Page 14 - UD Magazine Vol. 31 No. 1

From
Delaware
to the
World
PUTTING OUR STAMP ON STUDY ABROAD AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
Stories by Diane Stopyra
12 University of Delaware Magazine
PHOTO COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
University of Delaware students are rafting through caves in New Zealand. They’re dancing around 20-foot bonfires during sacred festivals in India. They’re hiking mountains in Tanzania, connecting with ancient civilizations in Brazil, snorkeling through underwater volcanoes in Hawaii. Around the globe, they are meeting the most exhilarating, awe-inducing moments of their lives.
Such transformative study abroad experiences are par for the Blue Hen course. This is an institution with 100 innovative program options in 40 countries, a University that kept cross-cultural learning alive even when COVID-19 torpedoed the objective at schools around the country. Unless you’ve been living under the Rock of Gibraltar (which Blue Hens have scaled), you already know UD is a globally recognized leader in international education, consistently named a top-tier choice for study abroad.
And what’s more... we were first.
This year, the University celebrates the 100th anniversary of its trailblazing study abroad program, which set the global standard for institutions of higher education, making the world just a bit smaller—and, arguably, quite a bit better.
“Through our programs, students build intercultural competence, broaden their worldview, acquire new language skills, expand their networks—all things that enrich society,” says Ravi Ammigan, a Mauritian citizen of Indian descent and the associate provost for international programs at UD.
That was, indeed, the goal of Raymond Kirkbride, an Army veteran who’d driven ambulances in France during World War I. The foreign language professor fervently believed that cross-cultural understanding was key to preventing future global