What awards course credit, builds your resume, provides hands-on experience and gives you the opportunity to travel the world?
Study abroad programs.
The Arizona State University Study Abroad Office coordinates 250-plus study abroad program options for all students across all continents (yes, including Antarctica) in more than 65 different countries. Some of the most popular programs are led by faculty members with groups of students, either over the summer, during a semester session or during an academic break (winter break, spring break and before/after semesters).
Each program focuses on a certain academic topic and incorporates excursions and field experiences to give students the opportunity to explore and learn about their host country. The Global Intensive Experience model connects students to experiences and cultures abroad that are integrated within credit-bearing ASU courses over a period of seven to 12 days.
Each year, faculty submit proposals for programs that integrate with the local culture and engage with current events and local experts. Here's a peek at a sampling of programs that are coming back (here's a hint: winter is coming) and a handful of brand new ones.
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Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, is one of the places you'll visit on the ASU: Cambodia and Vietnam: Countries of Historic Resilience Facing a Future of Rising Seas program.
Photo Courtesy of Peter Nguyen/Unsplash
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Explore Berlin on the Global Intensive Experience: Engage Berlin: Migration, Art and Justice program.
Photo Courtesy of ASU student Amanda Boschee
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A hippopotamus yawns in Lake Naivasha, Kenya. This lake is one of the spots students will visit on the forthcoming ASU: Kenya: The Role of Tourism and Park Management in Sustainable Community Development program.
Photo Courtesy of Julie Wolpers/Unsplash
Returning study abroad programs
ASU: Cambodia and Vietnam: Countries of Historic Resilience Facing a Future of Rising Seas
This program focuses on social, cultural, economic and political resilience and survival in the face of human and natural challenges, by experiencing a region that has witnessed centuries of human development. Students will travel through history and across geographies, including the Mekong Delta and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam, and the ruins of Angkor Wat, Cambodia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Students will witness firsthand how rising sea levels affect not only coastal cities, but the inner regions of the Mekong Delta and Cambodia, and how adaptation strategies, both new and ancient, can help solve flooding challenges.
Global Intensive Experience: Engage Berlin: Migration, Art and Justice
How do Europe and the United States respond to immigrants and refugees? How can the arts and storytelling help us understand migrant and refugee experiences? This program will engage critically in the history and contemporary experiences of migrants and refugees in Berlin. By working directly with Berlin-based NGOs, activists, policymakers and migrants themselves, students will get a firsthand account of how Germany, and Berlin in particular, handle arriving refugees.
Additionally, examine examples from various art forms, including film and the creative arts, storytelling, media and social media to help understand migration and immigrants in Germany. Comparative attention will be made with circumstances in Arizona and Germany to provide students a local/global lens and prepare them for addressing immigration through a robust, nuanced lens. Students interested in internship credit will work alongside Phoenix-area organizations and work closely with a similar Berlin organization to understand what immigration justice looks like on the ground in Arizona and how that might differ from the Berlin experience.
ASU: Game of Thrones: Global Film and Culture in Iceland, Ireland and Croatia
This program explores the film and television industries, history, culture and geography of Iceland, Ireland and Croatia through the global phenomenon of HBO's "Game of Thrones." The program features five-day stays in five major European cities — Reykjavik, Iceland; Belfast, Northern Ireland; Dublin; and Split and Dubrovnik, Croatia — and includes visits to the filming locations for Winterfell, King's Landing, Castle Black, the Wall and lands beyond, Meereen, the Eyrie, the Iron Islands and Blackwater Bay.
ASU: Japanese Language & Culture in Hiroshima
Video by Yuxing Lei/ASU Now
New study abroad programs
ASU: The Haunting of England: Ghost Stories and the Seduction of Fear
On this program, students will research how a culture develops its own horror mythos from beautiful but mysterious castles, manors and other supernatural sites. Through the study of ghost stories in literature, film and oral tradition in England and Scotland, students will examine the relationship between these stories and some of the actual locations where the stories originated. They will also examine, through their own personal experiences, what attracts us to the psychology of fear, comparing the literary involvement to the physical sensations in real life.
ASU: Kenya: The Role of Tourism and Park Management in Sustainable Community Development
This program blends together all that the country of Kenya has to offer, from the great migration through its Serengeti Plain to its white sand beaches along the Indian Ocean. Students will visit five national parks all teeming with wildlife, including the world’s last two remaining northern white rhinos, and stay at a conservation center on the banks of Lake Naivasha where they may see hippos at night roaming the grounds.
Through the lens of sustainable tourism and park management, students will learn how they can play a part in solutions to pressing sustainability issues. They will learn from exemplary global nonprofits with bases in Kenya and receive lectures from university professors at Kenyatta University, officials from Kenyan Wildlife Services and Maasai safari guides.
Learn about these programs (and more), meet the faculty leading the programs and chat with Study Abroad Office staff at these upcoming events:
Polytechnic: Monday, Oct. 7, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Backus Mall
Downtown Phoenix: Thursday, Oct. 10, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Taylor Mall
If you’re on the Tempe campus, catch an in-person Study Abroad 101 session Tuesdays from 1-2 p.m. in Interdisciplinary B building, room 255. If you're an online student, we’ve got you covered on Wednesday afternoons.
Top photo: Aerial view of Dubrovnik, Croatia, one of the many cities where "Game of Thrones" was filmed. Photo by Spencer Davis/Unsplash
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