Of the nearly 600,000 students enrolled in degree granting institutions in North Carolina, only two percent of those students studied abroad in the 2013-2014 academic year. Meanwhile, Elon University celebrates the fact that over 70 percent of its students get the opportunity to study abroad at some point during their four years at the school. In the 2014 fall semester, more than 400 Elon students studied in a foreign country, earning the number one ranking for study abroad by many organizations including the Princeton Review and the Center of International Education.
It’s no secret or surprise that an experience like study abroad will have vast effects on students. From gaining an increased sense of independence as young adults to learning about and assimilating into a new culture, the effects of study abroad are profound. That being said, these personal changes students frequently undergo can oftentimes lead to difficulty reintegrating into campus life upon return.
Kristen Aquilino holds a joint position at Elon between the Student Professional Development Center and the Global Education Center as an assistant director for Global Student Engagement. She works with students who have global career aspirations, along with those who have just returned from their semester studying abroad, many struggling with reentry to the U.S. and Elon.
Senior Melanie Mackin was one of those students who didn’t understand her place at Elon anymore after returning from a semester studying in Dublin, Ireland in the fall of her junior year. She found that the activities that once brought her joy on Elon’s campus no longer satisfied her.
“I think I definitely matured and grew up and kind of prioritized different things,” Mackin said. “I had spent all this free time exploring new cities, in a high paced lifestyle and I just really enjoyed learning about new cultures when we would travel on the weekends. Going from different museums and learning about the history of the cities to then coming back to Elon where in people’s free time it was more spent partying. I had a really hard time adjusting back to that lifestyle.”
Senior Melanie Mackin (left) explores the Cliffs of Moher during her semester studying abroad in Dublin, Ireland in Fall 2016. Courtesy: Melanie Mackin
“I think I would state the same thing as when we try to distinguish between someone who lost someone that’s really valuable and it’s natural for people to be depressed for a certain period of time,” said clinical psychologist and associate professor Bilal Ghandour.
While the label “post abroad depression” holds no medical validity, as it is not recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), Ghandour said it’s important to look for signs potentially pointing to something more serious.
“You expect this to last a month, two months, but if it goes beyond this we start to wonder if there’s a problem with readjustment,” Ghandour said. “And when we look at the problem with readjustment, we start looking at, okay this problem may have had symptoms in the past, for other reasons and now they’ve reemerged because of this trigger so to speak, because they feel sad, lonely lost, because it is a loss as well. So that’s what we try to distinguish.”
Despite study abroad rates increasing year to year around the world, psychology professor and director for the Center for Research on Global Engagement, Dr. Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler, said research on the effects a study abroad experience has on students is sparse. Vandermaas-Peeler would like to see this change so terms such as “post abroad depression” aren’t thrown around without validity. She said there is such a wide range of elements within study abroad to examine that currently lack empirical data and research.
Elon’s Center for Research on Global Engagement is a year old program with the focus of building scholarship on study abroad practices, effects, and general global engagement. Vandermaas-Peeler said she understands the intensity of an experience like study abroad, as she spent a semester teaching in Denmark last Spring.
Although, according to the Global Education Center, understanding how to properly utilize and integrate students’ abroad experiences is a work in progress, Elon offers reentry sessions to students the semester they return back to campus. The sessions include topics of how to integrate and utilize abroad experiences with employers, how to productively reflect, and positive outlets of expressing one's experience. Aquilino, who runs many of these sessions, hopes to expand future sessions to allow students to pick the topic they would like to focus on and even set up group sessions with people they are comfortable with. She said despite the vast number of students who come to her struggling with reintegration, turnout for the sessions are always very low.
Students participate in a reflection activity at an abroad reentry event held by the Student Professional Development Center and Global Education Center.
The study abroad experience is a "transformative" experience that every student processes differently, according to Aquilino. She said that not all students have a problem readjusting to the United States or campus life.