Carolina Alumni Review - March/April 2009

in far-flung locations.

“There is no question that this is a study abroad business, and some of these providers have major advantages. SIT, for instance, has been in Africa for 30 years,” Miles said.

Most who can afford study abroad say the same thing: It was well worth the cost.

Brandy Davila, a senior exercise and sports science and psychology major, studied on an SIT program in Samoa in spring 2007. The program was expensive, although Davila received a partial scholarship from SIT and other financial aid. But the program — which included trips to Hawaii and Fiji, a stay in a Samoan home, and an independent research project — lived up to what it promised.

For her independent research, Davila, who played on the UNC women’s rugby team, interviewed rugby players for a paper on rugby in Samoan society. She said that research experience made her change her major from biology to exercise and sports science when she returned to Chapel Hill.

“The research was something I never would have been able to do anywhere else. It gave me an opportunity to do something I’m not qualified for yet in the U.S., but over there, I could meet so many players. In the states, you would have had to have had your master’s.”

Digital delivery has arrived

Read the Carolina Alumni Review online, as it appears in print.

• Search archives and read past issues

AVAILABLE

ONLINE

• Find articles you seek using page thumbnails

• Share Carolina stories with other GAA members

and nonmembers

• Find out more through deep links in each issue

GAA members will receive notification by e-mail and a link to a user-friendly Web site for immediate access to their interactive issue, complete with hotlinks to all URLs and e-mail addresses. alumni.unc.edu/car

GENERAL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Expanding the opportunity

However tempting or potentially beneficial, many students still see study abroad as prohibitively expensive.

“Many students don’t even consider study abroad given the fact that they already face financial difficulties,” said Joseph Jordan, director of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History.

Because many chose not to respond to the “ethnicity” part of a study abroad survey, it is hard to determine the number of minority students who have studied abroad, but setting aside those nonresponses, about 18 percent of the students who studied abroad in 2007-08 identified themselves as nonwhite. The nonwhite population of UNC undergraduates is about 27 percent.

Jordan said that financial need, inflexible academic schedules and the fact that few people in their families have traveled internationally often combine to make study abroad nonviable for many minority students.