By Jenna Snider Students at Bellarmine University have many opportunities to enrich their personal and academic lives by studying abroad.
From individualized semester-long experiences to shorter two-week group trips, the study abroad possibilities are endless and completely customizable to each student’s needs.
Many students take advantage of group trips that are planned by various university organizations, while others choose to have longer term study abroad experiences that are more independent.
Shaela O’Keefe, a sophomore communication major, recently studied abroad in Rome, Italy, with a group from the Honors Program in a class called “Eternally Rome.” Students involved in this class spent the fall 2023 semester learning about the history and beauty of Rome and ended the class with a 10-day experience in the Eternal City.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Italy,” O’Keefe said. “It’s been a destination on my bucket list forever. Visiting the Coliseum was almost an out-of-body experience. Being able to see something
so old with so much rich history and amazing engineering and architecture was unbelievable.”
Sophomore mathematics major Lilli Evans also took advantage of a Bellarmine faculty- led program when she studied abroad on a 10-day trip to Belfast, Northern Ireland. “One of the highlights I would say was going to the Giants Causeway. That is just the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in the entire world,” Evans said. “It was an incredible experience getting to do that and then really just traveling with the group within the city, exploring and seeing the differences and similarities between the US and Ireland and getting to interact with people there, restaurants and whatnot, I really thought was incredible.”
For students like Evans and O’Keefe, traveling with a group of students and faculty from Bellarmine was a great way to experience traveling abroad for the first time.
“I really enjoyed traveling with the Bellarmine group. It took a lot of the stress and pressure off of having to plan your own trip abroad,” O’Keefe said.
Evans said, “I've never been out of the country before and being with a group of people that had also never been out of the country, and some people that had been before, kind of helped me navigate my anxieties because I knew I had someone else to rely on going into the trip.”
Other students, such as junior health humanities major Iris Cameron, opt for a more individualized and long-term study abroad experience.
“I went to the University of Eastern Finland,” Cameron said. “I was there for a semester, so I went in August and then I came back in December.”
Because Cameron studied abroad for an entire semester, she was able to travel to many other cities and countries outside of her main destination.
“I went to Stockholm in Sweden, these mountains in Norway, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and then I have a friend in Italy, so I went to Italy, and we went to Greece,” Cameron said.
Along with traveling to many different countries during her study abroad experience, Cameron was able to take classes in public health, which fulfilled requirements for her minor.
Students interested in studying abroad should fill out the study abroad interest form on the Study Abroad and International Programs tab of the Bellarmine University website. https://www.bellarmine.edu/international/
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