Research centres EQUALITY ResearchCollective and Learning in Diversity are collaborating with UVA, the University of Virginia (USA), by offering internships for students within some research projects. For six weeks, six US students experienced research, teaching and student life at HOGENT. Enough reasons for a chat, we reckon.
During their internships, students get the chance to, develop insights into approaches to social services, education and other fields under the guidance of HOGENT researchers. Specifically, the students collaborated as researchers in three research projects.
Of course, the research internship also aims to gain international and intercultural experience and develop research competences. The students follow various study programmes at their university, including Youth & Social Innovation, Anthropology and Psychology.
The students themselves see this internship as a unique experience and a great added value in their educational pathway. Justice Demby, who studies anthropology, sees it as an important addition to her academic studies: "My studies are strongly knowledge-oriented and theoretical. Because we can participate in practice-based research here, it all becomes more tangible much more hands-on."
US role model for pioneering students
Justice is working with Julia Bianchetto (youth & social innovation student) and Wendy Franco (psychology student) on the research project on pioneer students. That is the name given to students who are the first in their family to start higher studies. Their parents and/or siblings have no experience of higher education and therefore have difficulties in giving them supportive advice.
This makes it less obvious for them to figure out what is expected. The students also often encounter misunderstanding. For example, a student whose parents have not pursued higher studies but have their own thriving business is pressured to cooperate very regularly in the business. After all, the parents find it difficult to estimate the time investment involved in higher studies.
Such a situation sums up the context of pioneering students well, Wendy Franco believes: "It is a very varied target group, but what recurs time and again is the importance of parents in support. That's often missing. The 'sense of belonging' is also missing: pioneer students do not always feel they belong on campus and neither do they at home, since their studies there have made them an outsider."
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Wendy Franco, Julia Bianchetto en Justice Demby (UVA-university of Virginia) were in a research internship for six weeks at HOGENT.
UVA students are actually well placed to make a research contribution on this because unlike Belgium, the US has a very solid policy around pioneer students."
You could say that the US is a role model in this respect," says Julia Bianchetto. "It is even the case that pioneer students in our country wear a T-shirt saying 'I'm the first', to emphasise that they are pioneers within their family. So there is nothing stigmatising about it, quite the contrary."
Inclusion
Lucy Tedford and Emily LeGree are collaborating on a study on inclusion, about which they are interviewing students. Although the perceptions we get through the media suggest otherwise, there is a high value put on inclusion in the United States. "The US is very polarised," Lucy Tedford outlines. "There is a conservative trend that questions issues like gender and gets a lot of media attention, but nevertheless, there is a highly developed inclusion policy. For example, all our syllabi must contain a statement explicitly articulating the commitment to inclusivity as a guiding principle."
Campus experience
When it comes to the campus experience, all students mention the same differences with UVA: the campuses are smaller and form 'islands' scattered across the city, each standing on its own, while those in the US are much more centralised and (therefore) also much more extended. Student residences are also integrated on campus. The university campus simultaneously forms the student's social life. "I met students here who get involved in a youth movement during the weekend. With us, that is not possible," Emily LeGree illustrates.
The fact that some students here daily commute back and forth between home and campus is unthinkable for them. Even going home weekly as a dorm student is usually out of the question: in the US, it is far from exceptional for someone to study at a university in another state, making air travel the most appropriate and sometimes the only viable mode of transport. Even for students living 'nearby', a weekly return home is often difficult. Emily, for example, lives in Virginia, but to reach university she has to travel four hours.
'Something next to work'
The students sound unanimous about the work culture: they all observed that at HOGENT you can build a life with other activities besides work. And that seems hardly imaginable in the US: "With us, work determines almost your whole life," Justice Demby illustrates. "You notice that here in Belgium and Europe many people also have 'something next to work' that motivates and satisfies them."
Emily LeGree agrees: "Although everyone here is also very committed to the job, I have the impression that in the US we are much more pressured in work contexts. Also, the culture in the workplace at HOGENT is completely different: there is more togetherness, the atmosphere is more humane."
"And there is clearly less hierarchy here," experiences Lucy Tedford. "You feel that the lecturers and researchers really value what we bring in."
So let’s check with David Van Bunder, one of the mentors, whether the researchers really see the American students as an added value. "They certainly do," he says determinatedly. "They are highly motivated, work hard and independently and are mature. Moreover, what they bring from their environment, background and education is in any case enriching for the respective research projects they are involved in."