Carolina Alumni Review - March/April 2009

consequences are the same in Buenos Aires as Chapel Hill.”

Crises also open doors

The study abroad program now stares down the economic crisis just like everything else.

Miles says he is not too worried. He recalled that after the Sept. 11 attacks, people were projecting that numbers would go down, but those events, if anything, spurred students to understand the world better through going abroad.

“Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but none of the students’ motivations go away because of the economic crisis. What I expect is that the pressure to provide summer programs will increase. But if you offer a quality academic product that opens doors to students, they’ll work out whether or not they’ll make sacrifices.”

Because it changes perspectives.

“Students come back and look at this country the way others see it,” Donna LeFebvre said.“They’re not so self-absorbed. They learn to be global citizens. It’s not ‘here and over there’ anymore. It’s all of us.”

Because it affirms.

Anneliese Gegenheimer plans to go to law school, and she’s interested in living and working in China and dealing with intellectual property law there.

“Study abroad definitely confirmed that that is what I want to do.”

And, you know, because it’s there.

“Everybody says, ‘Oh, Cuba, no one should go there,’” said Angelo Coclanis, a senior history major with a Spanish minor who has studied in Singapore and Cuba. “But the fact that it was so frowned upon going there was kind of the leading force that drove me down there.”

“Carolina is a great place, and it’s awesome to be here, but you’re not going to miss anything if you go away for a semester,” Kennetra Irby said.“It’s almost like people can’t imagine life going on here without them, but it will. The classes will still be here, the professors will still be here. You can have this awesome experience, and then you can come back and pick up where you left off.”

KATHERINE EVANS, a senior from Raleigh, has worked as an editorial intern at the Review. She is a Morehead-Cain Scholar, majoring in English and comparative literature, who also studied abroad in Morocco.

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