Spring 2017: Update on Study Abroad Popularity

Photo via Amanda Brooks ’17

While the number of students spending a semester off-campus stays at about 50 to 60 percent of the St. Lawrence community, multiple factors affect where students choose to study abroad. They include the safety of the country or recruitment by other students or faculty. Next semester, 162 St. Lawrence students will embark on the formative experience of a semester abroad, but while most off-campus study programs remain relatively popular, the number of students applying to certain programs often ebbs and flows each semester. However, about the same number of students participate in an off-campus study program each semester, with slightly more at-tending in the spring semester than the fall.

The terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels have played a role in the decreasing number of applicants for the London program in the spring of 2017. There were about six or seven fewer applications than in past semesters. Usually, there are 20-25 applications, but this year only 14 students will be attending. “We think it might have been because of the situation in Europe regarding the terrorist attacks. And the same with the France program,” said Marina Llorente, the Associate Dean of the Center for International and Intercultural Studies (CIIS). There are only 2 students abroad in France this semester, which is quite low compared to previous semesters.

The Prague program has grown greatly in the last few years due to multiple factors. Associate Professor Juraj Kittler has been the faculty coordinator of the Prague program for the past six years. “I took the program when it was in its total infancy,” said Kittler. In the first three years that Kittler advised the program, there was a maximum of three to four applications.

“Then suddenly, about four years ago, there was a group of about six students who came back to campus and were very excited about the program and they advertised it. Ever since, we have had an exponential increase,” said Kittler.

For the fall of 2016, 24 students applied and 17 were accepted, compared to the 10 students who went in the fall of 2015. “I didn’t do any special advertising for the program,” added Kittler.He believes there are four main reasons the program has increased in popularity: the perception of Prague as a magical fairytale city, the fact that the city is so inexpensive, the cheap flights that can be found to other European cities, and that students find the program not to be very academically rigorous. Kittler is visiting the program in two weeks and will talk about the need to in-crease its academic rigor with the local directors.

The Prague program also offers a unique opportunity for film minors to take classes at FAMU (the Prague Film and Television School at the Academy of the Performing Arts).

“I think all the film minors are interested in taking the courses. And I think before a lot of the film minors didn’t know what to do, and there are a lot of film minors who wanted to go abroad, but didn’t have the opportunity to take film courses, and this is an important thing for them, so that is a good reason why the numbers are up,” said Llorente.

“Sometimes a specific cohort of students come back and do a lot of recruitment for a program,” noted Llorente.

“I was on the fence between a couple different programs, and there is a girl in my sorority that went last spring who could not say more good things about it, and listening to her firsthand experience really sold it for me,” said Maggie Wraight ’18, who plans to study in Rome in the spring.

“I wanted an experience that was out of the ordinary and I’ve heard great things about [the pro-gram] from my friends who have gone in previous semesters,” added Maisie Rosenheimer ’18, who is going to Kenya next semester.

Another program that has seen a large increase in student interest is the Thailand program. Associate Professor of Government Ronnie Olesker saw the program as a great fit for her department and did a great deal of recruiting in her classes. “I teach international politics and Thailand is a great place to study international politics because it is relatively safe, but it still has a lot of issues going on in terms of political violence [and] political instability. There have been several coups in Thailand, and yet for all intents and purposes, if you’re a tourist there, you would feel none of that,” said Olesker.

Olesker mentioned that very few government students were going to Thailand, specifically those interested in international relations. “It’s such a fascinating place to study the theories that we’re talking about in class,” she added.

Olesker believes that students do not realize the potential of the Thailand program and she hoped that through recruitment, she would be able to increase the number of students going.

“It’s not on their radar, and I think faculty have a lot of influence in what programs students pay attention to,” she said. Olekser advertised the program in her classes as well as visiting other international relations classes and Asian studies courses.

She is also teaching a class on political violence in Thailand this semester, and a few of her students from that course plan on going in the spring. Olesker was supposed to attend the pro-gram on a faculty exchange in the spring, but for logistical reasons with the host institution she is unable to attend, but hopes to go in the future.

The average number of students studying off-campus for the past five spring semesters, including next spring, has been 171 students, with the peak at 194 in the spring of 2016 and the low in the spring of 2014 with 160 students, according to CIIS. The average number of students studying off-campus for the past four fall semesters has been about 130, with the highest being 145 in the fall of 2014 and the lowest being 120 students in the fall of 2016, according to CIIS. However, the years with the highest number of students in the spring had the lowest number in the fall and vice-versa, which evens out the number going per year. In the end, the acceptance rate for study abroad remains 90 percent, ac-cording to CIIS.

Llorente hopes that one day 100 percent of St. Lawrence could study abroad, but “at the same time, it is very important that they have all the prerequisites and the minimum grade point average.”

She understands that certain majors make it difficult for students to spend a semester off-campus. “We are here to help them. If they come to talk to us, we will try to make all the arrangements needed for them to have all the classes, if possible. But [we won’t know] if they don’t come to talk to us. I know that science students have it really hard. But we could do the research and find out that maybe they can take [those classes] abroad,” she said.