Author: Leah Glowacki
The importance of multiculturalism at Occidental College is evidenced by an array of cultural organizations, classes in diversity and events focused on embracing difference. Its impact is affirmed by the popularity of Occidental’s Study Abroad Program. Whether students are interested in biology, performing arts, international relations or mathematics, studying abroad is an opportunity to experience foreign culture and diversity firsthand. Study abroad brings to life the concepts of multiculturalism that are at the heart of an Occidental education.
For Oxy students, studying abroad has not always been a possibility. According to the International Programming Office (IPO), 14 years ago only 34 students were able to study abroad during a given semester. Over the years, the program has grown tremendously and currently sends an average of 200 students abroad per semester. In the past two years, 100 percent of qualified and interested students have been able to participate in an international program.
For many high school seniors, study abroad is an important consideration when selecting and applying to colleges.
“I liked that they had such a broad study abroad program,” Kliah Soto Leytan (first year) said of Occidental. Applicants view undergraduate study as more than four additional years of education – it has become the opportunity for students to independently experience what lies beyond the borders of the U.S.A.
Though it is unnecessary for first-year students to have specific plans for studying abroad, it is important that if they are interested, they start their research early. Occidental offers over 50 unique study abroad programs in countries across the world.
The initial process of applying to these diverse programs is universal. Susan Popko, Director of the IPO, said that the first step for students is to meet with their academic advisors, who can help them understand the role of studying abroad in their personal academic experience.
Popko also suggests that interested students utilize the IPO resource library, which contains, among other tools, returning students’ evaluations, a large collection of guidebooks and a welcoming faculty eager to answer students’ questions.
“Nothing makes us happier than to see people sprawled out . . . using resources,” Popko said.
Beyond the application process, study abroad experiences are drastically dissimilar. The nature and location of student programs are basic distinguishers. More important, though, are students’ unique realizations, transformations and new understandings of the world gained during and after their experience studying abroad.
The IPO office is an indispensable resource for students with logistical questions about studying abroad. Without doubt, IPO staff will suggest that to capitalize on Oxy’s opportunities, students should participate in an international program; but only those who have experienced the process can justly describe its significance.
From last February to May, a group of Oxy students passionate about biology studied and conducted fieldwork in Costa Rica. Among these students was biology major Tyler Stuart (senior), who said that studying abroad is something “you don’t want to miss.”
Stuart’s was an island program, one of three program models offered at Oxy. Island models, according to the IPO’s Off-Campus Study Guide, offer specialized curriculum of courses designed for students on the program. These programs, which are often thematic, focusing on topics such as gender studies, art history – or in this case tropical ecology – provide the opportunity for students to study in non-English speaking countries where it would otherwise be difficult for them to take classes.
Other program models offered include direct enrollment, in which Oxy students study at universities alongside host country students, and hybrid programs, which combine elements of island and direct enrollment models. In these programs, students take some integrated university courses and some courses that are taught only for students on the program.
Stuart spent one month with a host family, one month traveling up and down Costa Rica’s East coast, and two months at a biological station in Ponte Verde. This mobility was his favorite aspect about the program. “I wasn’t going to the same classes in the same school everyday. We traveled around quite a bit,” Stuart said.
One challenge Stuart faced upon arrival to Costa Rica was communicating in Spanish everywhere he went. Stuart said that ultimately strained communication became comfortable conversation and that he gained a greater proficiency in the Spanish language.
According to the Off-Campus Study Guide, foreign language acquisition is known to be more probable for students participating in direct enrollment and hybrid programs, who take classes taught in foreign languages and socialize with students who speak them.
Stuart’s hesitancy to pinpoint the single most important thing he learned on the trip proved the enormity of his experience. One thing that Stuart said does stick out in his mind is something a program facilitator said; “You have to think of things for the planet and the animals around here. People have to stop doing things for the humans because it will work out for the humans, but the humans are destroying everything else.”
Whether they are interested in an island, direct enrollment, or hybrid program, Stuart’s advice to students is simply to “do it.” If a student chooses otherwise, he said, “They would have no idea what they were missing.”
