Natural disaster and National conflict disrupting study-abroad programs

Ashley Mar, a 20-year-old student from the University of California, Santa Barbara, ducked under her desk in a laboratory at Tohoku University in Sendai, about 80 miles west of the epicenter of the earthquake that struck Japan on March 11.She left unharmed minutes later, wearing a helmet provided by the school, and saw a nearby chemistry building on fire. While she has been ordered home by her university, the biology student said she is evacuating with reluctance.

Leaving Japan destroys most everything that I've developed in these past months,Mar said in a telephone interview from Tokyo.I really want to stay here.U.S. colleges are scrambling to assure the safety of their students on study-abroad programs in the wake of the Japanese earthquake and revolutions and violence in the Middle East. About 260,000 students studied abroad in the 2008-09 school year, up 81 percent in a decade, according to the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit group in New York.Study abroad in Sweden.The State Department's Wednesday travel warning that U.S. citizens should consider departing Japan has prompted colleges, including the University of California system and the University of Kansas, to recall students. Stanford University canceled the Bing Overseas Studies Program in Kyoto, scheduled to begin March 30, according to its website, citing the uncertainty about Japan's short-term recovery and the "unknown future impacts on the country's infrastructure.

Middlebury College, in Middlebury, Vt., for the first time in its 62-year history of running international study courses, canceled a program because of political upheaval, suspending classes in Alexandria, Egypt, in January.Because more students are going abroad to different places, there's a greater likelihood that if something does happen, that American study-abroad students might be nearby,said Richard Gaulton, director of the study abroad program at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.International study, sponsored by U.S. colleges or through partnerships with foreign universities, has never been more popular, said Peggy Blumenthal, who oversees the research division at the Institute of International Education.While Europe remains the most common study-abroad destination, accounting for 55 percent of students in the 2008-09 school year, the share going to Asia has almost doubled to 11 percent from nine years earlier, according to the institute. About 5,800 American students took courses in Japan and 1,780 in Egypt.Students can also get a lot of exposure while studying in such universities and different course Economics and Management Science,Master of Landscape Architecture and Social Sciences.

Keith Swafford, 21, a student at the University of Kansas, was in the middle of his junior year in Japan when his university ordered him to evacuate after the State Department's travel warning.
To have it cut short in half is just shattering,Swafford said by phone from Nara, near Kyoto.Robert B. Mulry, a 19-year-old sophomore at Grinnell College, abandoned his plans to spend a semester studying Arabic at the American University in Cairo three days after protests began in Egypt.I didn't want to waste my study-abroad experience getting helicoptered out, Mulry said in a telephone interview from the liberal-arts college in Grinnell, Iowa.Searching for a more stable experience,he plans to head to Amsterdam in August to focus on Arab immigration issues, Mulry said.Chase Renick, 23, a student at Dartmouth, wanted to study Arabic in a country where few spoke English. He found a language school in Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama Bin Laden. The State Department website warns that Yemen is a high security threat level because of terrorist activities and civil unrest.While his mother, Gigi Renick, wasn't happy with his choice, she felt more comfortable after the school responded within two days to her e-mail with 52 questions about safety and security. Her son completed a three-month language course in September.I just don't think you can stop a determined 21-year-old from living out their life and following their dreams, even if it takes them to Yemen,she said.