SUMMER-ABROAD.UCDAVIS.EDU May 12, 2008 02:56 PM
The orientation program was excellent in terms of giving us a sense of what to expect and providing key planning information. My husband and I attended since one of our daughters was on a study abroad program in London, and the other was attending UCSD...transferring to Davis, but not there yet. We came away with most of our questions answered and, importantly, a name and number...thank you!
The program itself was wonderful. One of my daughters told me today that her side trip to Venice was the single most exciting art experience of her life (she's an art major). My daughters loved their accommodations and the autonomy they had to plan side trips (Venice, Pisa, Naples, Rome, Pompeii), while still having the safety net of their classmates and instructor.
I really felt that my daughters were well prepared and appropriately overseen during their summer abroad experience. They returned home with increased self-confidence, bubbling over with enthusiasm, and with greater intellectual curiosity about the world beyond California! We were absolutely thrilled with our family's experience with the summer study abroad program.
My son is a second year Davis engineering major, who just participated in a Summer Abroad program in Transylvania, while completing a UC Materials Science course and an engineering lab. How many first year students have the opportunity to meet some core engineering requirements while having such a close encounter with their engineering faculty, much less a transformative experience in Eastern Europe? This innovative Summer Abroad program was called "Materialsylvania."
As a parent, I was particularly impressed with the faculty's personal commitment, creativity, and concern for individual student participants. As a professional, I was also very impressed with the painstaking completeness of the Davis Summer Abroad pre-departure materials. My son, a somewhat skeptical and very reserved engineering student, was able to venture abroad to Romania, in what he perceived as a personally and academically safe program, because Davis offers this non-traditional study abroad option.
The program was packed with cultural excursions as well as typically rigorous Davis course work. This Davis summer engineering abroad offering helped my son transcend the perceived barriers of a longer term and rigorous selection process. Regardless of whether he ventures abroad again, Davis provided a unique and academically integrated overseas opportunity, which has enriched him and broadened his perspectives on both the wonder and problems of the world outside the U.S.