St. Lawrence broadens its study-abroad options

CANTON — St. Lawrence University students will have four more options to choose from when they study abroad this fall.

Students may now study in the Czech Republic, Italy, Japan and New Zealand. A fifth program, in Thailand, was also formally adopted recently after a yearlong pilot period.

"We believe it's a really crucial part of the curriculum and part of the experience of an undergraduate to have," said Assistant Dean of International Studies Karl K. Schonberg. "I think the student interest will continue to increase."

About half of the university's population of 2,300 students choose to study abroad, according to a university news release.

The university already has 15 options for students to study abroad for a semester or a year, as well as several monthlong programs over the summer. Students can travel to China, Australia, Kenya and Trinidad and Tobago, among others, to study instead of staying in Canton the whole time they are undergraduates.

Most of the new additions came about because of student interest, according to Mr. Schonberg. The programs in Japan and Thailand partially came about through faculty connections as a result of a grant to build the university's Asian studies program, he said.

"We need to make sure that options are available that students will be interested in; where do they want to go, what do they want to learn while they're there?" Mr. Schonberg said. "We want to be flexible enough so we can offer students a lot of different options. We want to be flexible enough to acknowledge it may not be possible for every student and we don't want to require it."

Some colleges, beginning in 2007 at Goucher College in Baltimore, have been mandating that students study abroad as a requirement for graduation.

Most of the programs at St. Lawrence are in a partnership with host universities or occasionally in a coalition with other American universities. In a few instances, SLU owns and operates classrooms in the host country, though that is not the case with any of the recent additions. It does not affect how students enroll.

"We know that there are more and more students coming here who, every year, they are increasingly saying studying off campus is something they want to do while they're here," Mr. Schonberg said. "The kind of education we want to offer has to involve intercultural learning and learning beyond the student's culture of origin."