In a conference room in Annenberg Hall, School of Media and Communication faculty make decisions regarding the countries students can spend a semester visiting during their time at Temple.
Katie Ryan, assistant director of Study Away, said a board of SMC faculty meets frequently to discuss and vote on changing and adding new programs.
“We’ve changed a lot in the past couple of years,” Ryan said.
During the past few years, SMC faculty voted to add a wider range of Global Internship options and a semester-long program in Dublin, Ireland, Ryan added. A new program in Arcosanti, Arizona has also been added, but is not running this year due to low enrollment.
“We’re constantly evaluating our partners and interests by students and determining whether we should keep the program going if students aren’t interested in doing it,” Ryan said.
Despite a few illnesses contracted at the Peru summer Study Away session this past summer, the Peru program is still being evaluated for future trips, Ryan said. A program has never been terminated from SMC Study Away, she added.
There is no formal reviewal process for the programs, but if issues arise the committee will vote on changes, she said.
Senior media studies and production major and SMC Study Away peer adviser James Kenvin attended the London semester the fall of his junior year.
“I had the travel bug even before I started traveling, so I always knew that was in the cards for me,” he said.
Kenvin studied and interned while in London. While abroad, he had the opportunity to visit nine countries—five of which he visited in the span of seven days.
Although he enjoyed his time abroad and used his time there to the best of his ability, Kenvin said the internship program did not meet his expectations.
“The advisers that I met with when I was going all had amazing internships so that kind of made me and many of the other people in my program feel as if all of the internships were going to be our dream come true,” he said. “And that’s not going to be true. My internship wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t my dream internship.”
Kenvin added despite not getting his “dream internship,” it was still a learning experience working with people of different cultures.
The SMC Study Away program will continue to grow as long as student interest continues, Ryan said.
“A lot of our programs come about by student interest,” Ryan said. “So if students are interested in a specific region of the world that we aren’t offering, we can definitely take that into consideration and bring that to the committee as a proposal.”
Gillian McGoldrick can be reached at gillian.mcgoldrick@temple.edu or Twitter @gill_mcgoldrick.
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