New efforts to boost minority students studying abroad

Dana Sand | USA TODAY College

Kenya Casey studied abroad as an undergrad in 1997. As an African American, she noticed an under-representation of minority students on her trip.

Today, as associate director of the Center for International Programs Abroad (CIPA) at Emory University, she says the trend hasn't changed.

The Institute of International Education's Open Doors data shows that 78% of U.S. students who studied abroad in 2010-11 were white.

The next-highest percentage for a single group was 7.9% for the Asian student population, followed by 6.9% Hispanic and 4.8% black or African-American.

Melissa Fortes, a Filipino senior public relations major at Illinois State University, observed a discrepancy while studying abroad in Florence, Italy last spring.

"Out of 30 students from my school that studied abroad during spring 2013 in Florence, three of us were minorities," Fortes says.

DeAnna Anglin, a 2012 graduate from the University of Missouri who now works as an MCAC college adviser, describes her study abroad trip in Africa as 100% Caucasian. She adds that she was the only student of the 16 on the trip who came from a low-income household.

"I had no idea how I was going to pay for it. I was already 100% supporting myself. … I had three jobs and went to school full time," Anglin says. "Per my experience, less than 10% of students with high financial need see studying abroad as an option."

To address concerns like these, Casey recently co-authored NAFSA's "You Too! Can Study Abroad: Guide for Ethnically and Racially Underrepresented Students."

"The publication is for students, and it's supposed to break some of the barriers and misperceptions about study abroad and to outline the process of studying abroad," Casey says.

Diversity Abroad — an organization whose goal is to ensure that all students, regardless of their racial or ethnic background, physical ability or socioeconomic status, have access to international education and exchange opportunities — provides further resources to students.

According to the president of Diversity Abroad, Andrew Gordon, the organization works through two outlets.

The student outreach side, diversityabroad.com, provides students with how-to guides, travel discounts and scholarship and loan options. The organization also conducts tours on more than 100 campuses every year, educating target populations about available opportunities.

The organization's Diversity Network brings together a consortium of higher-education institutions, government agencies, for-profit organizations and non-profits committed to their mission of "advancing diversity and inclusive excellence in international education."

A number of institutions are developing initiatives to spread the word on creating diversity within study abroad experiences, Gordon says.

One such program is Casey's Minority Outreach Initiative, implemented at Emory in 2007.

"The initiative was to break the misperceptions of why students don't study abroad, what the barriers are, and to also spread awareness about scholarship opportunities," Casey says.

The Minority Outreach Initiative focuses on outreach not only to underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups, but also to students who have high financial need, Casey says.

"Being a person of color who studied abroad and having been on financial aid when I was in college, it was important to me for students to have someone they could relate to and identify with to talk to about some of their concerns," Casey adds.

While many students list cost as the No. 1 barrier to studying abroad, Casey attributes this to a lack of awareness of available funding options. Casey also promotes available scholarships, as well as assistance with reviewing application essays.

According to Casey, before the Minority Outreach Initiative was implemented, the external award amount in scholarships for Emory students studying abroad was around $7,000 per semester. From 2007 to 2013, the total scholarship award amount for external scholarships has reached more than $450,000.

Emory senior Angelica Calderon, who studied abroad in Italy during the summer of 2012, directly benefited from these services.

"What I saw as the main barrier to studying abroad was the cost. However, I quickly realized that there are various ways to overcome this challenge," she says.

Noting successes like these, Gordon is optimistic about current work in this area.

"I think there's a much greater awareness now than there used to be about it, and I think students are really trying to address this problem head on," Gordon says. "Last year was the first national conference on diversity inclusion on international education. We've never had that, so I'd say there's definitely been progress, but there needs to be more."

Dana Sand is a senior at Emory University.