SPI High School Study Abroad Announces New Addition to the Team, Carrie Straub, Admissions & Program Advisor

SPI Study Abroad, a leading provider of quality summer study abroad programs for high school students, today announced the appointment of Carrie Straub as Admissions & Program Advisor.A study abroad veteran, Straub completed a year-long program at the University of Granada in Granada, Spain. She earned her degrees in both Spanish and International Studies at the University of Nebraska and now comes to SPI Study Abroad from Wells Fargo, where she served as the residing Service Manager.

After first completing a brief internship at SPI Study Abroad, Straub takes on a new role as the SPI Admissions & Program Advisor. She will apply her excellent customer service skills, leadership, and knowledge of Spain and international education that are relevant to the niche of high school study abroad.I have no doubt Carrie will thrive in her new position as our Program Advisor, helping both parents and students through the high school study abroad experience,” said Jeremy Goodwin SPI Executive Director. “Her expert customer service and communication skills with clients will play a vital role in helping them feel comfortable sending their teen on a summer immersion program.”

Personalized service is something that SPI Study Abroad takes pride in, making many efforts to ensure each family feels they are receiving the support they need, from enrollment, through pre-departure and during the summer programs abroad. Carrie’s addition to the team demonstrates that these practices continue, despite the company’s rapid growth and expansion each year.Word of mouth referrals are the key source for most high school study abroad enrollments,” said SPI Program Director Celeste Weary, “So establishing good relationships and communication with our participants and their families is instrumental to our success as a business. With the addition of Carrie to the SPI Study Abroad team, we’re ready for more growth!

“My study abroad experience in college was an absolute turning point in my life and shaped the person I am today in terms of my career, passions, and vision of the world,” said Straub. “My only regret is not having done it earlier in my studies! I’m thrilled to be a part of the SPI Study Abroad mission of offering high school language immersion and global leadership programs, helping students have a life-changing experience as it was for me.Carrie will be based at the SPI Study Abroad office in Austin, Texas to serve the company’s growing base of high school student participants, families, and alumni.To learn more about SPI High School Study Abroad and view complete summer program information for Spain, France, Italy, Costa Rica and China.

The fair offers students a chance to win a $2,000 study abroad scholarship

The 2013 Study Abroad Fair will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today in the Prairie Room at the Bone Student Center.The fair offers students a chance to win a $2,000 study abroad scholarship, a drawing for five free $150 application fees and more information about more than 50 semester and summer programs. Students can speak with past participants, program faculty directors, program providers and study abroad advisors.

The Study Abroad program offers students more than 80 countries to choose ranging from England, Scotland and Ireland all the way to South Korea, Thailand and China.Anywhere students want to go, the program will make it happen,” Alex Ratcliff, ISU study abroad advisor, said.Ratcliff, who has been with the program for just over a year, sayidthere are many great advantages of studying abroad for every student at ISU.Especially with the economy, you need some way to set yourself apart, and studying abroad is a way to do that,” said Ratcliff.  “I’ve seen that as a person, it really builds character. I can’t tell you how many students start off being nervous, scared and anxious, but when they come back they look like a completely different person.”

Last year was the first year ISU held a spring and fall Study Abroad Fair for students. This year, the program is trying to build an interest in all other colleges within ISU by bringing in affiliates, outside companies, faculty directors and past participants to talk to students about their experiences.By going to the Study Abroad Fair, students gain a better experience and understanding for what the program is all about.There’s something to be said for personal interaction,” Ratcliff said.By having a past participant there that you can talk to who literally just got back from the program, they are not going to sugarcoat it. So they’re going to tell you both the positives and the negatives of their experience

Free online courses offered by FIU

Florida International University is offering five online courses that anyone can take, for free.The courses, which make up FIU’s initial offering of “Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC),” include entrepreneurship, real estate and a class on project management in English and Spanish.Each course is a self-directed, condensed version of a college-level course and takes about eight hours to complete. Participants can watch a short video of the content of each course as described by the instructor before enrolling.

