The world is your classroom
The world is shrinking. Odds are, you already have classmates, colleagues or contacts in or from another part of the globe. So go ahead. Explore the unfamiliar. Odds are, it will change your life.
At UMass Lowell, students have access to study, work and service opportunities in every corner of the globe. The University is creating partnerships for collaboration and exchange with universities around the world. The growing list of countries represented by our partnerships reflects both the diversity of our own community and contemporary geo-politics. It includes Ireland, Germany, Spain, China, India, Greece, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, South Africa, Cambodia, and more. Our professional staff has helped countless students find international experiences that meet their needs and their budgets.
In recent years, UMass Lowell students have studied in more than 30 countries around the world. Below, meet a few of these students and read about some of the exciting experiences available to our students. You can also
meet some of our international students.
Exploring Entrepreneurship in Turkey
What makes an entrepreneur? And what influence does cultural environment have on the birth of a company? These were questions that Steve, four other students and Prof. Steven Tello explored during a two-week course on technology entrepreneurship in Ankara, Turkey. The group was hosted at Bilkent University, which houses a technology incubator on its campus. The group met with local entrepreneurs, learned about their business challenges and offered their insights. "I brought home a new perspective and greater confidence to my work and my studies," says Steve. During their free time, the group visited historic sites, sampled local food and confirmed the universal appeal of karaoke.
Semester Abroad in Barcelona
During a semester at Pompeo Sabra University in Barcelona, Spain in her sophomore year, Jennifer Castano explored topics in her major of criminal justice from a fresh perspective and lived with a host family. She also traveled, even spending the night with a Berber family in the Moroccan desert. "I'd never left home before and couldn't event read a map!" she says. "Now I'm more confident and independent." In Barcelona, Jennifer volunteered at a local second grade classroom and blogged for a U.S. school in hopes of inspiring younger students to seek out crosscultural experiences like hers.
Service-Learning in Peru
A group of engineering and humanities students took a service-learning trip to Peru in the summer of 2010 as part of the University's ongoing Village Empowerment Project, founded by engineering Prof. John Duffy. In addition to helping install solar panels in a remote village, Sarah Lawless delivered to a young mother there a new prosthetic leg that she and other students designed and arranged to have manufactured. Read the blog at blog.uml.edu/peru.