On Return from Abroad, Students Seek Support

CORRECTION: The print version of this article mentions a Mellon Foundation grant of $5.5 million. This is an error; the grant’s actual amount was $700,000

Over half of the student body studies abroad, as the Connecticut College website confirms. There are a large amount of resources available to encourage and support students going abroad, but how robust are the College’s efforts in helping students transition back to life at Conn? Perception of the efficacy of the College’s support systems varies depending on the position and affiliation of those consulted.

Among the College’s efforts to improve re-entry comes the opening of the Walter Commons for Global Study and Engagement. The Commons marks more than a decade of planning and programming among faculty and administration, and with it comes a plethora of changes to Conn’s study abroad program and a renewed commitment to global engagement at the College. “The study away landscape has changed really dramatically in the last ten, fifteen years,” explained Amy Dooling, Associate Dean of Global Initiatives. Dooling, who has been a member of Conn’s faculty since 1998, added that “there’s been a tremendous commercialization of study away in the past decade or so.” As a result, the Office of Study Away and the Office of Global Initiatives are working to determine how best to advise students on how they should approach their semester abroad. In order to do this, faculty involved have developed a 25-minute survey which was released to students for the first time this year. This, along with other data collected by the College’s Office of Institutional Research and Planning, is being used to further improve the study abroad structure at Conn. Since 2013, the College has benefited from a $700,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support initiatives in global education, one of which is study away. Additionally, a 2016 grant of $800,000 that the College received from Endeavor foundation is devoted, in part, to study away.

Operating in conjunction with several study away options at Conn, the Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts (CISLA) provides selected students with the chance to complete an internship in a country of their choice. Cara Masullo, the internship and publications assistant for CISLA, said that the faculty have been working to address the transition back from abroad more directly and help students apply their research to their future careers. In fact, the Office of Career and Professional Development recently held a career session targeted toward juniors who have returned from abroad. According to Masullo, “the main focus was on helping students to translate their experience abroad to a potential employer.” However, Sarah Potter ’19, who studied abroad this past semester in Edinburgh, Scotland, stated that “the career parts of [the meeting were] helpful… such as reminding [us] how to improve our cover letters and resumes… but the actual [incorporating of experiences] abroad on [a] resume and cover letter” was not as helpful.

Nonetheless, there are other opportunities for students to process their experience abroad. Among members of CISLA, for example, seniors take a seminar and work on senior integrative projects (SIP). While it seems that CISLA already offers students more opportunities to combine their experiences abroad with their life at Conn, Masullo said faculty are creating a “re-entering program [that will be] more robust and available to [non-CISLA] students going abroad.”

Masullo believes it “would be great if we could do a seminar that was required for students.” However, incorporating a new seminar can be challenging and could hinder the efforts of Director of CISLA Marc Forster and others in the administration who are working to modify curriculum requirements to allow more students to study abroad.

Potter agrees that informal events seem more reasonable for now. She suggested that it would be most helpful if these events focused on a specific theme or department. At the end of her interview, Masullo stated that Conn “has such a strong study abroad program,” but is “lacking in ways to help students after [the fact].”

While not all programs and departments on campus offer re-entry support,  CISLA’s senior seminar is not the only course-based support option for students returning from abroad. The Anthropology Department, for example, offers the transition course “Anthropologist Abroad,” which is open to all students, despite being focused primarily on anthropology. Potter described this class as allowing her to discuss her abroad experiences “through an anthropological lense” with other anthropology students, all of whom have studied in different countries. Caroline Longacre ’19, who studied abroad this past fall in Bhutan, also spoke of how the “Anthropologist Abroad” course allows her to speak to other students about their study abroad experiences in an intimate setting. When asked if she would like Conn’s administration to be more actively involved in helping students returning from study away adjust, Longacre said no. She emphasized that the class’s small size and the similarity of its participants’ experiences make it more helpful than administrative meetings would have been. Though Longacre approves of the Anthropology Department’s current model, the College aims to supplement these more specialized courses with a more general course for students not in CISLA or the Anthropology Department.

Another key problem students encounter upon returning from abroad is housing. Longacre spoke of how she did not receive a housing assignment until the first day of the Spring 2018 semester. It was not until after she sat in the Residential Education and Living Office, refusing to leave until they gave her a room, that she received an assignment.

“It was kind of ridiculous,” Longacre said, speaking of how “unpredictable” and “unhelpful” REAL was in finding her housing. To verify this story, the Voice reached out to Kathy Longo, administrative assistant and housing coordinator for REAL, who said that “the REAL office cannot comment on an individual student’s housing.”

Though Longo noted that “all students returning to the College in the Spring use their lottery number to select an assignment on Jan. 4,” Potter also described the housing situation as the most difficult obstacle in the transition process. She was able to find a room in Abbey House, where she has access to a kitchen, but many of her friends were not as lucky. Potter explained that “it’s hard for a lot of people to return to living in a dorm after living in an apartment, [and] not having a kitchen.”

Following national and international trends, the nature of study abroad at Conn is changing. As the College evaluates and updates its requirements and programming, it will continue to face challenges in making the study abroad experience easier. Ultimately, the purpose of study abroad is to experience a new, uncomfortable, and challenging environment.

“I am glad I had academic preparation,” Longacre said of the experience, “[but] prepare to be unprepared.”