Ecuador Abroad Trip Reduces Size Amidst Growing Interest
At Exeter, rising seniors who have completed two years of Spanish may choose to study abroad during their winter term in the city of Cuenca, Ecuador to enhance language skills, build a relationship with a host family and enjoy the South American sunlight. The trip to Ecuador, due to its appeal among seniors who are interested in the aforementioned aspect of the trip, witnessed a surge in the number of applicants for next year’s trip.
“I’m glad that there is such a strong interest in going abroad in the Class of 2016, as I see it as an essential part of my Exeter experience.”
Last academic year, the department received 13 applications and granted admission to 12. This year the faculty have to narrow down a pool of 26 applications.
Senior Zach Hamdi, one of 12 students who went on this year’s trip, attributed the sharp rise in applicants to the good reviews he and the other students had given to the program upon their return to campus.
“I think hearing positive things about the trip from someone you know can prove instrumental in your decision to go abroad—it certainly was for me—and I think with more questions asked and more positive things said the popularity of the trip will only rise,” Hamdi said.
For Eimer Page, the Acaedmy’s Director of Global Initiatives, the spike in applications was not surprising. “It goes in waves” Page said, noting that last year, students expressed more interest in the Taiwan program. “It isn’t really possible to predict, because it is based on student interest, which has so many variables.” These “variables” may be a low number of Spanish-speaking varsity players in the winter or awareness spread through friend groups.
Although some believe the trip is more of a vacation, modern languages instructor Fermin Perez-Andreu does not attribute the increase in applications to the mentality that Ecuador will be “some sort of vacation.” Ultimately, “It’s not” he said, though students are offered a multitude of exciting opportunities. The trip allows students to “get into the culture on so many levels that school can not provide” modern languages instructor Ahmed Jebari said.
Along with the opportunity to study and live with a host family in Cuenca, students participate in a community service project and an excursion to the Galápagos Islands.
Hamdi said that the trip to the Galápagos was one of his favorite moments of his term abroad. “The untouched natural beauty of the islands was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have gone,” Hamdi said.
Although the program has special opportunities like the Galápagos, it is still a part of the Spanish language program, and Cuenca is well-suited to the prospective students who have an interest in expanding their language skills. “Living with a host family with whom you must communicate every day in spanish forces you to learn and adapt in a language that you have been learning for years,” upper Joon Kim, an applicant for the upcoming year, said.
Upper Zaidee Laughlin, another applicant, said that she is interested in any trip abroad and added that her love for the Spanish language makes the Cuenca trip “perfect.”
Rumors surrounding the possible cancellation of the trip or reduction in its size have been floating around campus in recent weeks. A student who requested to remain anonymous said, “I think it would be an absolute shame to cancel the trip for ‘problems’ present in every single abroad program.”
Regarding the rumors, Jebari said, “the department did not consider canceling the program,” dispelling these rumors. Instead of making significant changes to the program, the faculty are going to continue taking the students to Ecuador, in hopes that “we can continue there making it better every time we go,” Perez said.
As Page noted, “the program had 11 participants this year and is likely to have 10 or 11 next year, too.” Hamdi and the other seniors that went this winter enjoyed the small group of 11 for the close dynamic, though he added, “I would not see a problem to increasing the group size marginally, to possibly 13 or 14—something which the Taiwan trip did in order to accommodate an influx of applications.”
Although it is a possibility that the group size will increase by one or two, the department wants to make sure that the group is small enough that “the faculty chaperone is able to build a relationship with each host family and to hold classes of a reasonable size,” Page said.
Another reason for taking such a small group is that the Ecuador program is relatively new. In past years, the Spanish language term abroad program had been located in Mexico, and the recent switch to Ecuador makes the trip more difficult to supervise. “It seems like we need to make sure that the Cuenca program, which is very new for us, runs smoothly, and a lower number of student would help with that,” Perez said.
There is a rigorous selection process to narrow down the applicant pool to the handful of students whom the faculty believe are the best fit for the program. The process takes into account the academic, attendance, discipline and transcripts of every applicant.
Although the final decision rests in the hands of the department, lists of the applicants are available to the entire faculty body. The faculty members can provide important commentary about how they believe a student will behave in the independent environment and whether he or she will be a respectful guest in a host family’s home. Students will be informed of the department’s decision before registration for next term’s classes.
Unfortunately, the department will not be able to accept the majority of the interested students for next year. However, faculty and former attendees are still happy to see such excitement about a school trip.
As Hamdi said, “I’m glad that there is such a strong interest in going abroad in the Class of 2016, as I see it as an essential part of my Exeter experience.”