More Than Study Abroad
There is no substitute for the lessons learned by living, working and engaging with cultures different from your own. Our award-winning Global Opportunities (GO) program facilitates a more expansive view of the world — and the role we all play in it.
Susquehanna guarantees all students an opportunity to study internationally. Only one in 10 U.S. college students study abroad, but all SU students do.
Choices and Support
Through our GO program, you’ll study away from campus in a cross-cultural setting. Your options include a semester-long, study-abroad program or a minimum two-week experience during summer or winter break to learn about a different culture.
We make it easier to study abroad:
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Program choices — Study, intern, conduct research or volunteer in 70 study-abroad programs operating in 35 countries representing almost every continent. About 5% do a study away experience within the United States.
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Affordability — Every student with need receives a scholarship. For a GO Long semester experience, you’ll use the same package of scholarships and financial aid as when you attend classes on campus. For students on GO Short and GO Your Way programs, Susquehanna provides more than $750,000 in need-based aid annually.
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Faculty support — Susquehanna faculty and staff lead GO Short experiences, and will help you prepare for your GO Long or GO Your Way program.
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Easy to schedule — Because GO is already part of your four-year curriculum, your program and relative courses count toward your degree. GO Short and GO Your Way programs during semester breaks easily keep you on track to graduate in four years.
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Free passport assistance — Every semester, Susquehanna helps students by bringing passport agents to campus, helping with the paperwork, arranging passport photos and covering passport fees.
Wider Worldview, Expanded Self
Greater self-confidence and global awareness are some of the significant outcomes you will gain from education abroad, preparing you for a lifetime of personal and professional success.
You will also learn valuable things about yourself from being exposed to different cultures. You’ll try foods you’ve never had before, meet a new best friend or look at your life from a fresh perspective.
Future-proof Your Career
In addition to boosting your emotional intelligence, studying abroad helps jump-start your career. Of students who study abroad:
90% secure a career-related job and earn thousands more
within the first six months after graduation, compared to other graduates, according to an IES Abroad survey.
90% get admitted into their top choice graduate program
and students who study abroad are more likely to earn a postgraduate degree, according to a Census Bureau study.
You will gain valuable job skills such as adaptability, communication, cultural training, foreign language proficiency, problem solving and tolerance for ambiguity.
Recognized Program with Successful Students
Susquehanna University was awarded the Institute for International Education’s highest award for facilitating study-abroad opportunities and increasing students’ cultural competency — important for success in our global society. Susquehanna is recognized by Open Doors as a top study-abroad program, is on Great Value Colleges’ 30 Affordable Colleges with the Best Study Abroad Programs, and is named the Best National Liberal Arts University for Study Abroad by Intelligent.com.
The strength of Susquehanna’s GO program has also influenced student success in pursuing and achieving prestigious Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships, enabling them to study in places such as Cyprus, England, Ghana, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and South Korea. After graduation, many students have gone on to earn international graduate degrees, and others have received a highly competitive Fulbright Award to study, teach or conduct research abroad.
Intercultural Competence
Completing a Global Opportunities experience is a degree requirement unique to Susquehanna. The GO program guides Susquehanna students, faculty and staff in cross-cultural experiences that academically engage them in learning about our diverse and interconnected world.
Through completion of a GO experience, you will demonstrate a complex understanding of culture that enables you to:
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Recognize and reflect on your own culture, ethnocentric assumptions and differences/similarities between cultures.
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Recognize and articulate ways that your own identity and actions may be understood differently in various cultural settings.
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Describe how your cross-cultural experiences help you understand issues in different cultural contexts.
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Articulate how your own intercultural growth can enrich your personal development, academic development and career readiness.
Preparation and Reflection Courses
In addition to what you will learn through your cross-cultural, study-away experience, GO emphasizes what you’ll gain through the required seven-week on-campus courses you take before and after you GO:
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In preparation to learn about other cultures, you will take a one-credit-hour course where you will reflect on your own culture and gain insight into your host culture.
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Upon your return, you will take a one-credit-hour course where you will reflect on your cross-cultural experience and be able to articulate it to others, including prospective employers and graduate programs.
June 3, 2024 Two Susquehanna University students were awarded the prestigious Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, enabling them to study in Australia and Italy.
May 30, 2024 Layren McDannold ’23 has been awarded the Anne Wexler Scholarship in Public Policy from the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. The award will allow McDannold to go to Australia to pursue her master’s degree in public policy while conducting research into climate change.
May 7, 2024 Emily Hizny is readying for a nearly 5,000-mile journey to North Macedonia for a two-year commitment to the Peace Corps. While in the southern European republic, Hizny will be assigned to a primary or secondary school where she will work collaboratively with a teacher there to teach English
