As semester ends, students gear up for summer abroad

As the summer semester approaches, many students have something on their mind besides finals: preparing for study abroad.

According to the Office of International Education (OIE), there has been a steady increase in the number of students who apply for faculty-led summer study abroad programs over the last few years.

This year, there are 672 graduate and undergraduate students who will be participating in these summer programs, a slight increase from 664 last year.

"I intended to go last year, but I was nervous and [put] it off until this year," said Rodrigo Pemueller, an Industrial and Systems Engineering junior. "If I don't do it now, I can't graduate when I want to."

Pemueller will be going to the School of ISyE's Singapore and Beijing program, and is one of a total of 98 students this summer who will be heading for Asia for various study abroad programs.

"I wanted to go somewhere else for the experience, and it would be good to try the Asian cultures," Pemueller said.

However, he did voice some of his concerns. "For Singapore, I don't think there [will] be a big culture clash," he said. "As for Beijing, I expect to be totally lost, since I don't speak Mandarin."

Language barriers are just one of the more practical concerns raised when students are on the verge of leaving for their respective programs.

According to Amy Henry, associate director of OIE, these questions are much different from the questions students usually raise earlier on in the semester.

In the initial application period, "The three primary things students ask regarding the summer programs are credit, location and cost," Henry said. "Where can I go to earn credits for my course or major, are there scholarships available-questions like that."

Students are also benefiting from scholarships, with the Students Abroad with Regents Support (STARS) scholarships supporting 36 students this summer. Most scholarships are $500; some are $1,000. To qualify for the scholarship, applicants had to write an essay that was largely the deciding factor for the selection process.

Though not a lot of money, the scholarships help to defray some of the cost.

For example, Cassy Romano, an International Affairs and Modern Languages sophomore, was awarded the STARS scholarship and another scholarship from the School of Modern Languages. "When you consider that [the $3900 program fee] covers the plane ticket, textbooks, lodging, the cultural excursions and so on, it's not unreasonable," Romano said. "[But the scholarships] helped to make this trip feasible."

Cost was not the only factor applicants considered when choosing which summer program to go to.

Romano said that she chose Toulouse, France because the program there is structured closest to her major. "I'd get to go to [European aircraft manufacturer] Airbus Company, talk to French businessmen and get French credit," she said. "And I've been to Paris and it's beautiful."

Many students who returned from summer programs have rave reviews regarding their trips. One memory they came back with is the different experience of immersing oneself in a new culture as part of a group, as opposed to traveling solo. "When you're thrown into this foreign place with a bunch of other people [and] everyone's in the same boat, trying to feel their way around, you sort of get closer when you're helping each other out," said Pharaon Siraj, a fourth-year Industrial Engineering major who attended the Beijing-Singapore summer program last year.

"All the commonalities of the group are accentuated and the most obvious one being that we're from Tech. We feel more like Tech students, or at least have a greater awareness of being Tech students," he said.