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Voyages of self-discovery

Stephanie Siek harbors a fierce addiction to passports, planes and intriguing places.

Rick Fatica

A Turkish performance group participates in the annual International Street Fair.

“Once you start traveling abroad, you don’t want to stop,” says Siek, a journalism major who spent fall quarter at Ohio University’s Ohio-Leipzig European Center in Germany.

“Being in an unfamiliar environment really makes you think about who you truly are, away from all the cultural, familial and social factors that influence you at home.”

The Leipzig center was developed two years ago through the University’s outreach efforts in Germany. As many as 50 Ohio University students can spend a quarter fulfilling general education requirements in classes taught by Athens campus faculty and English-speaking professors at the University of Leipzig.

“There’s no replacement for learning about a country’s culture than spending time with its people, eating its food, following — or breaking — its rules and seeing its hardships and triumphs,” says Siek, who plans to return to Europe next year. “You just can’t replicate that experience.”

Connie Perdreau hears similar comments from students whose study abroad experiences have ranged from teaching in Swaziland to painting in Bali.

“So many students have said it is a life-changing experience for them,” says Perdreau, director of the University’s Education Abroad Program. “We’ve been sending students abroad since the late 1960s, and we’ve found that not only does it expose them to another culture, but they become instantly more attractive to potential employers. ”

Last school year, more than 600 OU students earned academic credit overseas, with about half of them receiving some financial assistance. Although the percentage of Ohio University students who study abroad is higher than the national average, administrators want to double the total by 2004.

Students can choose from more than 50 programs encompassing nearly every major, and more options are added every year.

For example, the campus now is working to become the first American university to establish formal ties with institutions in Croatia. And in April, the College of Business announced plans to establish a center for economics and business education at the University of Pecs in Hungary. That pact builds on a relationship that has existed since 1991, when the two universities established a faculty exchange program.

Another initiative of the early 1990s, the University’s Institute for International Journalism headed by Terry Anderson, provides students training in newsrooms from Ireland to Israel. Equally intriguing offerings take students to Rome to study archaeology, to Paris and London to immerse themselves in the fashion industry and to the Bahamas to research tropical ecology.

Ann Arbor Miller

Athens resident Martha Gonzales brings a Spanish flair to an international music and dance extravaganza on campus earlier this year.

Rather than focusing mainly on language proficiency, as most study abroad programs did in the past, today’s options impart diverse professional and cultural lessons. For instance, French majors traditionally have had opportunities to study in France, but only recently have Ohio University theater majors traveled to England to learn about British drama.

"As these programs expand, so do the opportunities for students to encounter other possibilities, other ways of living,” says College of Arts and Sciences Dean Leslie Flemming, who spent time studying abroad as an undergraduate, including three weeks picking potatoes at a work camp in Poland. “‘Who am I? What are my skills? What do I believe spiritually? What do I think of my family?’ are all questions that students traditionally ask themselves during their college years. Education abroad gives students new options to think about.”

Some students are gaining more than academic credit as a result of their travels. Assistant Professor of Behavioral Ecology Molly Morris regularly takes undergraduates to rural areas of Mexico to collect specimens for research the students conduct on fish mating behavior. Faculty also are encouraged to engage in research and teach at universities overseas. When Professor of Physics and Astronomy Kenneth Hicks spent three months in 1999 teaching at Chubu University in Japan, he gained an appreciation for the transition international students face when they come to the States.

“As professors, I’m not sure we always understand what our international students go through to get used to a different culture,” says Hicks, one of 27 visiting professors from Ohio University to teach at Chubu.