To sign up, visit www.open.fiu.edu. Students can enroll and complete the course at their own pace. At the end of the course, participants have the option of receiving a certificate of completion. No college credit will be awarded, FIU said.Applied Real Estate: What you need to know about buying and selling residential real estate.Entrepreneurship and New Ventures: Geared to give students practical tools to help them rapidly assess the potential of a new business idea.Legal and Ethical Governance - A Roadmap for Florida's Public Officials and Employees: The course includes both theoretical and practical approaches to common ethical issues, with an emphasis on Florida law.Project Management Basics: Aimed at providing key concepts and techniques for successfully managing projects from planning to completion. It is offered in English and Spanish.

Courses aimed at those caring for people with mental illness

The first, starting Tuesday Jan. 8, will be “With Hope in Mind,” which is an eight-class weekly course for family members or caregivers of adults with mental illness. National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Sumner County will be offering two free mental health courses in January in Hendersonville.With Hope in Mind” provides the basic education and skill training needed to cope with the difficulties associated with caring for adult relatives who exhibit behaviors like anger, depression, mania, psychosis, paranoia and other symptoms of mental illness.

The second, starting, Thursday Jan. 10, will be Beginnings, which is a six-class weekly course for parents or caregivers of children with behavioral issues. “Beginnings” provides a wealth of information for primary care providers of a child or adolescent who struggles with depression, mania, delusions, inattentiveness and other difficult behaviors. The course covers a spectrum of brain disorders, such as bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD. The course is helpful for primary caregivers along with grandparents, aunts, uncles, respite care providers and foster parents.

Free courses, materials

The “With Hope In Mind” and “Beginnings” classes address these common illnesses along with many others. The courses will be taught by NAMI volunteers who have taken instructor training and have personal experience in caring for someone with a mental illness. These free workshops are sponsored by NAMI Sumner County and are supported in part by a grant from NAMI Tennessee and the Tennessee Dept. of Mental Health & Developmental Disabilities.Both classes take place 6 p.m. at the Hendersonville's Babb Center at 105 Music Village Blvd. on their respective days.

Common skills

Both acclaimed workshops will help participants understand the feelings of anger, frustration, guilt, and hopelessness that arise when trying to help someone struggling with a mental illness. They also outline coping skills for dealing with the cycles of mental illness. Participants will learn helpful skills such as problem management, communication and crisis planning while being offered practical and emotional support as they learn that they are not alone.One in five Tennesseans is affected by a mental illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder or eating disorder.

Special computer education class for seniors

Senior Computer Associates is sponsoring a special class to help you learn how to email your grandchildren, browse the internet and send and receive digital photos. Join the computer age as over 1,000 Senior Citizens of our area have done through this program. A computer is provided free to graduates of this program, if needed.

Senior Computer Associates will sponsor this class to all residents 50 and older of Latrobe, Derry & Ligonier. This class will be held for 4 weeks. Classes will be held Mondays from 9:30 to 11:15 a.m. The cost is $20, 100% of which goes to the Latrobe Senior Center. Maximum class size – 6 students with an instructor and 2 coaches to assist you.The Latrobe Senior Center provides a hot breakfast and lunch for a minimal additional cost. Transportation is available through Veteran’s Cab at a minimal expense.The Latrobe Senior Center is located at Avenue C in Latrobe.

Harvard Law offering first free online course

The new phenomenon seen nowadays in higher education around the world is the online open courses, also known as MOOCs. So, what is MOOC?A MOOC is an open online course that can be pursued by the masses through Internet. In a MOOC, the course materials are uploaded by a University, college or institute through portals like edX, etc.These portals allow students from across the world to enrol into a course of their choice free of cost and access the course material of institutes like Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, University of British Columbia, and University of Melbourne, University of Toronto.

The good part is that while doing a particular course, students may be given assignments and exams to complete and at the end of the course certificates of course completion are also granted.So all those students who want to upgrade their skills into specific fields, this is probably what you can check out. Also, the courses available on MOOCs are plenty. Be it medicine, law, computer science, business and management, Business Administrationn and social sciences, everything is available and that too for free.It is estimated that close to 400 courses are available through MOOCs, and the lists are growing. Each course takes around 600 hours to convert to be online ready, and cost the university approx $45,000.

