CCSC, ESC Examine Study Abroad Programs

Reacting to the call for better study abroad programs, both the Columbia College Student Council and the Engineering School Council are taking action.

A new think tank organized earlier this month by CCSC sophomore class Vice President Sue Yang and involving several council members focuses on programs for Columbia College students, whereas ESC is considering organizing a panel of students from the School of Engineering and Applied Science who have studied abroad. The two councils decided to pursue disparate efforts to improve study abroad for their constituents after a discussion revealed differing needs.

“Most of the time we say we want it [study abroad] to improve but we don’t have the capacity to improve because we don’t have any explicit comparisons we can use,” Yang said after explaining that the issue is brought to the administration every year without any progress.

The CCSC think tank is researching both Columbia’s study abroad options and study abroad programs at peer universities, including the Ivy League universities, Duke University, Boston University, and Stanford University. After gathering enough details such as program requirements, student eligibility, and financial costs of programs, the think tank will write a report of where Columbia stands in comparison to other institutions. The report, which Yang hopes will be completed by mid-April, will also include both short and long term recommendations.

ESC is also trying to address the problems of study abroad for SEAS students, which, according to Sam Wilner, SEAS ’09 and ESC academic affairs representative, stems mostly from the need to plan early. “A lot of SEAS students show interest. They’ll have that initial meeting [with the study abroad office], and then they never come back. They basically get overwhelmed,” Wilner said.

Kathleen McDermott, assistant vice president of Global Programs, said that another difficulty results from the lack of a language requirement for SEAS students. Because of this, she said, many engineering students are limited to studying in English-speaking countries.

Morton Friedman, vice dean of SEAS, has expressed a preference that students study abroad at a school with an engineering curriculum similar to that of Columbia, according to Wilner. The ideal is to find programs offering courses that SEAS will accept as credit for engineering courses.

Columbia belongs to a committee called Ivy Plus on Study Abroad, which includes all the Ivies, Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago, and allows the member schools to discuss their policies and programs.

“While there are specific institutional differences between schools that dictates certain policies, the practices among these peers are similar in that we all have an approved list of study abroad programs vetted by a faculty committee,” McDermott said.

CCSC’s initiative also aims to enhance transparency in the financial obligations of students studying abroad and the ways in which these programs are chosen. This past January, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo subpoenaed the study abroad offices of 15 schools, including Columbia, due to allegations that study abroad offices receive benefits from certain programs for putting them on their preferred list of programs.

McDermott has encouraged transparency and stated that all financial and procedural processes are published on the Web site of the Office of Global Programs. “We would very much like to both discuss and read the report from the student think tank,” she said. “Student feedback is extremely important to us, which is why we have a mandatory program evaluation that all students must complete when they return from studying abroad, as well as having a robust peer-mentor program.”

ivy.chen@columbiaspectator.com.