STUDY ABROAD
dents about study abroad programs and the
funding that is available. It also offers a study
abroad fellowship for students who demonstrate financial need.
There is financial aid available to qualified students who want to study abroad, and
there are a slew of scholarships and grants,
including the Carolina Southeast Asia Summer Program, the Phillips Ambassadors program to Asia and the Class of 1938 Summer
Study Abroad Fellowships. In summer and
fall 2008, UNC awarded a total of $99,000
in privately funded, need- and merit-based
scholarships to 40 undergraduates for participation in study abroad programs.
Officials are studying how they can
reach other under-represented groups as
well, including those with disabilities, science majors whose schedules can discourage a semester away, and male undergraduates — female participation is more than
twice that of men.
“Does the population going abroad
match the population on campus? No,”
Miles said. “We still have a way to go.”
Chapel Hill High School.
“We formed a pretty close
relationship,” she says. “Part of
why I was able to do that was
because I had studied in Mexico. … What I went through as a
traveler in Mexico was what
they were going through as
immigrants here.”
Aaron also had participated
in the UNC London summer
program. “I enjoyed the London
trip, but I always sort of felt like
a tourist. In Mexico, I felt like I
lived there. The service made me
feel like I was contributing and
getting something back from the
country itself.”
Serving while studying
If you’re going abroad to study, Donna
LeFebvre can’t imagine why you’d skip
service.
“That’s how they get to know the culture. You don’t want to feel like you’re just
going over and taking from people. Then
you’re just looking at the veneer of the
society. It’s not going to be meaningful.”
LeFebvre, a lecturer in the political science department, will lead a Burch Field
Research seminar in Rwanda this summer,
and the program includes staying in Rwan-dan families’ homes and doing volunteer
work.
The APPLES service learning program,
which offers service learning courses on
campus, coordinates study abroad programs
in Mexico, South Africa and Vietnam. Students participating in these programs take
classes, but they also volunteer at local community organizations. When APPLES students return to campus, they must enroll in
a two-hour course that has a 30-hour service requirement.
Junior Rachel Aaron spent summer
2008 in an APPLES program in Guadalajara, Mexico, where she volunteered at a
home for abandoned and abused boys and
lived with a Mexican family. After she
returned, Aaron tutored two students at East
Work and play
There’s an 800-pound gorilla
in the room anytime study
abroad is discussed: Sure, there
are myriad educational and cultural opportunities out there.
But how many students are just
taking a quasi-academic vacation?
Britney Sink said the attendance requirements in Seville
were more stringent than those
in Chapel Hill. “We had class in
the morning and at night, and it
was always kind of hard. The
workload seemed really intense
because it was all in Spanish.”
On the other side of the scale are the
three students who bragged about how little time they spent in their programs and
how much they spent traveling Europe.
The idea that a study abroad experience
is just a semester-long vacation isn’t new,
and Miles said, “There’s no question that
that image hovers over us.”
The answer for many probably lies
somewhere in between.
Jane Gray, a junior history major, studied
in the Lorenzo di Medici Florence program
— one of the most popular semester programs offered. She was surprised by the
number of American students in the city,
and she did not expect to hear so much
English intermingled with Italian during
her walks around town.
“It’s almost like you’re in a college town
because there are so many students there,”
she said. Because three of her five courses
Angelo Coclanis
Angelo Coclanis
hooks up with Che
Guevara, in a sense,
while studying in
Cuba. The senior history major with a
Spanish minor also
has studied in
Singapore.
PHOTO COURTESY
OF COCLANIS
were with all UNC
students, she said, it
was more difficult to
make friends with
non-UNC students,
let alone Italians.
“It could be also
that I would have
had a more ‘Italian’
time if I went on
another [school’s]
program. But you’re definitely learning a
new culture. ... It’s infused with other
things.”
And while it’s a safe bet that some students are lured abroad solely by the promise
of pubs and discothèques and a lower
drinking age, if they’re not able to keep up
with their work, they’ll still face the consequences. As Miles put it,“A student can
choose not to go to class anywhere, but the