As per The Horizon Report of 2012, Higher Education Edition predicts how emerging technologies in education will have an impact in the next five years globally. People will increasingly expect to work, learn and study, at anytime and anywhere. MOOCs will allow this.In Kenya, there is rising access to the Internet owing to broadband technologies. The Internet is also becoming more affordable. The University of Melbourne in Australia signed up to Coursera in Septemb,er and in just over two months, it had more than 52,000 enrolment.Now the question arises, why are universities interested in sharing their courses with the world for free?Having their course material available to all, universities get to interact with students of caliber, who otherwise do not participate in such classes. Such an experience also opens up new theories, arguments and reasoning.Also, students are unable to make it into top institutions get to feel how things are taught in such institutes.

online courses are changing study

When the first movable-type printing press began churning out books in 1439, knowledge that belonged to an elite few flowed to masses of hungry learners.This year, something similar happened. Select courses taught at places like Stanford on subjects like physics were offered for free online, meaning that a level of education once available only to Ivy League-level college students is now an option in places like Pakistan, Ghana and Tibet.These courses, called Massive Open Online Courses make education cheaper and more accessible, but some say they have potential to undermine the current profit model.

"This transition to digital learning is as significant as when we first began to learn from books, said Karen Cator, director of the U.S. Office of Educational Technology. "Now we have a whole new opportunity to learn, with expert explanations, simulations and models of complex ideas. It's interesting and exciting, and it also needs continued research.Online classes have been around for decades, providing a convenient, if rather dull, learning environment for correspondence courses and basic education. MOOCs have much more going for them: the ability to turn a Harvard professor's best course into a global learning community via the Internet, usually at no cost to the learner.To get an idea of what a typical MOOC is like, the nine-week Introduction of Astronomy course available through the Coursera website at coursera.org is a good place to start. The class is taught by Duke University physics professor Ronen Plesser, whose video course introduction paints a glowing picture of a splendorous universe. Tests and assignments are graded automatically, and the course workload takes six to eight hours per week. No college credit is given, but students can pay to get a certificate proving they completed the course.

In the past year, interest in MOOCs like this one have exploded. Upstart companies that provide the classes have seen dramatic growth. Coursera, one of them, has 2 million subscribers and partners with schools like Stanford, Princeton and Johns Hopkins Universities to provide content.MOOCs have been around for at least five years. One of the first people to create one was Utah State University professor David Wiley, who found a way to invite people all over the world to interact within a 2007 class he was teaching on the USU campus, via the Internet.In Canada, educational technologists David Cormier and Bryan Alexander hit upon a similar idea at around the same time, and christened their online learning community a "MOOC"  Massive Open Online Course in 2008. A buzzword was born, albeit one that sounds like a coughing cow when pronounced.

Wiley's first open online class adapted the community-driven idea behind open source software and applied it to educational content, creating a learning environment where everything happened online.You put so much work into building a course and getting it ready to offer, and you have this feeling that there are a lot of people in the world whose lives would be blessed if they had a chance to learn some of the things you are teaching," Wiley said. "It turns out to be very little extra effort to put it all online, and do it in such a way that anyone can participate.Endless replication of a good teacher's work creates tantalizing possibilities, said Cator: "Every teacher doesn't have to do the whole thing over themselves. We will have the best-of-the-best playlist of lectures and interactions, and we'll begin to understand which are most helpful for different kinds of students."

Gilman International Scholarship for study abroad

Shawnee State University student Melissa Collins, the daughter of Sherman and Sherri Collins, of Franklin Furnace, has received a $4,500 Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to study in Morocco.The scholarship is a Congressionally-funded program sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State and is administered by the Institute of International Education through its office in Houston, Texas.

Collins will attend Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco.Studying abroad is going to be a life changing experience for me, and I am very excited,” Collins said. “I hope to get to know a lot of the local students and other internationals at Al Akhawayn.The program provides scholarships to students who study abroad, including students from diverse backgrounds and students going to non-traditional study abroad destinations. The scholarship will pay for fees, tuition, room and board, airfare, books, local transportation and insurance.The Gilman Program is the largest undergraduate study abroad scholarship in the nation, now awarding over 2,300 scholarships annually. In 10 years, the Gilman Program has received more than 31,000 applications and has awarded more than 8,800 scholarships to students studying in 125 countries and enrolled in nearly 950 U.S. institutions.Collins is the second student at Shawnee State University to receive the scholarship in the past few years. Jonathan Phillips, of New Boston, received the scholarship in spring 2010.

