5 Reasons to Join an International Summer School

Apple’s Steve Jobs has often repeated that “innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” In order to become a leader, it is very important to learn from leaders, and often international summer schools attract experts who are typically busy and often inaccessible during the academic year. Good schools try to attract not just educators and professors, but also experienced practitioners from different fields. In the case of the Silk Road International Summer School in Kazakhstan, the organizers invited practitioners from the UN office, UNESCO, USAID and other international and national organizations and diplomatic missions.

Top-notch international summer schools are built around specific themes and target students and faculty who have interest in and enthusiasm for very special issues. Unlike the traditional university environment where students are among those who gained admission to a certain program, international summer schools attract like-minded people according to their professional interests. These networks are very strong and effective, as an international summer school can be built around specific themes like business, innovation, global and regional sustainable development issues, etc.

During the academic semester students may miss out on interesting courses for a variety of reasons, and in some instances specialized topics are not covered in the regular curriculum. Summer schools are more flexible and dynamic. For example, in the case of the Silk Road International Summer School, students are interested in exploring not just cultures and inter-cultural communication in the Great Silk Road region, but also in emerging ideas and trends about traditional and innovative sustainable infrastructure from China to Europe via Central Asia, and they had interesting discussions on these issues.

American poet and writer James Russell Lowell once said, “One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.” International summer schools provide good opportunities to have hands-on experiences in different formats. These experiences might range from meeting local policy makers and representatives of NGOs, to visiting local businesses and learning how business really works in a specific country, or even rolling up your sleeves to work on small projects. For instance, participants of the Silk Road International Summer School, together with KazNU’s MDP program on sustainability, had a chance to visit a camel farm to discuss the impact of climate change and rainfall patterns on camel breeding.

As an MDP/Global Classroom student from the summer school said, “Ultimately, an international summer school is about learning through traveling, hands-on experience and networking.”