Universities encouraging study abroad to students

Her older brothers and sisters studied abroad while they were in college, so Valerie Gibbs planned to do the same when she enrolled at the University of Louisville.It wasn't until last summer, however, when she spent several weeks in Costa Rica and San Juan studying Spanish and Latin American culture, that she realized how much she was learning from the experience.
I loved it. I didn't want to come home at all,said Gibbs, a chemistry major from Lawrenceburg, Ky., who is also planning to travel to Spain and next summer.I think it should be a requirement for everyone to study abroad at least once.It opens your mind to new ideas.

Traditionally, Kentucky's private liberal-arts institutions have led the way in sending its students abroad to learn. Eighty-five percent of the students at Centre College, for instance, study overseas.But now several of Kentucky's public universities are seeing their numbers of students going overseas climb in part because those universities want to prepare their students to compete in a global world and economy.U of L saw the number of its students studying overseas climb to 597 in 2009-10, a 56 percent jump from the 241 students who went a year earlier.By 2020, U of L hopes to see that number rise to 1,500.

The goal is for our students to become global citizens,said Mordean Taylor-Archer, vice provost for Diversity and International Affairs at U of L.The goal is similar at the University of Kentucky, which has seen its number of students studying abroad growing from 369 in 2002 to 589 in the most recent school year. The university wants to see that number reach 800 by 2014.And at Western Kentucky University which has branded itself a Leading American University with International Reach the number of students studying abroad has jumped from 210 in 2005-06, to 486 in the 2009-10 school year.Those increases have come despite a overall drop nationwide. According to a report released this month by the Institute of International Education, the number of American college students studying abroad fell for the first time in 25 years during the 2008-09 school year, the most recent data available.