For ECLS major Allison Beresford (senior), the study abroad process resulted in greater independence. Beresford said that as a first-year student, her sights were already set on Hungary. She hoped to participate in a non-Oxy program focused on language and literature.
The first step of her journey to Hungary was doing independent research. “If you want to do a non-Oxy program, you need to do a lot of research,” she said. During her first year at Oxy, Beresford met with faculty in the IPO to discuss her plans and goals. She suggested that first-year students seek advice there first.
Traveling to Hungary meant departing from the Oxy safety bubble. “I was the only [Occidental student] on the program, which would have been difficult for a lot of other students,” Beresford said. But, in the absence of familiarity, Beresford said she developed new relationships with her Hungarian roommates. Initial solidarity “turned out to be a good experience,” she said.
For Beresford, engaging in Hungarian commerce illuminated the most striking difference between American and Hungarian culture.
“They don’t have the same sense of customer service that we have in the states. They don’t smile – they are just there to do their work,” she said.
As daunting as some societal differences were, for Beresford foreign culture proved fascinating. Beresford remembered with a smile dancing with a gypsy to traditional music in Transylvania. “It was such an awesome experience overall being in a different culture,” she said.
Establishing a home for herself in Hungary delivered the biggest rewards for Beresford.
“You have to do everything for yourself, and I learned that I can do that. I am much more mature and I know how I can live on my own,” she said.
Beresford is currently pursuing a Fulbright scholarship and plans to return to Hungary next year.
In classrooms, students learn about the world’s diverse cultures. They read about multiculturalism, but, as Diplomacy and World Affairs major Katherine Lonsdorf (senior) learned during the year she spent in Amman, Jordan, “wearing full-covering clothing all year, sleeping in the desert [and] experiencing some of the dirtiest conditions” provided the deep understanding of a diverse world that textbooks can only describe.
Lonsdorf said that the most important lesson she’ll take away from her experience is “realizing how many different ways there are to live in the world and
that each way has its own positives and negatives.”
Lonsdorf found the treatment of women in Jordan to be a negative societal reality.
“I’ve never been more thankful to be a woman here in America before,” she said.
The disparities between women’s lifestyles in America and Jordan are best illustrated by Lonsdorf’s homecoming.
“I was all kinds of messed up when I got back,” she said. “I couldn’t make eye contact with men I didn’t know, and I unconsciously didn’t wear skirts, shorts, or tank tops in public for a while. I still feel really out of place.” However, Lonsdorf also said that some women in Jordan don’t tolerate inferiority.
“There are a lot of progressive, strong, feminist women out there too and a lot of families that support their daughters,” she said.
Lonsdorf described her struggle as a woman in Jordan as the type of challenge she was looking for. She said that students thinking about studying abroad should also challenge themselves.
“Don’t be afraid to pick a place you’ve never been or never even heard of. Who knows when you’ll ever have an opportunity to go there again? Once you get there, be open-minded, and make sure you push your comfort zone as much as you can.”
Based on her experience, Lonsdorf also advised students to embrace the uncomfortable: “Remember that you are in another culture and you’re supposed to feel out of place; that makes it even more rewarding when somewhere that was once so foreign to you suddenly feels like home.” For Lonsdorf, this transformative experience and the awareness it generates are what our textbooks’ and teachers’ words cannot recreate.
Lonsdorf said she would change little about her experience.
“I will be reflecting on it for the rest of my life,” she said.
During the 2008 spring semester, Diplomacy and World Affairs major Maureen Mae Ditol (senior) experienced the culture of Khon Kaen, Thailand. According to Ditol, learning about globalization and development in this foreign setting provided an opportunity to reflect on what she had learned and experienced at Oxy. Ditol said that studying abroad proved the purpose of her education.
As a student in Thailand, Ditol said that rather than reading historical texts and memorizing theories about globalization and land development, she interacted with families in affected communities.
“I learned about trade economics, but my understanding of it magnified when I met families who lost their farms because they could not compete with imported goods,” she said. Ditol said that both students and community members benefited from this interaction by an exchange of experiences, academic ideas, and information.
“We helped each other, rather than the ‘one-way’ sharing of information in traditional classrooms.”
