Letter to Parents
2009-2010
Dear Parent/Guardian/Friend of a Study Abroad Participant,
By this time, most of our students are making final preparations for their time abroad. We understand how difficult it can be to send a child off to college, let alone halfway around the world. Nonetheless, we in the Wisconsin School of Business International Programs office and more than 12,000 UW-Madison students who have preceded this year's group agree that overseas study will add an important dimension to their education, offering a broader perspective on their studies and on themselves, preparing them for new opportunities and more interesting lives. Recent years have seen continuing nationwide growth in the number of students interested in and actually studying abroad. Legislation in the U.S. Congress is evidence that the issue of international education is important for the good of the nation.
If you would like to learn about the program, check out our website where you can read information on your student's host university and then move to the pre-departure link at the bottom of the page for more details on procedures. Please keep browsing through the parent web site as there is important information on other pages. Useful information includes being sure your student has all the required medications to last the entire trip abroad.
In the upcoming weeks, as the departure date approaches and eventually arrives, it will be important for you to remember some basic information about homesickness and culture shock that will affect your student. Given the inevitable confusion of arriving in a new country (plus the need to catch up on sleep after the long flight from the U.S.), and the normal length of time it takes a letter from abroad to reach the U.S., it may be two or three weeks after their arrival before you receive any postal mail from your student. On the other hand, you may receive a phone call, a fax or an e-mail message right away. Hints of homesickness are common during the first few weeks and are not a cause for alarm. All students, regardless of maturity, disposition, previous experience abroad, or knowledge of the country in which they will be living, experience some degree of culture shock. Culture shock can be characterized by periods of elation, frustration, and even depression before adjustment and increased confidence set in.
The worst homesickness often occurs two to three months after students leave home. It is common for students to call or write home during moments of low morale, but not when they are busy and things are going well. Consequently, families often picture a more negative situation than actually exists.
One way to get a more complete picture and help reduce feelings of homesickness is to write to your student regularly, and encourage him or her to do the same. While e-mail is increasingly the mode of communication, cards, newspaper clippings, pictures or a letter in your handwriting can be very welcome. In addition to your own letters to your overseas scholar, you may want to encourage other family members to write. A letter that a student can read and reread in quiet moments is always appreciated. There is a close correlation between morale overseas and mail from home. Strange as it might seem, our students can be almost as concerned about you as you can be concerned about them! If they do not hear from you, they may be concerned that something is wrong.
If you and your student have access to e-mail, communication should be easy. Please understand that access to e-mail overseas is not always as readily available as it is in the U.S., even in parts of the world where you would expect it to be comparable. It is worth noting that daily e-mail contact is not always desirable. Students need to separate themselves a bit from their home support networks as they build a local one, especially if they want to immerse themselves in the local culture.
In this era of modern communication, phone and fax are effective tools to get in touch with your overseas scholar in a hurry. If you plan to use the phone to communicate, you may want to call your long distance company. Many offer special services that allow you to identify one country as a frequently called one, and for a small monthly fee, you can cut the cost of your calls considerably. Another option is to purchase a calling card with reduced rates for the country in which your student is studying. An increasingly popular option is the use of Skype, a computer software program that allows users to “call” another computer and talk via the Internet using a head phone. Many computers also have a camera for video connection. Communicating with Skype is free if both parties have a computer with internet connection, but it can also be used by your student to call landlines and mobile phones all over the world for only a few cents a minute. Past participants highly recommend this method of communicating with those back home.
If you want to visit your student overseas (and we hope some of you do), it would help if you could arrange your visit to coincide with vacation times or after the program has ended. Then your student will not have to make the choice between academic work and having fun showing you how competent he or she has become in a new environment. Many families find reading about the overseas location both interesting and a good way to feel more in touch with the experience of their student.
Although it may seem like a long way off, you may want to start thinking about your student's return to the U.S. after the program ends. Students often go through a phase of "reverse" or "re-entry" culture shock when they come back home, which is sometimes more challenging than what they went through overseas. They expect to go through adjustments in foreign countries, but do not always realize that life has continued on without them at home and there may be changes for which they are not prepared. One way to alleviate the difficulty of re-entry shock is to keep your student aware of what is going on at home through consistent communication.
