WWU’s new president encourages more students to study abroad
Western Washington University is known for its linguistics department, and its students are avid learners of world languages. So the Bellingham university’s new president hopes to encourage them to take the next step: studying abroad.
Sabah Randhawa, who over the summer became WWU president after Bruce Shepard’s retirement, says interacting with people from around the globe will be an important part of students’ working lives.
And Western students are well primed to study overseas because so many already study languages other than English. Yet only about 600 WWU students, or about 4 percent of the student body, go abroad each year. That’s the national average, but Randhawa wants it to go up.