Sending students abroad

Transcript

Every year in August and September nearly a hundred of our students go abroad on university-sponsored study tours. We send groups with chaperones to China, Europe, and North America, and individual students join programs in Australia, Britain, Korea, and New Zealand.

I'm the Dean of International Programs at my university, so I'm responsible for the welfare of all of these students. Every year at this time I get a little nervous, hoping that everyone will be all right.

There are always problems, of course. The Administrative Director of our Center for International Programs spends a lot of time on the telephone, solving minor problems. Most of these involve transportation, accomodations, and sometimes insurance claims for minor injuries or illnesses. She and her staff and I do what we can for the welfare of our students, but we can't control everything.

For most of our students who join study tours, this is their first trip overseas. It's a great adventure for them. In fact, we hope that they'll face some challenges. If all goes well from our point of view, they'll have to talk with people in other countries in order to get by, and then they'll have to use a foreign language, Chinese or English or Korean, for real communication. Encounters with people who speak foreign languages really motivate some students and change the way they think about communication.

As I wait for our students to return safely, I look forward to meeting them in Fall Semester. Everyone will have a story to tell, and it will be a great pleasure to learn about how they gained new perspectives from their overseas adventures.