Carolina Alumni Review - March/April 2009

Get Out of

Town

One of the best places to go to college is also
one of the most popular to leave behind for a semester.

by Katherine Evans

or the first month of her semester abroad in

FGhana, Carly Brantmeyer was convinced she had made the worst decision of her life. “It was so tough and so unfamiliar,” the junior photojournalism major said.“We went without electricity, without running water. We had no hot water for the entire semester.”

But between her African drumming classes and volunteering at a local orphanage, between weekly dinners with a Ghanaian family and teaching a photography class to local elementary school students, between interviewing Nigerois street beggars and just hanging out with the Americans, Ghanaians and the other African and international students with whom she lived and studied, Brantmeyer began to change her mind.

“You learn to live simply and embrace the love of that culture,” said Brantmeyer, who studied in Ghana in fall 2008. “Once you learn you can live out of two suitcases with no hot water and no make-up, life becomes more beautiful.

“Looking back, I can totally agree that [studying abroad in Ghana] was the best decision I have ever made,” she added. “I’m really changed because of it.”

Study abroad, an experience once mostly limited to budding anthropologists or aspiring Francophones, has in the past decade become an indispensable part of the college experience for undergraduates across the academic spectrum. At UNC, participation has doubled since 2000. Last year, 1,378 students studied abroad in programs administered through the Study Abroad Office. (That number does not include undergraduates who studied abroad through programs offered by the summer school and professional schools such as Kenan-Flagler Business School.)

While the “traditional” study abroad destinations in Europe and Australia/New Zealand remain popular among UNC students and American students on the whole — more than half of the UNC students who

studied abroad last year went to those destinations — programs in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East have been gaining in popularity. About 29 percent of UNC students who studied abroad went to those locations in 2005-06; that rose to 37 percent last year.

“We’re expanding opportunities in other parts of the world,” said Robert Miles, director of study abroad programs. “And this is consistent with student interest and what is being taught on campus.”

Undergraduates now are taking their cues from shifts in the world scene. China is an economic force, so undergraduates interested in global business are out to study and work internships there. The Middle East remains a political flashpoint, and students exploring careers in political science or foreign service go there. Those interested in development and public health issues are headed to Africa; many who want to gain fluency in Spanish are now going to Central and South America instead of Spain. Enrollment in Arabic classes at UNC has increased since the Sept. 11 attacks, and Chinese courses also are popular among undergraduates.

Anneliese Gegenheimer’s language classes in Beijing were so focused on complete immersion that she signed a pledge before she left that she would not speak English for the duration of her time in China.

“It was pretty hard on the weekends, especially at night when we weren’t at school,” she says. “But while we were at school, it was weird to hear English being spoken.”

After a few weeks, the junior business and Chinese double major and her American friends began to feel much more comfortable speaking Chinese. “We started to think about other foreigners as ‘foreigners.’We started to point at other foreigners and talk about them in Chinese even though we were foreigners ourselves.”