First free online course offerd by MSU

Learning how to turn complex technical terms into plain English is the subject of a new online course at Michigan State University.
The Foundations of Science class makes the tongue-in-cheek promise that students will learn "to speak mumbo jumbo" and amaze their friends.
The East Lansing school says the class is its first free Massive Open Online Course and debuts in May 2013.
Stephen Thomas (Zoologist) says he and course co-creator Julie Libarkin seek to help students improve their critical thinking skills and make better decisions.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is providing $50,000 to fund the course, which will be offered worldwide. Michigan State says Thomas and Libarkin hope the class attracts at least 10,000 students.

Open Free online courses

In the fall of 2011, a free online course was offered by Stanford University on the subject of artificial intelligence. The instructors were world-renowned experts in their field and this massive open online course, or MOOC, wound up with an unprecedented enrollment of 160,000 students and ushered in a new era of virtual education.But what if artificial intelligence isn’t your thing? The good news is free resources are rapidly coming online for business owners and entrepreneurs, covering topics ranging from leadership to innovation to startups. Here’s a look at some of them:

Take the challenge: One recently launched offering is the 21 Day Leadership Challenge.The challenge features management consultant and New York Times bestselling business author of Tribal Leadership Dave Logan in a series of 3-minute videos delivered via email. Each video contains both information and a homework assignment, most of which take about 20 minutes to complete, with a few one hour assignments mixed in. The three-week program promises greater confidence, along with a better ability to light a fire of enthusiasm under tribe.

Leading innovation: Coursera is another major player in this space, with 33 university partners, including Cal Tech, Columbia, Duke, Princeton, Stanford and UC San Francisco. Coursera offers the class Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses,” which starts in January 2013, or Leading Strategic Innovation in Organizations,” which starts in February 2013. The classes are offered by the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University respectively, and require a four to eight-hour workload per week.The long and the short of startups: If you’re looking for a quicker hit of learning and inspiration, consider the free videos available at StartupSchool.org from Y Combinator’s annual program. This year’s lineup included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann, and famed angel investor Ron Conway. Each video is about 30 minutes.

And if those talks put you in the mood to join the startup scene., consider visiting www.Udacity.com to register for “How to Build a Startup. The course is presented on demand by Steve Blank, the co-author, along with Bob Dorf, of “The Startup Owner’s Manual.” Blank’s book and “Business Model Generation by Osterwalder and Pigneur are the suggested, but not required, texts. Enrollment is fast and allows you to participate in discussion forums, view the 8 lectures, and track your completion percentage via a progress meter.Whether you are looking at a slow end-of-year season or contemplating your new year’s resolutions, it might behoove you as a leader and entrepreneur to jump onboard the MOOC bandwagon.

Free information technology courses

Two Bay area schools are teaming up with the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance to offer free information technology courses.Drawing from a U.S . Department of Labor grant, the classes are offered at Hilsborough Community College and St. Petersburg College. Administrators say the training is a response to an increased demand for information technology hires.

We're looking at skills gaps. What does industry need? And how can we feed them the workforce that they require in order to get their business done in Tampa Bay? said Rachel Gelbmann, a program director with the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance.Entrance into the classes is competitive. To be accepted, applicants must meet certain eligibility requirements, in addition to passing either a computer literacy test or college placement test.

Online courses speeding catching city's fancy

Studying abroad and getting an international tag of reputed institutes on their resumes is a dream of many. But a few are able to realize it. However, with advancement of technology and the world turning into a global village, students studying in city colleges and even working professionals are getting hooked to online courses offered by foreign universities like Harvard, Stanford and MIT to get certificates and enhance their knowledge.From colour theories to mythology, sociology and healthcare, several websites such as coursera.org and udacity.com are offering online courses from foreign universities such as Harvard and Stanford as well as Indian institutes like IIT Delhi and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The courses are catching fancy of many. Several universities like Massachusetts Institute of Technology also have opened courseware that allows students from across the world to attend online classes (www.ocw.mit.edu). One can study everything  from cryptography to epidemiology  absolutely free.

