Increasing Number of Students Ready to Branch Out

For UMass Lowell sophomore Jennifer Yu, the pyramids are a lot closer this semester than the pages of a textbook.

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While her fellow sophomores will spend their winters in ski hats and sweaters, looking out classroom windows across the frozen Merrimack, Jennifer Yu will be studying under palm trees, walking between classes along the banks of the Nile.

Jennifer, a student in the College of Management and winner of a Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State, is living out a dream this semester — swimming in the Red Sea, riding horses across the Giza Desert to the base of the pyramids, ingesting a culture light-years away from the mills and museums of Lowell.

A sophomore this fall at the American University in Cairo, she is one of a small but growing number: 15 students last year, 31 this year, somewhere around 45 next year will come or go from the University as members of study-abroad programs to Thailand, South Korea, Egypt, Spain, France, Germany, even on shipboard between ports. It’s a trend, says Kristen Rhyner, that has been gaining ground slowly for some time.

“I see some momentum behind this,” say Rhyner, who serves as the Study Abroad campus coordinator at the University’s Centers for Learning. “There’s more support all the time, and more interest. And most student-aid money can be applied to it. The students are getting more knowledgeable. It used to be rare to get inquiries about travel abroad. Now I might hear from four or five students in a day.”

Most of last year’s 31 study-abroad students — a number that includes both incoming and outgoing traffic — did their traveling under the auspices of programs linked to other universities (such as UMass Amherst, or the State University of New York), or private programs. But that may be changing, Rhyner says. The Transformation Team on International Exchange and Collaboration for UMass Lowell, chaired by Prof. Chris Tilly and Dr. Chandrika Sharma, have proposed the establishment of an International Programs Office. The team’s belief is that once the structure is in place for a study-abroad program, the collaborations that will follow will create opportunities of their own.

“These experiences are a vital benefit for our students.” Rhyner says. “It’s just a matter of time, I hope. The interest is there, the initiative is there, now we just have to make it happen.”