All abroad!

Delving into subjects from apparel studies to zoology, in cities from Addis Ababa to Zurich, UD students spent Winter Session 2008 earning academic credit while exploring their world.

Students from all seven of the University’s colleges traveled to all seven continents during January, taking part in about 60 different study abroad programs in more than 35 countries. It was just the latest illustration of UD’s international reputation as one of the top study abroad institutions in the United States.

“This was a month of memories and life-changing experiences,” reads one of the final entries in a blog written by an adventurous group that braved the icy terrain of Antarctica to study wildlife conservation and nature photography. “We have learned valuable lessons about life, each other and the great world we call home.”

During the five-week Winter Session, by far the most popular time for study abroad, students moved out of their usual environments and into very different kinds of educational settings around the globe. Their new “classrooms” were situated in underwater reefs in the Caribbean, treasure-filled European museums, boardrooms of multinational Australian corporations, rural homes in African villages, sites of architectural marvels in Asia and sprawling South American wetlands.

“Our success is largely due to the creativity of the faculty who design and direct the majority of our study abroad programs,” Lesa Griffiths, director of the University’s Center for International Studies, says. “The breadth of the programs is extensive—allowing most students to find a program that works into their academic program in a meaningful way. UD students have embraced study abroad, making it part of the undergraduate culture of the institution.”

The University, which pioneered the concept among U.S. educational institutions 85 years ago, today offers a wealth of wide-ranging study abroad programs available from the freshman year onward. Participation has increased 70 percent in the last five years, Griffiths says, and almost 42 percent of graduating UD students have enrolled in at least one study abroad program.

This level of involvement has won recognition from the Institute of International Education (IIE), whose annual Open Doors report recently—for the third straight year—named UD the only public institution among the nation’s top 20 doctoral/research institutions in terms of undergraduate participation in study abroad.

“We continue to educate the next generations of leaders in this country by also providing them the opportunity to have a better understanding of the international or global context in which we live,” says Havidán Rodríguez, vice provost for academic affairs and international programs.

UD’s long tradition in study abroad began when Raymond Kirkbride, a French language professor, took eight students to France in 1923 for the inaugural “junior year abroad.”

The program became a regular one, and students came from all over the country to take part. Among them, in 1927, was Harriett Kellogg, an undergraduate at what is now Washington University in St. Louis. Her son, Robert H. Richards III, an attorney and an instructor in foreign languages and literatures at UD, recalls the family story of how she met Delaware student Robert Richards Jr., AS ’28, on the trip, and the two later married.

“I think that year abroad was a wonderful experience for both of them, and at the time, it was a very unusual opportunity,” Richards says of his late parents. “They talked about it often.”
Today, study abroad is much more varied. Some programs immerse students in a language and culture for a full semester or academic year, while others have no language requirement as well as a shorter time commitment.

In all programs, students travel with UD faculty directors and take standard courses for credit, meeting regularly in such locations as hotel conference rooms during the time abroad.

The keys to a successful program, Griffiths says, are “a strong academic base, enough free time for students to explore on their own, excursions related to the academic component of the program and also to the local culture, and an engaged faculty.”

Offerings during the most recent Winter Session were as diverse as any in recent years.

The Antarctica program certainly ventured far off the typical tourist path, but others were unusual as well, including one that took leadership students around the world, from Greece to Laos with stops in north Africa, India and Thailand. Another group studied landscape design in Brazil, spending time, as one participant wrote, “hiking, horseback riding and piranha fishing in the remote Pantanal Region, the largest area of wetlands in the world and a real gem of dense flora and fauna.”

Other Winter Session programs studied economics in Switzerland (the University’s longest-running annual program, which has missed only one year since it began in
1972), engineering in Turkey, physics in Argentina (historically, South America’s most scientifically active nation), Arabic and art history in Tunisia, nursing in Australia and geology on the Caribbean island of Bonaire.

Surveys of study-abroad participants at UD have found that even short-term programs have broadened the students’ global awareness, Griffiths says.

Regardless of the type or length of the trip, students frequently mention the experience as a highlight of their undergraduate years, citing educational value, a broader understanding of the world and lifelong friendships formed with their traveling companions.

“I really have to applaud the efforts of the teachers and the school for creating such a great trip,” says Kathleen Plummer, BE ’08, who traveled to Australia and New Zealand this Winter Session to study international accounting and global issues in information technology. “It’s seldom students get to have such a great learning experience while still having fun.”