Finding good study-abroad programs
WASHINGTON – I didn’t give much thought to my college daughter’s plans to spend her spring semester last year in Chile.
I didn’t study the brochures. Neither my wife nor I had ever studied overseas. We had no stories to tell and no expertise to share.
We figured this was one area where we wouldn’t interfere, and let Katie take care of everything.
She did a fine job. But then, she was robbed in Santiago. It was at a Starbucks, where she liked to study.
A young man approached and asked her what was in an espresso coffee. She thought this was an odd question, but he was good-looking, and it wasn’t until she finished her answer that she realized he had gotten a hand on the strap of her book bag – containing her wallet, passport, laptop and lots of other good stuff.
In another second he was out the door. She never saw him, or her belongings, again.
I got the call that afternoon. Katie was upset, but had already contacted the Santiago office of her study-abroad program. They were helping her deal with the police and start the frustrating process of replacing everything she had lost.
I had lucked out again. These people knew what to do. But I felt stupid that I hadn’t investigated the program long before to make sure it was equipped to handle emergencies.
Many high school seniors are making final decisions on where they’ll go to college. Many of them are hoping to study abroad at some point. So I’ve come up with some rules for dumb and lazy parents like me who want to make sure the college they pick is well equipped for this.
I spoke to Michael Vande Berg, chief academic officer of the Portland, Maine-based Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE); Mary Dwyer, president of the largest program provider, the Chicago-based Institute for the International Education of Students (IES); and Rhoda Borcherding, director of study abroad at Katie’s school, Pomona College.
Here are seven tips to help you figure out which college overseas program is best for you:
1. DO NOT LOOK FOR THE PROGRAM MARKETING ITSELF AS THE NO. 1 OVERSEAS EXPERIENCE, WITH THE MOST STUDENTS GOING ABROAD.
Vande Berg said it’s relatively easy to get young people excited and fill a college’s study-abroad program to overflowing. That will generate buzz on the college application circuit and provide some fabulous photos for the admissions page of the college Web site.
But it’s much harder, with such a load of participants, to make sure you can give each of those young people the service they deserve, particularly when something goes wrong. So don’t judge programs just by size.
2. DON’T TRY TO AVOID COURSES IN LOCAL UNIVERSITIES WHEN YOU GET THERE.
Katie had a literature professor at the University of Chile who smoked and made cell-phone calls during her lectures, and sometimes walked out in the middle of class without a word of explanation. But she was also a published poet who had known Pablo Neruda, and her odd demeanor taught Katie a great deal about Latin American higher education.
In a list of 10 tips for picking a good program, Dwyer emphasized the importance of the student becoming immersed in local cultures. There are programs that keep American students in comfy little cocoons, with American instructors and American dorm life. But they miss the point.
Katie’s six months in Chile were full of annoyances – a host family that often ignored her, several student strikes, university classes with low standards and, of course, the robbery. But I think those were the experiences that taught her the most and gave her the confidence to handle the many other new environments she’s sure to encounter.
3. ASK IF THE PROGRAM HAS A COUNSELOR OR PSYCHOLOGIST ON CALL.
For some students, a nation full of strange people and strange habits can be too much, and yet finding a competent professional to talk to is often difficult. Dwyer said at a bare minimum you should make sure the student has a way to reach a good, English-speaking clinical psychologist by phone no matter where the student is.
4. READ THE PROGRAM PROTOCOLS.
Dwyer’s 10 tips put great emphasis on taking such protocols seriously: “Make sure the program has clear, written crisis-management and emergency-evacuation plans in place, as well as a regularly drilled and tested system for promptly reaching students and their emergency contacts in a crisis. Since these plans are rarely published, ask about their availability.”
5. DON’T STOP WITH THE COLLEGE’S STUDY-ABROAD OFFICE.
Actually, the resident director of the overseas program in your target foreign country is the crucial person. If you don’t check that person out, if the college’s student-abroad office can’t provide you with that person’s resume, you’re taking a risk.
The program providers are independent organizations that work with many colleges. It is they, not the colleges, that hire the people your child will have to call if something goes wrong.
As Vande Berg said, the resident director will also “make or break the student learning experience.” The director will often be the one to explain local academic customs, such as a lecturer’s habit of discouraging lively class discussion, and the student’s need to take seriously the suggested readings at the beginning of the term “without ever really discussing those texts in class,” Vande Berg said.
Find out how long the resident director at your destination has been in that job, what languages and skills that person has, what previous students have said about her and what the college student-abroad staff think.
Katie had the benefit of an experienced director, Hector Cruz-Feliciano.
6. TAKE TIME TO READ THE INSURANCE POLICY.
Some families will rely on their own insurance, which can be a mistake. The best programs will have negotiated policies that cover situations that parents might not think about.
Dwyer, Vande Berg and Borcherding mentioned the utility of having a clause that covers medical evacuation by air to a hospital suitable to the illness or injury at hand.
7. DON’T LOOK FOR A PROGRAM THAT WILL JUST LET YOU WANDER AROUND OR CREATE YOUR OWN ADVENTURES.
That was what study-abroad programs were often like decades ago. They got you to the country you wanted to visit, arranged for some housing and wished you well.
Some free spirits may prefer that approach, but for most college students, this is a recipe for frustration and wasted time – or for four to five months of parties, which isn’t my idea of a good use of those hard-earned tuition dollars.
My conversation with Vande Berg began and ended with this point: “Those responsible for designing and delivering programs need to focus very intentionally on student learning,” he said. “This includes identifying learning outcomes and designing programs to make it more likely than not that students will meet these outcomes.”
source:http://www.nashuatelegraph.com
