Cal Poly kinesiology and public health professor advocates for cross-cultural learning

As a faculty member in the California State University system, I see my job as preparing students not just to be California’s future leaders, but also its global citizens. That belief has been tested — and deepened — by what I’ve observed during recent visits to Senegal and South Africa.

Both trips revealed how teaching and learning differ dramatically across cultures, and how easily Americans — students and faculty alike — can mistake difference for deficiency.

In Senegal, I joined a group of U.S. educators exploring potential study abroad programs. It quickly became clear that our Western sense of structure— tight schedules, fixed start times and linear planning — wasn’t shared by our hosts.

Flight delays and flexible mealtimes frustrated some participants who expected efficiency. Our hosts, meanwhile, prioritized relationships and conversation. What we saw as “disorganization” was actually a different way of valuing time and learning — one that centered on people, not the clock.

That lesson stayed with me: Structure is cultural. When we impose our rhythms abroad, we risk missing the deeper experience of connection and reciprocity that global learning can offer.

Months later, in Durban, South Africa, I met with American students enrolled in an experiential study abroad program. They thanked me for helping them strengthen their project proposals but complained about a “lack of structure” at their host university.

Their courses emphasized fieldwork, reflection and inquiry over lectures and rubrics. What they called “missing structure” was actually experiential learning — education that prioritizes exploration and ambiguity. I asked them gently, “Are you sure structure is missing, or are you just uncomfortable?”

That pause — when students realize that discomfort can be part of learning — is precisely where growth happens.

At my own campus, Cal Poly, we call this Learn by Doing. But even across the California State University system, experiential education is uneven. Too often, our classrooms prize control over curiosity and predictability over process. Yet the world our students are entering demands adaptability, empathy and critical thinking — skills that flourish only when learning stretches beyond the familiar.

In Cape Town, I met a student from a private California university who dismissed indigenous knowledge as “illogical” because it didn’t follow a linear pattern of reasoning. Her comment echoed a recurring theme: the assumption that Western frameworks define intelligence.

In many African contexts, logic is relational, storytelling is evidence, and knowledge is lived. When we prepare students for global engagement, we must help them see these as alternative forms of rigor, not opposites of it.

These experiences abroad mirror what we face at home. California’s classrooms are already global. Our students bring multiple languages, cultures, and learning traditions into the room. But our systems often treat one approach — linear, measurable and time-bound — as the standard.

If the CSU system wants to fulfill its mission of inclusive excellence, we must also learn to value diverse ways of learning and knowing. That begins with embracing discomfort, not as a threat to academic quality, but as a catalyst for empathy and innovation.

Not every student can study abroad, but every classroom can create opportunities for global thinking. Whether through community partnerships, reflective assignments, or interdisciplinary projects, we can help students see that real education is less about control and more about connection.

When I ask students to reflect on their global experiences, I don’t ask, “What did you see?” but “What changed in how you see?” Because in that shift — from certainty to curiosity — global citizenship begins.