Ditol said that one of the defining moments of her experience occurred during a home stay. The family she lived with scavenged city landfills for sustenance. To appreciate their dire situation, Ditol went to work at the landfills.
“We spent hours raking through piles of old shoes, toys, food, bottles, syringes and plastic containers,” she said. Standing on mountains of trash and realizing that her host family “may smell, see, touch and live,” next to her own trash changed Ditol’s consumption patterns. “It made me realize that what seems like an individual action of throwing something away has consequences on everyone in a community.”
For Ditol, experiencing and interacting with the realities of textbook theories and examples facilitated a greater appreciation of education.
“There are times when I am working on an assignment in the classroom, but that’s all it is – an assignment. When I went abroad, I started to really understand the purpose of certain assignments. I have noticed that since I have been back on campus, I am more focused because I know why I am learning something,” Ditol said.
The best advice Ditol offers to interested students is to read returnees’ evaluations of their experience, which are available in the IPO, and to contact them.”I really learned a lot by talking to the students who did the program before me,” she said. She said it is also important for students to find out if they need to take specific classes for the program they are interested in.
Ditol was also eager to become more than just a student.
“I wanted to do my own research rather than just take the author’s word for it.” She encourages her peers to study abroad to possibly discover a purpose in their education.
Biology major Chelsea Brown (senior) spent the 2008 spring semester studying at James Cook University, Australia’s leading tropical research institution. Living in Australia provided an incredible connection to abundant wildlife and world-renowned educational establishments.
With the abroad experience so fresh in her mind, Brown was unable to verbalize specific life lessons or experiences she gained in Australia. Her description of returning to the United States though, was indicative of the powerful impact that Australian wildlife had on Brown’s travels.
“I felt overwhelmed at how crowded it is here in Los Angeles. It felt odd to not have cockatoos and kangaroos everywhere you looked,” Brown said.
Interacting with wildlife, beyond being a unique cultural opportunity, also resulted in Brown’s appreciation of the American natural world. In Australia, wallabies and kangaroos, that were “no big deal” to Aussies, fascinated Brown. She quickly learned that her fascination by these creatures was Aussies’ fascination by squirrels.
“I discovered that my Australian friends all thought squirrels were really cool and they were jealous that I got to see them every day back home!” Brown said. “I never would have thought of squirrels as anything cool, but I guess if you don’t have them around you all the time, they would be!”
The abundance of exotic wildlife was as welcome a change as the absence of a domineering metropolis.
“What I love about Australia is that the cities are spaced out. So you can drive for only 45 minutes, to be surrounded by nature,” Brown said. “You can’t do that in LA and it made me feel trapped.”
Brown said that with such a huge selection of programs to choose from, first-year students need to think about what they are passionate about and the kind of experience they want to have abroad. For her, the decision to participate in a direct enrollment program focused on academics was rewarding.
“As someone who wants to be a marine biologist, studying at James Cook University [which is ranked as the top marine biology school in the world], was an incredibly valuable experience for me. I studied under professors who were doing groundbreaking research and established networks that will help me in my future career.”
Brown was also quick to point out that as beneficial as she found her experience at an Australian university, it may not have delivered the same results for a person more interested in multiculturalism.
“My study abroad experience would be nothing like the one you would get from studying abroad in a third world country [. . .] that type of experience would be perhaps less academically oriented, but it would increase your social understanding and awareness in unbelievable ways.”
Last spring, Brown vacated blurred lights and bustling sidewalks. In a small Australian town, she embraced wildlife, open space and fresh air. For Brown, the quality of her education at James Cook University, above all, made the experience priceless.
Many individuals return to Occidental after studying abroad more aware and appreciative of the implications of multiculturalism. The diversity of the five experiences described here is indicative of the breadth of opportunities that Oxy’s study abroad program offers.
Each semester, in every region of the globe, Occidental students assimilate into foreign societies. They learn from challenge, interaction and immersion. Their stories contain the best guidance for students interested in studying abr
oad. The consensus of the five experiences highlighted here is that all Oxy students should burst the bubble and discover how the world beyond its shiny surface can impact their lives.
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