With over 400 different study abroad programs offered at the University, any student with any major has the chance to study abroad.
Academic Programs Abroad Director Harald Leder said the University offers several types of programs for students, such as international exchange, national exchange, field trips, summer abroad programs and spring break and fall break trips. These trips range from a week to a full academic year, depending on the program and length of time student plans to stay. Leder said the longer students stay, the more affordable the trip is.
“If you go for a summer program for example, usually you cannot get your TOPS for it,” Leder said. “There are very few scholarships that you can apply for, and the support is more limited. If you wanted to go for a semester or year, your TOPS applies, any kind of other financial aid you have applies, and you can also apply for a lot more scholarships.”
Many of the senior colleges are increasing their funds for study abroad scholarships because of the importance of these programs, Leder said. The University offers a LSU Study Abroad scholarship that works as an ambassador program. Students help incoming international students with adjusting at the University, and students are given points for the effort they put in. Leder said these points are translated into scholarship money for students to study abroad.
University alumna Weston Twardowski said his year-long study abroad experience at the University of Nottingham in England gave him a fresh perspective of his own community, as well as the opportunity to meet different people and develop friendships. Now a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, Twardowski said he gained skills from studying abroad that have helped him with adapting in any environment and engaging with people from different backgrounds.
“It really shapes the way you think in highly productive ways,” Twardowski said. “It makes you more cognitive of the way the world at large works, it challenges your thinking in really productive ways, and the ability to spend time in a different culture and be aware of that as well as live in a different culture.”
Leder said studying abroad helps with graduate school applications as well as resumes and gives students a multicultural experience sought after by employers.
“It’s a very smart investment in their own future,” Leder said. “The usual answer is students should study abroad because it broadens their horizon. They learn something new about different cultures or it can enhance their skills in another language. That is all true, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that they also acquire soft skills overseas that basically every employer in the United States is looking for — flexibility, somebody that’s willing to do something that’s extra-curricular or that is not inside what everybody has to do.”
English junior Brittany Marshall said she learned new things culturally and educationally while studying abroad in Argentina for five weeks, but most of it was outside the classroom. Marshall said her host home, as well as the different museums, gave her a different perspective of the new culture, and it was her time spent with her hosts that helped her learn to be more fluent than a class.
“[Educationally], a lot of the learning that happened was through my own kind of self-teach thing,” Marshall said.