia, and now has her analyzing business technology in New York.<\/p>\n \u201cThe open nature of the fellowship\u2026 there\u2019s nothing like it,\u201d she said. \u201cFiguring how to create structure to make sense of something and deal with obstacles that arose was invaluable.\u201d<\/p>\n David Jinkins said he was madly curious about how China\u2019s economic shift was affecting worker culture in northeast China. Though his focus today has shifted from China, the fellowship took him to Taiwan for a master\u2019s and Penn State University for a doctorate. Now he is in Denmark, where he serves as associate professor of economics, specializing in international trade.<\/p>\n Jessica Lilu Chen fell in love with the stories of Muslim minorities on her fellowship. That started a journey to a PhD in religious studies at Stanford University, the recent publication of her book<\/a> on Islamic history in early modern China, and her current work as a hospice chaplain in California.<\/p>\n The fellowships helped many stand out in job interviews and has served them in the longer arc of their careers.\u00a0 But most recalled how tough it was to convey to recruiters how the experience could be applied to their first jobs. That\u2019s not surprising since top executives cite soft skills (adaptability, assimilating information, communication, creativity) as critical, but they generally don\u2019t do the entry-level hiring. There\u2019s also increasing evidence<\/a> that those same soft skills, not the quantitative ones, may be more valuable in a world of increased automation, and that generalists with wider-ranging experience, not narrow specialists, produce more cutting edge scholarship and innovations, given their ability to make disparate connections.<\/p>\n Expanding Experiential Learning <\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s a price to funding students and providing the critical support to make experiential learning work well. Patience, in short supply these days, is also needed to allow exploration to take its course. So, student fellowships like the Chang-Lan may not be possible at all institutions, nor be right for every student.<\/p>\n But there are many ways to integrate experiential learning into courses, study abroad programs, and independent study and work. At IE Business School, for example, I teach a course on business in China. One course I deliver entirely on campus; the other includes a weeklong immersion in Shanghai.<\/p>\n With the course on campus, I have drawn inspiration from Chang-Lan Fellows. For example, we conduct live WeChat video conversations with diverse experts in China; I integrate rich video, interactive articles, and simulations into coursework; and students deliver exercises and projects that pair them with mentors across China.<\/p>\n These changes have deepened student understanding of China, but I still can\u2019t find a substitute for taking them there and sending them on their own explorations. When a student suddenly finds her internet sites blocked, she learns to navigate and live the experience, and then reflect on the broader implications. I see minds opening in our blogs, discussions on the bus, and group chats (we use WeChat, another way to enable the lived experience). Executives are no different: they can read a McKinsey report or hear my lecture, but until we buy a beer at a corner shop using WeChat pay, the vast implications of a mobile ecosystem usually escape them.<\/p>\n Those who go to China and explore seem to have deeper empathy and perspective than they had before their trips. The most valuable part is watching them grapple with contradictions between what they read or thought and what they see and experience, such as the trade-offs between convenience and personal privacy, between more individual rights and top-down rule.<\/p>\n When they\u2019ve spent their time in China well, they become humbler, and I find they are less prone to demonize \u2013 or overhype \u2013 China. We could definitely use more of that these days.<\/p>\n There\u2019s of course a balance between in person, experiential learning and time in the classroom. Fellows and the students I take to China need background on China\u2019s history, political economy, culture, and language. But I find giving them too much information stifles refreshing questions that even seasoned experts overlook or have become too jaded to ask. And as a professor, there are benefits for me: seeing China through their eyes challenges my own views, particularly the constructs I\u2019ve formed over the years.<\/p>\n When the pandemic ends, I hope we can safely mix more in person, and not retreat behind our walls into our online echo chambers. For those seeking to heighten the experiential in their organizations, I attribute the modest success of the Chang-Lan Fellowships to four sources:<\/p>\n![\"Wenderoth](\"https:\/\/www.chinacenter.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/wenderoth-chang-lan-223x300.jpg\")