Jalaj Jain, an engineering student of SGSITS, has found fancy of doing courses that can enhance his knowledge and expertise. He said, Technology has made it easy to enhance your expertise and I am enjoying doing it. I have enrolled for various computer Science related online courses. You can sign up and get enrolled and choose topics of your choice.Preeti Mukati, a maths teacher at a city-based school said, "There are several sites that offer online courses from these universities. I have signed up for some other certificate courses in education, mathematics and accounting. Once you sign up, you are informed in advance when the course will begin so that you can free up your time.Working professionals who have got school-going kids, loans to pay and finding no way to take a break to pursue a course in the university are finding the online courses a right option. Kshitij Sharma, who runs his own company, completed an MS in Computer Science from Minnesota several years ago and has now signed for a course from Wharton on operations management, which he believes has helped him run his business better. "Honestly, I don't find too much of a difference between actually being there on campus and doing the course online. In fact, I think I am more focused now," says Sharma.

Though there are various international universities that are offering online courses, the ministry of human resources and development too has come up with a concept of online courses.Dr Narendra Chaudhary, a senior professor of IIT-I said, The ministry has developed the concept long ago where engineering students can enrol and choose courses of their choice to update their knowledge. Even working engineers too upgrade themselves through such courses.

universities search at free online courses to complement conventional

 Michael Hwan didn’t have to pay for the Stanford University computer science and Economics and Management Science course he took online. The class on gamification  applying game techniques beyond games from the University of Pennsylvania was also free.Hwan earned a psychology degree in 2011 from Arizona State University but was thinking about going back to school. Instead, he signed up for two free online classes offered by Coursera, a company founded by Stanford professors that partners with dozens of universities to provide what are called massive open online courses, or MOOCs.

“I definitely feel like it puts the student in control of what they really want to learn,” Hwan said.These free online courses feature lessons by instructors from recognized universities. The courses are available to anyone with Internet access. Most MOOCs have no size limits, so tens of thousands of students are able to enroll in the same course.Arizona’s three public universities are moving to expand online degree options and the availability of online courses, but officials said they are exploring the potential of MOOCs to complement those efforts.None currently offers classes through Coursera or edX, another major MOOC initiative founded by Harvard and MIT, but Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University are working toward implementing MOOCs of their own. The University of Arizona is evaluating options to build on a series of early MOOCs it offered through iTunes U several years ago.

Northern Arizona University President John Haeger said that the school is trying to decide which courses it should offer as MOOCs. Haeger said he hopes NAU can begin implementing these types of courses by the summer or fall and that the university will discuss options with Coursera and others.Haeger said while MOOCs are disruptive to traditional models of education, they could potentially be beneficial to both universities and students.It offers the university a way to change its delivery system, and, in effect, it could lessen the cost of an undergraduate degree, which is in the students’ best interest, Haeger said.ASU is planning to debut a MOOC of its own in August, according to Phillip Regier, executive vice provost and dean of ASU Online.

Regier said ASU’s MOOC will be distinct from what other schools have offered. The course won’t replicate content of an existing ASU class but instead will span multiple disciplines, he said.It will showcase all of the areas around ASU and what the university does in terms of knowledge-creation,” Regier said.Regier said that the course will likely be offered on ASU’s own platform, rather than through an organization like Coursera. He added that that ASU has no plans to offer credit for the free course initially, or to offer existing ASU classes for free online.The University of Arizona offered a series of entrepreneurship courses for free on iTunes U in the past few years. Mike Proctor, dean of the Outreach College at University of Arizona, said the university is evaluating how it might be able to build upon that experience.

We’re not close to inking a deal with anybody,” Proctor said.Proctor said he thinks MOOCs have the potential to be both beneficial and disruptive.They might be both,” he said. “Time will tell how that plays out.Students who successfully complete a MOOC through Coursera or edX can earn a certificate of completion, but the American Council on Education is evaluating a way to determine credit equivalency for some Coursera classes, a step toward enabling students to earn college credit for these courses.ACE President Molly Corbett Broad said if the organization can determine credit equivalency, MOOCs have potential to break through barriers to college access.The MOOCs make it possible for the issues of time and location to be removed as barriers to a completion of a degree,” she said. “And because they are free they also address the escalating costs of higher education.Coursera co-founder and co-CEO Daphne Koller said that MOOCs, including those offered by Coursera, can provide education for people who are held back from going to school by financial, geographic or family reasons.We actually believe that this has the potential of increasing the number of people who get degrees in the United States,” Koller said.

