Understandably, given the demands of their professional preparation, study-abroad opportunities have long been scant for nursing students at Hope. Their academic schedules are packed to an unusual degree because healthcare licensure requires nursing education programs to structure an unusually intensive mix of research, clinical experiences and many course credits.
Dr. Melissa Bakhuyzen ’95 Bouws, however, believes there’s a way to equip nurses with both nursing degrees and experiences outside of West Michigan. She’s spearheading an initiative to offer Hope nursing majors opportunities to study abroad starting in spring 2026, in Oman, India and Bahrain.
“A lot of schools are not able to do it, because it’s too regimented,” Bouws relates. There are daunting challenges around incorporating clinical experiences with existing curricula, licensure requirements, and bureaucratic, scheduling, interest, safety and cultural considerations. To get off-campus study off the ground in the Department of Nursing, “we’re going to have to be creative,” she says. “But we’re really committed to making this happen.”
In May, in collaboration with the Reformed Church in America, nursing faculty members Dr. Melissa Bouws ’95 and Dr. Erika Frost Bouws traveled to Asia with a nursing student and a global health student. They toured RCA-founded hospitals in India (Christian Medical College of Vellore) and Bahrain (Christian Medical Hospital), blazing trails for future Hope nursing students.
When high school students visit Hope, they frequently ask about opportunities to study abroad. “They’re asking, What kind of nursing care can I give, with my health care interests, in a context abroad? And we didn’t have a lot of that,” Bouws says. Apart from an opportunity for nursing majors fluent in Spanish to study in Mexico, nursing students haven’t been able to experience life abroad while completing their major. “We wanted a wider net, to get more students who are interested in mission work to have an opportunity to go to an English-speaking country,” Bouws says. (English is one of India’s official languages, and it’s widely spoken in Oman and Bahrain.)
“[Hope nursing graduates are] going to become much better nurses because of this experience, not just in caring for patients of a different culture, but making friendships with fellow nurses who are from a culture different than their own.”
In May, in collaboration with the Reformed Church in America (RCA), Bouws traveled to Asia with Associate Professor of Nursing Erika Frost DNP RN, a nursing student, and a global health student. They toured RCA-founded hospitals in India (Christian Medical College of Vellore) and Bahrain (Christian Medical Hospital), blazing trails for future Hope nursing students.
The trip’s timing was providential; an off-campus semester program that had been held in Chicago for years was coming to a close when the RCA proposed a novel opportunity.
“They happened to step up at that very time and say, The RCA has some hospitals in Bahrain and Vellore; would the nursing department be interested? And we’re like, Yes! We had just some perfect things that happened at perfect times,” Bouws says.
The RCA initiative had been nearly two years in the making at that point. With the May 2024 trip, logistics for a full-fledged, full-credit semester began clicking into place.
When the experience is made available to students, they will begin with several weeks at Al Amana Center in Oman, which already hosts a May Term program. Nursing majors will join other students in general education courses such as Arabic language, Omani history and culture, and religion in health care. Nursing students will follow up those weeks with clinical nursing studies at either Christian Medical College in Vellore or the American Mission Hospital in Bahrain.
Both hospitals boast high-caliber programs. “The rigor and the nursing curriculum are very comparable” to Hope’s, Bouws says. “They have simulation labs just like we do. In fact, they have a few more mannequins that we wish we had.”
National accreditation standards — “The Essentials” — for Bachelor of Science degree programs in nursing specify that students must receive training in social determinants of health and how to serve the underserved — including tending thoughtfully to those outside their own cultural and religious groups. “That’s part of the Essentials of nursing education,” Bouws says. “We have that in our theory courses and we try to give them intercultural experiences as much as we can. We call them community-based experiences, where we put them in different settings and different socioeconomic status throughout the West Michigan area, and we incorporate that as much as we can in the classroom.” But there’s only so much intercultural exposure possible within one region. “It just puts a cherry on the top just to be able to say, I did this abroad,” Bouws explains.
Bouws speaks firsthand about the value of experiential learning. As a high school student, she loved everything science, but her college biology classes didn’t engage her in the same way. Once she heard about her roommate’s nursing classes, though, the spark came back. The science of nursing and required physiology and anatomy courses brought a fulfillment to her calling. “That was right up my alley; I loved it,” she says. She went on to practice nursing in oncologic, medical-surgical and stem cell transplant contexts for 17 years, at which point, she says, she “got the bug to teach” because of her work mentoring new nurses and students in the clinical setting.
When Bouws discusses vocation with her students, she emphasizes what her career experience has taught her: “You don’t have to know as an 18-year-old what you’re going to do for the rest of your life. It’s okay to explore and navigate. As a student at Hope and also as faculty, I have found that Hope College enables this exploration of calling and vocation really well as students grow into young adults.”
Not everyone hopes to explore and navigate quite so far afield, but the opportunity will present unparalleled cultural engagement experience. Bouws is especially excited about “the impact this will have on the students’ lives and their nursing practice.” After just one day with nurses and instructors at Vellore, Bouws was becoming fast friends with them, discovering deep, abiding commonalities. She foresees similar opportunities for the students. “They’re going to become much better nurses because of this experience,” she says, “not just in caring for patients of a different culture, but making friendships with fellow nurses who are from a culture different than their own.”