Students often go through periods of mild depression once they return home because of feelings that no one is interested in what they experienced in their time overseas. Faced with questions such as "How was your time in xxxx?" a student often can only answer "Great!" before conversation moves on to another subject. Encourage friends and family members to ask more specific questions like "What were the best things about living abroad? The most difficult? What places did you visit? Are people's daily lives the same as in the U.S.? What was a typical day for you?" Have a gathering where your student can show off food, customs and photos from his or her travels. Not only will such questions and activities remind students they had a worthwhile experience and help them to readjust, it will help others in your community learn more about the world around us.
Recent world events have heightened concern regarding safety both here in the U.S. and abroad. The safety of our students is and always has been a primary concern as we have developed and maintained programs abroad. We would like to take this opportunity to explain some of the policies and procedures of our office regarding the safety of students studying abroad, and to assure you that we work proactively to provide your student with access to information about safety and their program location.
We realize that events in the news, including the U.S. State Department's Worldwide Cautions and Public Announcements for various locations around the world, may have raised some appropriate concerns about going overseas. Please be aware that the State Department has been issuing public announcements and travel warnings of various sorts regularly for many years. While the information is certainly to be taken seriously, it is helpful to realize that these cautions are not necessarily a recent phenomenon, nor have they prevented thousands of U.S. students from studying safely overseas. As you read these alerts please remember that while various governmental agencies have issued warnings related to locations abroad, alerts also have been issued for locations within the U.S. Up-to-date information, including the full text of current public announcements and travel warnings, can be found at the U.S. State Department's web site: http://www.travel.state.gov.
Some of you may also be concerned that an identifiable group of Americans may be targeted in some way. Our assessment is that students can reasonably expect to avoid danger if they follow safety instructions given to them during orientations in Madison and by local staff while abroad. We communicate regularly with our overseas partners and instruct them to make assessments and adjustments to enhance safety.
All students going on any education abroad programs through the University of Wisconsin System schools are required to purchase an emergency medical insurance plan through CISI at the very reasonable rate of $37 per month. This is supplemental to any current coverage for your student and the policy can be viewed on-line .
International Programs regularly assesses safety conditions at program sites through all available channels. With special regard to student safety, our standard procedures for preparing students include:
- Fully disclosing program information to students -- we supply each student with a website about their program, provide a general online orientation, and require that they participate in a one-credit International Perspectives course prior to departure;
- Supplying students with U.S. State Department information about the country in which they will be studying, sending any updates to them at their sites, and informing them of the location of these resources on the web so that they can consult them at any time;
- Providing contact information for students in case they encounter problems while overseas -- this includes phone, fax and/or e-mail for on-site support, as well as Madison office contact information;
- Maintaining regular contact with our administrative counterparts overseas, keeping them informed of any significant developments, and making sure they can contact the students should the need arise;
- Having in place policies and plans for evaluating the situations at local sites based on changing circumstances, including the daily monitoring of U.S. State Department information;
- Urging our students to register with the U.S. Embassy or Consulate nearest to them (or, for non-U.S. citizens, their own embassy or consulate) so that they have the best possible access to the services provided by the government to its citizens when abroad.
This will be an exciting time for your student, and our office will do all it can to make it a safe, successful, and rewarding experience. If during the coming months you have any questions about your student or any aspect of their program, please feel free to contact us at 3121 Grainger Hall, 975 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706. Our main office phone number is 608-265-5017 and our e-mail is international@bus.wisc.edu. My direct phone number is 608-262-9037 and my email address is jsymonhanson@bus.wisc.edu. There is an emergency cell phone number for after hours It is checked regularly for messages: 608-516-5998.
I also remind you to consult the rest of our website designed especially for parents of study abroad participants: .
We thank you in advance for your support and guidance.
Judy Symon Hanson
Co-Director – International Programs
Next Section: The Importance of Studying Abroad