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2007-2008 was a banner year for the Education Abroad Program (EAP) at UC Santa Barbara. While we have led the universitywide program in per capita student enrollment for the past several years, we have always trailed UC Berkeley in absolute numbers. This year, with 909 students studying abroad through EAP, the campus passed Berkeley by a wide margin and led the University in EAP numbers.
This was also the year the systemwide program sent the largest number of students abroad in its 45-year history, over 4,500 from the nine undergraduate campuses. The long-awaited Joint Ad Hoc Report on International Education, undertaken at the behest of the Office of the President and the Academic Senate, recommended that each campus double its study abroad numbers over the next five years and put EAP at the center of this ambitious goal.
None of this success, however, saved the systemwide EAP from a 15% cut in its overall budget for the current year, a result of the financial turmoil in the Office of the President. Several programs abroad had to be eliminated, along with five faculty study center directorships and 20% of the personnel in the University Office of EAP. EAP has so far weathered this budgetary “perfect storm,” but there is reason to fear that any further cuts will seriously hobble the University’s much-admired study abroad program. This year’s systemwide student numbers, as well as those of our campus, will fall short of last year’s by about 4 to 5%.
Spain was the most popular destination (172 students) for our students, followed by programs in the United Kingdom and Ireland (146), Italy (131), and France (77). Since EAP has some 120 programs in 32 countries, students have a wide range of opportunities from which to choose. Students retain their UC status, pay the same UC fees, and receive unit credit for all courses they take abroad.
Under the steady leadership of Sue Berg Arnold for the past 16 years, the highly effective EAP campus office (five advisers working with Sue) recruits, advises, selects, and prepares students for their study abroad experience. In the current year 255 students from EAP’s partner universities abroad studied at our university, also a record number. Our local EAP office continues its “academic integration” work of close collaboration with academic departments to insure that all students are aware of the ways they can complete their majors and minors through EAP study. Advising pages, which list specific programs and courses for nearly all majors on campus, are being completed.
Through outreach to EAP alumni, a scholarship program has been developed to assist UC Santa Barbara students with the extra expenses attendant on study abroad. (The falling value of the dollar worldwide has impacted student budgets.) So far some $70,000 is being made available in extra scholarship grants to students needing assistance, thereby making it possible, for the first time, for financially-challenged students to apply.
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