Over the past few years my attendance at international education conferences has dwindled. I have missed the past three Forum on Education Abroad conferences (my last one was Portland in 2009) and the past two NAFSA: Association of International Educators conferences (my last one was Kansas City in 2010) and the past four CIEE conferences (my last one was Toronto in 2007). I did manage to make it to the CIES conference in Chicago in 2010 to present but my time at the conferences consisted of arriving 30 minutes before my presentation and leaving 30 minutes after it ended so I really can’t say I attended the conference (my only CIES conference I have seen). I only presented at the Chicago CIES conference. This also sums up the amount of time I spent at the 2011 NAFSA Region V conference in Champaign, Illinois as I was also in and out of the conference venue only to present and say hello to a few friends and colleagues. I did attend the entire 2010 U.S. Summit for Global Citizen Diplomacy in Washington, D.C. and it was a worthwhile event.
There are several reasons for this decline such as dissertation conflicts, lack of funds (almost all of my previous conference participation was self-funded) or lack of support.
I do hope to attend the 2013 Forum on Education Abroad conference as it will be in Chicago and perhaps the NAFSA conference in St. Louis in 2013. CIEE 2012 in Shanghai is definitely out for me but who knows about 2013 in Minneapolis!?!?!
I will attend the annual conference of the Partnership in International Management (PIM) in Lima, Peru in late October (in many ways PIM has become my new NAFSA) and later this month I will attend the Peer Schools International Educators [group of top business schools in the U.S.] meeting at Stanford Graduate School of Business for a couple of days (in many ways Peer Schools has become my new Forum although on a much, much smaller scale] so I’m not totally out of the conference/meeting circuit…it’s just changing! Last month I attended my first Chicago NAFSA Roundtable meeting since I worked in the Office of International Affairs at The University of Chicago seven years ago.
I, too, and finding that the costs and the emerging numbers of organizations focusing on IE have made me consider whether I will attend such conference in the future. Thanks for your bringing this issue to the fore.
Mike
I have a friend that attends the conferences, yet last year he was not able to because of finances. Bloggers do you feel that the conferences will have a meeting to see how the turn out can be reached to obtain a goal to reach all the learners that want to attend?
Sebrina Patton
The following comment is from Missy Gluckmann of Melibee Global who is having difficulty posting to WordPress so I am posting her comment that I received via e-mail:
I hear you David and so appreciate you raising this point. The high cost of these events is one of the reasons I haven\’t attended either. I also find that it is sad to imagine how many future international educators are unable to attend, even if they volunteer at such events. It is one of the reasons I started offering online workshops, as I firmly believe that we ALL need affordable professional development. How else can we tackle this issue? It would be great to see colleges offering space for gatherings for more regular, local dialogue on a regular basis – or for us to simply carve time in our busy schedules to do more face to face networking when folks are traveling across \”regions.\” Thoughts? – Missy (www.melibeeglobal.com)