When Hongbo Li came to the USC School of Social Work from China as a participant in the school’s popular Visiting Scholars program, she expected to put her head down and grind away at her dissertation research.

To a certain extent, she has prioritized her academic work, which focuses on comparing marketing efforts by public nonprofit organizations in China and the United States. But Li also found herself opening up to other aspects of American culture during her yearlong stay.

“As a PhD student in China, I always work. I don’t have much free time,” she said. “Nobody pushes me, but I push myself. When I came here, I was able to separate my life from my job. When I work, I work hard, and then I can have some fun.”

That is an encouraging result for Cherry Short, the school’s assistant dean of global and community initiatives. She has made a concerted effort to bring a stronger sense of cultural exchange and community engagement to the Visiting Scholars program, which typically enrolls 20 to 25 participants at any given time.

Although each of the participants is paired with a faculty member who shares similar research goals, Short said there is a greater effort to integrate them into the school, the university and the culture of Southern California in general.

“The idea is to be able to link people with the same research interests and abilities with our faculty here and to allow our faculty to be a bit more open to understanding different cultures with regard to their research,” she said. “Even though they have this relationship with a specific faculty member, we really try to engage them in a more holistic way.”

In addition to receiving advice and sharing ideas with Dean Marilyn Flynn, her faculty sponsor, Li said she has also benefited from interactions with her peers, including her Ukrainian roommate and another visiting scholar from South Korea.

She admits she struggled at first with the English language but forced herself to engage with others and has seen significant improvements. That will be critical during the coming months as she interviews local nonprofit officials, including CEOs, board members and employees.

“If I want to do a field study, I have to talk to people,” Li said. “So I found every chance I could to talk to people in English.”

Li plans to stay until September before returning to China to complete her dissertation.

Short said USC has invested heavily in cultivating relationships with Pacific Rim countries, and the Visiting Scholars program has attracted numerous participants from China, Japan and other Asian countries.

However, school leaders are reaching out to other regions as well, including northern Europe, Israel, India and South America.

Many participants are invited by their faculty sponsor for stays ranging from six months to two years. Others seek out one of the school’s leading scholars based on their shared research interests.

Børge Skåland, a lecturer at Oslo and Akershus University College in Norway, is among the latter. Prior to pursuing his doctorate, he taught at a school for children with serious behavioral issues.

When he began noticing incidences of violence or intimidation by students against his fellow teachers and realized they were receiving little attention, Skåland was intrigued by the lack of response from school officials and society in general.

“Teachers and even social workers who experience violence are often ostracized,” he said. “It is kind of looked upon as a deficit, that something is wrong with you if you have been exposed to violence. You are regarded as less competent and portrayed as weak.”

While exploring what happens to teachers after they are threatened or assaulted by students, he came across several articles and a book by Ron Astor, the Richard M. and Ann L. Thor Professor of Urban Social Development at the USC School of Social Work, and his longtime colleague from Israel, Rami Benbenishty.

“They were the most thorough pieces of research I have come across that were looking at what is happening in the real world,” Skåland said.

He contacted the researchers directly and traveled to Israel in November before arriving at USC in January, where he has benefited from discussions with Astor about the American school system and perceptions of violence, among other topics.

He has also engaged with Charles Kaplan, the school’s associate dean of research, on issues related to an experience-based approach to research known as phenomenology.

Skåland lauded the university’s academic resources and said he appreciated being invited to several scholarly events and lectures, including a gathering of the International Association of Schools of Social Work.

“There are lots of very good literature and good scholars who have done research in the field,” he said, citing R. Paul Maiden, vice dean, and Beverly Younger, a clinical associate professor, as two examples.

Short said although many of the visiting scholars concentrate on their own research rather than assisting faculty members with specific projects, they often report that the experience helped them focus their work or take a new perspective as a result of discussions with USC researchers, something Skåland confirmed.

“It has been a very welcoming and positive experience for me, both meeting good people like Ron Astor’s research team and the inspiration of the high academic level,” he said.

Short said school administrators remain strongly supportive of the program, and she is hopeful it will continue to expand to other areas of the world, strengthening the global reach of the school and building on its status as a leading hub of research on social work.

“It’s seen as a benefit and a resource in terms of learning and sharing knowledge with people from other cultures,” she said. “It’s really a unique program.”