Internationalizing the Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum: Practical Lessons Learned at Home and Abroad

As U.S. colleges and universities attract an increasingly diverse student body and incorporate global perspectives across the curriculum, international study has become an important part of higher education.

Building on the foundation laid by the APA-sponsored book Undergraduate Education in Psychology: A Blueprint for the Future of the Discipline (Halpern, 2009), this book offers teachers of psychology what they need most to internationalize the undergraduate curriculum: clear approaches to studying psychology across cultures, practical ideas they can use in the classroom, resources that connect students to the world beyond their home campus, and expert advice on how to develop and administer study abroad programs.

Dana Gross, PhD, associate dean for interdisciplinary and general studies and professor of psychology at St. Olaf College, has been a member of the faculty there since 1988. She is affiliated with the Asian Studies Department and the Linguistic Studies Program. She has served as coordinator of St. Olaf's U.S. Student Fulbright Program and is currently director of an interdisciplinary individual majors program. As associate dean, Dr. Gross works closely with St. Olaf's Office of International and Off-Campus Studies.
 
Dr. Gross received her BA in psychology from Smith College and her PhD in child psychology from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. She has coauthored and contributed to textbooks in developmental psychology and is sole author of a textbook focusing on development from birth to age 3.
 
Internationalizing the psychology curriculum is a major theme in her work. She has studied and traveled in China, Japan, and Norway and has developed assignments to promote global learning in her courses. She leads a short-term psychology course in India and has organized faculty workshops about developing and leading off-campus study programs.
 
Dr. Gross is collaborating on a multi-institution study of the factors that contribute to the transformation of study abroad/study away faculty leaders to have a positive impact on them, their students, and their institutions.
 
Kenneth Abrams, PhD, is an associate professor of clinical psychology at Carleton College. At three U.S. colleges, he has developed cross-cultural psychopathology study abroad programs in the Czech Republic and has led six term-long programs there. Additionally, he has made numerous presentations on internationalizing the undergraduate psychology curriculum at conferences in the United States and abroad and coorganized with Dana Gross a June 2011 conference in Northfield, Minnesota, "Finding Our Way: Strategies for Internationalizing Undergraduate Psychology."
 
Dr. Abrams received his BA from Dartmouth College and his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Minnesota. Between his undergraduate and graduate years, he taught in a small town in the Czech Republic for 2 years. At Carleton College, he teaches courses in health psychology, psychopathology, and statistics and a seminar on science and pseudoscience. He has authored or coauthored 30 journal articles and four book chapters, many of which focus on his other research area, comorbidity between substance use and anxiety disorders.
 
Carolyn Zerbe Enns, PhD, is a professor of psychology and a contributor to the ethnic studies as well as the gender, sexuality, and women's studies programs at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa.
 
Dr. Enns was born and raised in Japan, spent 2 years as the resident director of the Japan Study Program (2006–2007 and 2012–2013), and has had a lifelong interest in intercultural learning. Her teaching and scholarship have been informed by sabbatical research and teaching experiences in East Asia as well as seminars and field study experiences sponsored by the East-West Center in Hawaii.
 
Dr. Enns received her BA in social work from Tabor College, an MA in rehabilitation counseling from California State University in Fresno, and her PhD in counseling psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has coedited three previous books and contributed to approximately 60 articles and chapters on gender, pedagogy, and feminist multicultural/transnational theory and psychotherapy.