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To make education abroad more inclusive, institutions need to design international experiences that more closely align with underrepresented students' identities and interests, by charlotte west
Darayon Moore, pre-med major at Kentucky Wesleyan College, knows there are fellow students on campus who want to study abroad but are discouraged by "so many different things, such as money or just the thought of not being able to go," she says. "I know, because I was one of those students."
Moore will be going to Tanzania this summer as one of the inaugural recipients of the NAFSA Tamara H. Bryant Memorial Scholarship, which offers funding for African American students to study abroad. With her program's focus on medicine and social work, Moore hopes the experience will make her a better doctor.
"As a doctor, you have to be able to relate to your patients, no matter where in the world they come from," says Moore, who is a firstgeneration college student.
She will join the approximately 300,000 U.S. students who study abroad each year-about one in 10 undergraduates, according to the Institute of International Education (HE). Yet, Moores story indicates a larger trend. Andrew Gordon, founder and CEO of Diversity Abroad, notes that there are often g parallels between students who are underrepresented in education abroad and students who have historically been marginalized in higher education as a whole. These groups include students of color, first-generation students, low-income students, students with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ students. There is often significant overlap between the needs of these historically marginalized groups.
Participation Gaps
Nationwide data on study abroad rates remain scarce for most of these groups, partly because the data aren't broken down beyond the categories of gender, race, and disability. But even within those groups, there is a dearth of information about who these students are and their multiple, often intersecting, identities.
"If you look at [IIE's] Open Doors report, it doesn't cover the intersection of race and gender," says Aaron Bruce, chief diversity officer at ArtCenter College of Design. "We know that males are least likely to go abroad, but when it comes to African American or Latinx males, we have no idea. No one can tell me the number of African American males who go abroad nationally."