With the reduction of COVID-19 restrictions, the 2022-23 school year marks a re-expansion of offerings for Rollins’ Office of International Programs.
This year, there are several new opportunities being offered. This includes programs in Tunisia, Austria, England, Brazil, and Trinidad and Tobago.
“Only about 10 percent of U.S. college students study abroad nationally… so study abroad really can set you apart,” said Dr. Giselda Beaudin, director of Global Initiatives.
“There’s pretty good research now that shows that study abroad is a high-impact practice, which means that it tends to be correlated with students graduating on-time,” she added.
According to Sofia Baker (’26), a participant in the Costa Rica freshman field study, “Going to Costa Rica was beyond life-changing and really set me on the right path for my career.”
“I learned so much about the culture, environment, and society,” added Noah Denmark (’26), who also went on the field study.
Rollins study abroad opportunities have been crafted in order to fit the needs of its students. In forming semester-long programs, student and faculty input are considered as part of a lengthy review process, which is repeated approximately every five years. Short term programs, such as Intersession and spring break programs, are led by faculty and, therefore, change every year. Through these processes, students are presented with both long-established and new programs geared towards their different fields of study.
According to Beaudin, popular programs of the past have featured destinations such as Spain, England, Japan, Italy, Australia, and New Zealand. Though many students choose to study abroad when they are sophomores and upperclassmen, students can take part during any of their four years at Rollins.
“We have a lot of funding for scholarships and we really work hard to try to make sure that if you want to go abroad that finances are not a barrier,” said Beaudin.
Following the temporary shutdown of study abroad during COVID-19, programs have slowly returned to normal; the majority of offerings have relaunched.
While the semester programs only had one participant in the 2020-21 academic year, they had 67 participants in the 2021-22 year according to statistics provided by Beaudin. The numbers are also climbing for short-term programs, which experienced a jump from 4 participants in the 2020-21 year to 184 participants in the 2021-22 year. Students interested in learning more about study abroad opportunities are encouraged to meet with a Study Abroad Advisor.
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