To encourage students to study abroad during their undergraduate experience at Baldwin Wallace University, the Center for Global Exploration has partnered with the French Club and the Asian Student Alliance to showcase the different opportunities available to students.
Gabriela Rolim Da Silva Figuero, a graduate intern at the Center for Global Exploration, said the collaborations are about getting information out to students and helping them understand that it is doable for most BW students.
“Sometimes when you reach out on Jacket Connect, people don’t have access to the information [they want],” Rolim Da Silva Figuero said.
“So when we go to the clubs, we can organise the kind of presentation that would help them and help us promote studying abroad.”
The French Club hosted an information session with the department on 7 November, specifically about opportunities in France. Halle Moder, President of the French Club, is a double major in French and Psychology. She studied abroad over the summer on a five-week French language and culture immersion programme.
The programme was in Paris with the Mission Interuniversitaire de Coordination des Eschanges Franco-Américans, a fully immersive programme that places students in Parisian universities based on their interests. Moder said a unique challenge with MICEFA was that she had to take a proficiency test because her classes were in French, unlike most study abroad options that offer classes in English.
This fall, Moder reached out to the Center of Global Exploration to set up an information session to give students thinking about studying abroad in France a chance to learn more about the opportunity.
“I think the idea of studying abroad can be a little overwhelming, especially if you don’t feel like you have a starting point,” Moder said. “So if you’re going to one of these clubs, you might have a particular interest in where you want to study, so that at least narrows it down a little bit.”
The Centre for Global Exploration also partnered with the Asian Student Alliance club to host an information session about studying abroad in Asia on 13 November.
Elanna Su, a second-year history student and president of ASA, said that when Rolim Da Silva Figuero contacted her about hosting an information session, she immediately decided that it would be a good idea to help anyone who might be interested in learning more about studying abroad in Asia. “I’m also interested in studying abroad, so I want to learn more about the different options,” Su said. “I also think this is a good way for students to see another way to interact with Asian culture.”
Su also said that one of her goals for the event was to show students that studying abroad is accessible. She also wanted ASA to be “open to anyone who wants to learn more about Asian culture”.
Rolim Da Silva Figuero said she wanted to continue to work with clubs and reach out to as many students as possible because studying abroad is a different way to grow and learn, both in and out of the classroom.
“Sometimes people are so American-centric that they don’t think about what’s going on outside, and going abroad gives you a different perspective on life,” Rolim Da Silva Figuero said. “And I think when you come back to your home country, which happened to me a long time ago when I first studied abroad, you come back a different person.”