University Announces today that it will open its first permanent international education site in Italy

Kennesaw State University will open its first permanent international education site in Montepulciano, Italy, enabling the expansion of the study-abroad programs the university has conducted in that historic Tuscan city for the past 15 years.Under the rental agreement approved this week by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, Kennesaw State will occupy 4,000 square feet in the soon-to-be restored and renovated historic Fortezza Poliziana beginning in fall 2014. Funding for the $520,000, 25-year agreement will be provided by private donations and the Kennesaw State University Foundation.This represents a major milestone for Kennesaw State’s international initiatives and our commitment to providing students high-quality, global learning opportunities, said KSU President Daniel S. Papp. Not only have we found a long-term home for one of our fastest-growing study-abroad programs, we are expanding the Kennesaw State brand internationally an exciting development as we approach the university’s 50thanniversary.

This week, Kennesaw State also earned the distinction of being named among the top campuses in the nation for student participation in study-abroad programs.  The Institute of International Education, in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, annually publishes the Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange.  The just-released 2012 report ranked KSU 8thamong the country’s top 40 master’s degree-granting institutions in study-abroad participation. During the 2010-2011 academic year, 734 Kennesaw State students studied abroad.Kennesaw State’s study-abroad programs in Montepulciano have grown from serving eight students in 1998, to 76 in 2011.  Nearly 1,100 students and faculty have participated in study-abroad programs in Montepulciano since the program began. Participants include Kennesaw State’s students and faculty, as well as students and faculty from other University System of Georgia institutions with whom KSU partners.

To date, Kennesaw State officials have rented four classrooms in an unused wing of an elementary school outside of Montepulciano’s city walls to provide the program’s offerings. The Montepulciano study-abroad programs typically include courses in art, history, Intelligent Software Systems,literature, Italian and political science,Social Sciences,Master of Landscape Architecture through two regularly scheduled five-week summer sessions and occasional shorter fall sessions.  An intensive, 12-week foreign language program also is scheduled to begin in fall 2013.When finalized, the agreement will provide space in the Fortezza Poliziana for five classrooms, a program office, residential quarters for the program director, and a teaching kitchen for a proposed culinary program. The new facility will allow the program to offer longer, regularly scheduled fall sessions, shorter sessions during the May and August mini-mesters, as well as short-term courses during December.

Thomas H. Keene, Kennesaw State professor of history and a study-abroad program director in Montepulciano, is ecstatic about the plans and prospects for the new space. “The classrooms in the Fortezza will be a massive upgrade and will offer considerable advantages, including the safety and security of being in the central city,” Keene stated.The development of the rental agreement followed a visit to Kennesaw State University’s Georgia campus last February by officials of the City of Montepulciano and representatives of a consortium of more than 80 wine producers  the Consorzio Del Vino Nobile Di Montepulciano. The visit resulted in a resolution to complete negotiations with the University and the Kennesaw State University Foundation to provide the financial incentive to undertake the renovation and restoration of the Fortezza.  The rental agreement is the catalyst that will launch the project to restore the historic 18thcentury fortress.

When the project is completed, Kennesaw State and the wine consortium will each occupy most of an entire floor with common spaces reserved for public events, conferences and exhibitions, including those staged by Kennesaw State’s study-abroad faculty and students.We are honored to be a part of this historic partnership that will provide a phenomenal setting for our students to learn and engage globally, with the added benefit of witnessing our partners in this endeavor restore an important historical landmark in Italy’s beautiful Tuscan region,said Papp.Currently, University officials are considering proposals for a Great Books Honors Program in Montepulciano; as well as a program of non-credit short courses in art  painting, drawing, photography, print-making  and in Italian cooking, wine-tasting and art history, among others.The programming possibilities for this site are virtually limitless, said Keene, who has co-ordinated KSU’s Montepulciano effort from the very beginning.  “It presents a great opportunity to attract even more students to study abroad, and also allows us to offer these incredible learning experiences to our alumni and the larger community.

Most popular study abroad destinations

The University works in association with the Institute for International Studies and the Kentucky Institute for International Studies to offer students a ‘world of opportunities’ with its study abroad programs, held in the summer and during each semester.The Institute for International Studies provides support for international students and scholars, Murray State students studying abroad, international visits and community education.

