Having landed in Chicago, we leave the city early next morning to beat the traffic and get to the first point on our itinerary, which is Kalamazoo, Michigan. We arrive after around three and a half hours driving up I-94 along Lake Michigan, the largest freshwater lake in the United States, and turning off eastwards towards Detroit. Kalamazoo is home to around 74,000 inhabitants – plus four German experts who arrived this year for a two-month stay in southwestern Michigan’s largest city. They are who we want to meet up with for the first time since they completed the preparatory seminar in Germany. They give us a warm welcome as we emerge from our car in the parking lot of the local project partner, Global Ties Kalamazoo, and proceed to answer all of our questions. How have they been doing so far? Do they get on with their host families? How are things at their place of assignment? What do they feel is different in the US, or maybe surprisingly similar? What experiences will they be returning home to Germany with? We have a great conversation about cordial encounters, heart-wrenching poverty, and a system that actually manages to produce even more red tape than its German counterpart (really!). Their stories are full of warmth while giving us much food for thought at the same time – clear evidence of the importance of international expert exchanges.
How it all began
In early 2022 IJAB took over responsibility for the job shadowing program, known today in IJAB’s portfolio as TraX, along with its original concept and a team of contacts in the United States. The scheme itself has existed since the 1950s, but IJAB was a new addition to an existing group of partners. Because IJAB lacks a shared history with them, we felt we needed to know more about the inner workings of the program as well as the needs of the project partners in the States. After all, any sound partnership is based on respectful communication, considerate attitudes, and mutual appreciation – all values that are close to our hearts. And so we decided to go and see the program at work with our own eyes.
Rock’n’roll, Hollywood, IJAB
From Kalamazoo we travel onwards to Cleveland, Ohio, driving through sheer endless cornfields and rows of grain elevators along I-90 towards Lake Erie. Here, we meet up with our partner organization the Council of International Programs. When the first German experts started visiting the United States in the 1960s, CIP was established as the administrative backbone of the scheme. The organization has evolved and grown, bringing more than 15,000 international professionals from over 147 countries to the United States for an exchange since its inception. CIP maintains a network of several offices and local partners that assist the organization in running the exchanges.
The meeting with four CIP representatives is important to us for two reasons: one, because we hope to maintain the program for a number of years yet in collaboration with CIP and two, because we want to leverage unused potential and help build a viable future for the scheme. We need to think about target groups, potential places of assignment, and also increasing costs and rising inflation, which are impacting host families in particular. We emerge from our meeting in happy anticipation of the next call for applications, armed with exciting ideas and impressed at how the small CIP team is managing a broad range of international programs, ours among them. We spend some time contemplating the vastness of Lake Erie and learn that Cleveland is the birthplace of rock'n’roll, that an Avengers movie was shot here, and that the theater district of “the Land,” as the city is also known, features the world’s largest outdoor chandelier.
Almost Heaven, West Virginia
Inspired by our meeting with CIP, we continue our journey southwards. Gradually the Corn Belt gives way to the brilliant fall colors along the winding roads of the Appalachian Mountains, taking us to the next stop on our itinerary. A stone’s throw from the border between Pennsylvania and West Virginia is pretty Morgantown, a small community on the banks of the Monongahela River. It’s home to a population of 30,000 as well as the most prominent university in the state, West Virginia University, with around 26,000 enrolled students.
At WVU’s International Office we meet our local partners from CIP as well as two of the three individuals who are spending their job shadowing placement this year in Morgantown. Again, we’re here to meet our partners in person and understand what we need to do to ensure the Morgantown placements continue to be a success. Having discussed these aspects and drawn up a plan for 2024, it’s the experts’ turn to report how their stay has been so far. They tell us about the Buckwheat Festival, a regional highlight; helpful locals who offer lifts up or down the hills in the area; and a country music festival they plan to visit with their hosts. Of course we also discuss what we can improve and respond to the experts’ questions and suggestions. As we leave the office, we realize how well they already know their way around the campus and the region itself. They feel at home in Morgantown and even tell us where to stop for the best coffee in town before we leave.
So long, America
The meeting in West Virginia marks the end of our trip to the US. We leave for Washington, D.C., from where we’ll fly back to Germany, opting again for the scenic route through forested hills showing early signs of red and yellow fall foliage. We pass impressive rockfaces and road signs warning drivers of crossing deer and bears. On the way, we snack on smoked gouda crackers and apple pie-flavored iced coffee with a generous dusting of pumpkin spice, reflecting on everything we’ve seen, heard, and talked about over the last few days. We’re all satisfied with the experience and agree that the meetings with our partners were immeasurably valuable. It certainly has been worth making the trip – not just because it’s renewed our motivation to maintain the partnership, but also because we now have a clearer picture of the program and its future potential. Sadly we lack the time to stop for coffee at the White House, but do manage to tour the German-American Friendship Garden in D.C. – an obvious must-see while we’re here – and think ahead with joy to the next iteration of TraX in 2024.
