Part-time Students Enjoy Study Abroad Opportunities

The lives of most part-time students are filled with the kind of responsibilities most traditional-age undergrads don’t encounter – jobs, families, aging parents, and community commitments. Even when you’re regularly attending classes, it’s often difficult to find the time to get involved in campus activities and other perks of the Syracuse University experience. SU Abroad is one opportunity that eludes most part-time students as they consider their educational options. But study abroad doesn’t have to be a foreign concept. In fact, many UC students do take part in programs that take place in other countries, and say it is the highlight of their educational experience.

Greg Maslak ‘08, who earned an M.B.A. from SU and later returned to earn a second bachelor’s degree, had a full-time job and a family while studying part-time at SU. He couldn’t go abroad for an entire semester, but he was able to take a short course in London.

“My five-week study abroad experience in London rates as one of the most rewarding things I have ever done,” Maslak says. He was the only nontraditional student among many full-time undergrads, but was welcomed openly. He says the key was that he “dared to dream a little” and received support from everyone involved. 

Rachel Frantz, an English major who has been studying part-time since 2005, took an Irish Drama course with professor Stanford Sternlicht in the summer of that year. Frantz is a travel buff whose excursions have taken her to India, Nepal, Spain, France, and Italy. She says that the six weeks she spent in Ireland through SU was her favorite trip of all. “I was the only part-time student,” she recalls, but she was housed with the other students in dormitories at Trinity College, and they took numerous field trips to locations throughout Ireland. “We had the time of our lives!” she recalls.

Phil Benedict’s student experience abroad was even shorter, but had a profound impact on him. The 50-year-old liberal arts student took an 8-day Greek and Roman history course in Rome, Italy with professor Craige Champion.  It was a life-changing experience for the part-time student who had previously visited Rome as a 21-year-old in the military.

Benedict said one of the best parts of his educational experience abroad was having the “best tour guide ever” in professor Champion. “He would set up an outdoor-type classroom wherever we went, and talk about what we were seeing with little-known facts.” The professor required students to keep a journal of their experience, and Benedict found that he could write in his journal for hours about the things that inspired and moved him. “The Colosseum was worth the entire trip for me,” he says. “From the moment I walked into the Colosseum, I never took my hand off the building. I could feel and see all that happened from the day it opened in 80 A.D.”

To learn more about opportunities available through SU Abroad, visit the web site http://studyabroad.syr.edu/concrete/ or call 315-443-3471.