Murray State also works with the Kentucky Institute for International Studies, a non-profit organization which strives to establish high-quality, low-cost, academically sound study abroad programs for students. The KIIS options for semester programs this year are to Caen, France, Regensburg, Germany or Segovia, Spain during the spring semester and Merida, Mexico during the fall semester.Pallavi Thadhani, a graduate from Murray State with a Masters in Business Administration from Corozal Town, Belize, studied abroad in Paris, France and London, England from January 2-January 10, 2012. He said his experience changed his life for the better in many ways.This was an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life, Thadhani said. “I learned so much from executives of many world-renowned organizations and individuals on my study abroad trip. This trip required the MBA students to be open-minded and accept challenges and situations as they were presented. This experience definitely confirmed my dreams of aiming for a job that includes international traveling.”

KIIS offers thousands of dollars in scholarships each year. For its summer programs, KIIS provides one $500 scholarship for each program and in the fall and spring they provided one $750 scholarship to each program.Murray State encourages students of all fields to study abroad, especially students with majors and minors in a foreign language. Students studying a foreign language are encouraged to attend one of the many summer programs offered, which include countries such as China, France, Spain,Sweden, Tanzania and others. The programs range from 4 to 6 weeks in length.Bonnie Higginson, vice president of Academic Affairs, said she has seen many lives change as a result of study abroad programs.

For many students a study abroad experience can be life changing because they are immersed in another culture and have to step out of their comfort zone as they adjust” Higginson said. “I’ve seen a number of students who have even changed their career goal and career paths.Don Robertson, vice president of Student Affairs, said the study abroad programs are one of the best opportunities at Murray State.One of the things that makes Murray State very unique is its array and variety of opportunities” Robertson said. “I think it is very important that students have the opportunity and that they take advantage of it because we are a very multicultural world and studying abroad will better prepare them for it.

DO the maths on study resource

The rapid rollout over the past year of massive open online university courses, or MOOCs, illustrates how university education is becoming a global commodity. While ­Australian universities face pressure to launch online courses, the Gillard government is aiming to increase the quality of university teaching and research. One of the goals listed in the Asian Century white paper released in late October was that 10 of our universities would be in the world’s top 100 and our school system would be in the world’s top five by 2025.

But universities are struggling to accommodate the surge in student numbers since the government relaxed restrictions on place numbers in 2010 as a result of the Bradley review in 2008. The Gillard government argues that funding for ­universities has increased. An Ernst & Young report released in July showed funding per student was $2000 higher in 2013 than in 2008. But the government will not loosen the ­antiquated regulations on fees that universities can charge ­students. Instead the talk is about extra government spending on education, such as the $6.5 billion in extra funding that the Gonski report recommended for schools.

Former head of the Commonwealth public service Mike Keating has raised the provocative idea that rather than increasing schools funding, we should cut it. Mr Keating’s belief that we are wasting money on schools and should divert the funds to vocational training has some support. Labor MP and former ANU economics professor Andrew Leigh and ANU researcher Chris Ryan showed in a 2009 study that despite a 10 per cent increase in real per-child school ­expenditure between 1975 and 1998, which paid for smaller class sizes, literacy and numeracy performance declined.As the gap between tax revenue and spending widens, it’s time to re-examine such ideas, because finding extra funds to deliver on the education goals in the Asian Century white paper will be difficult indeed. In July, Fred Hilmer, the University of NSW’s vice-chancellor and chairman of the group of eight universities, said if his university could charge students in better paid professional courses such as law and medicine 25 per cent more, the university would raise $30 million a year.If the government is serious about creating elite universities and high quality schools, it should change the present system of capping university fees and give them more market flexibility.

Students believe their career prospects would have been improved by a stint working or studying abroad

Many people believe their career prospects would have been improved by a stint working or studying abroad, a poll has suggested.Almost four in five UK adults (79%) have not lived or studied overseas for six months or more, according to the British Council survey.Of these, more than a third (34%) said they believed that they would have had better job prospects if they had done so.

The survey, which questioned 2,114 UK adults between October 5 and 7, found that young people were most likely to feel they had missed out.More than half of the 18 to 24-year-olds who had not lived abroad said they believed their careers would be better if they had done so.Dr Jo Beall, the British Council's director of education and society, said: The good news is that this poll shows people are beginning to recognise how vital international skills are for enhancing their career.Research last year revealed that more UK employers look for international awareness and experience above academic qualifications.But the bad news is that not enough people in the UK are taking opportunities to gain international experience. That needs to change if the UK will successfully compete in the global economy.

Dealine for Paris application due Thursday, Nov. 1; other trips coming up

Tiffany Brown traveled to China this summer, and hopes to expand her horizons further next year.
In China, we climbed the Great Wall, visited the house of a master of kung-fu, took a dragon boat ride and visited four different cities, said Brown.The people were so friendly and treated us like celebrities.Brown recommends the study-abroad program to fellow students.It gives you a different opportunity to experience something that you can’t get from a book, she said. “It shows you the world in a whole new light. I did not have a low point while there.

Brown hopes to travel again.In 2013, UDM students will have the opportunity to travel to Brazil, France, China and Italy as part of the study-abroad program.We are partnering with Marygrove for the France trip, said Lara Wasner, director of Language and Cultural Training. “This is a great opportunity to work together and we hope that there are more opportunities to travel together in the future.The Brazil program, begun in 2005, has rotated through the College of Liberal Arts and Education, giving different faculty members an opportunity to teach, she said.The Italy program runs every summer through the College of Architecture, she said.I first visited China in 2010 and took ten students there last summer.

Two obstacles  time and money keep many students from participating, Wasner said.We want students to have an international experience at their time at the university,” she said. “Many students are not able to participate in the whole semester abroad, so the faculty-led trip is a great option, as students can learn and engage in cultural activities in the places that they are visiting.I do everything in my power to make this happen for students, she added.We have sponsorship forms, which helped one student pay for their entire trip. Financial aid can also be used. We want to make this happen for you.”

Last summer, Wasner and a group of students, faculty and alumni traveled to Cuba.Shelly Payne was among them. She said the experience changed her life.In the beginning, I didn’t want to go, but my mom forced me,” said Payne.I later learned that I have some Cuban lineage. I knew that Cuba existed, but I didn’t understand the whole essence of it. It is engrained in us not to like Cuba, but traveling there opened my eyes.The people are just like us so it made me wonder what the whole disagreement between our two countries was about,” she said.The people were so friendly and I loved dancing at the Buena Vista Social Club.With restrictions once again tightening regarding travel to Cuba, the program will not be running in 2013.But Wasner said that she looks forward to running it again in the future.Payne said that she plans on traveling to Brazil in 2013 and would also recommend studying abroad to anyone.I had no low points while in Cuba,” said Payne. “It was the experience of a lifetime. You don’t really gain a lot of knowledge if you are stuck in one place. It makes you a better person and a better teacher. If you do the trip right and go there for educational reasons and are open to opening yourself up, you will enjoy it.”

China scholarship 18,000 to study abroad in 2013

China will send 18,000 people to study abroad in 2013 under a government-funded scholarship program, the China Scholarship Council (CSC) announced on Tuesday.Those who are sponsored include 6,000 for graduate degree study, and 12,000 for undergraduate degree study or to take roles as senior researchers or visiting scholars, the CSC said at a conference in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province.

The number of scholarship recipients next year will be 2,000 more than in 2012, and more than double the 7,500 in 2006, according to the CSC.Currently, over 24,000 Chinese citizens are studying abroad under the program.The CSC said more than 98 percent of sponsored students and scholars have returned to China on time over the past five years, after they finished their study abroad.The program has become an important way for the country to foster talents in various fields, sources with the CSC said.

Uiversities offer free online courses

Top US universities have started offering free online courses and certificates, challenging the expensive on-campus way of studying and allowing international students to get US education straight from their computers.Universities including Stanford, Princeton and Columbia, are signing on with new online venture Coursera with classes varying from Finance through to Sociology and Statistics – all of the online classes are taught by the universities’ teachers.

The project is still to overcome some scepticism about the quality of online education as: doors are wide open for cheating,” said Michael Winckler mathematician at Heidelberg University.At the same time MIT, Harvard and University of California, and Berkeley are uniting and offering online courses under a non-profit venture called edX.Enrolling more students through MOOCs may cut costs by enabling universities to outsource coursework on the internet, while fewer students would need campus housing.However, instead of college credits, the students enrolled on the online classes receive certificates of completion, which do not lead to a degree.University of Washington is the first US school to provide credits using a MOOC learning platform – for a fee.Could this initiative change the face of the contemporary education? Anant Agarwal, president of edX called it “the single biggest change in education since the printing press.The enthusiasm about the free prestigious online courses is not in question. Over 1.7 million people have already signed up for Coursera.