Comets travel the world during study abroad summers

From the Czech Republic to Morocco, many UTD students recently had the opportunity to spend their summers abroad, immersing themselves in distinct cultures and unforgettable experiences while furthering their education.    

UTD offers multiple study abroad programs for students to choose from. Growing more popular with each passing year, a “Maymester” offers students the opportunity to spend two weeks abroad with a cohort of fellow students led by a UTD faculty member. Students can also spend a longer time abroad through a more traditional exchange program or a six-week-long faculty-led program in the summer, and UTD also offers multiple study abroad scholarships for different times of year and financial circumstances. For psychology and child development double major Bill Pickrell, studying abroad allowed him to experience medieval history unusually — and uniquely intimately.  

Pickrell spent two weeks this past summer in London and Scotland learning the history of medicine in a program led by honors college dean Donal Skinner. As a former U.K. resident, Skinner offered the cohort a curriculum that included tours of historical sites such as Edinburgh Castle and an opportunity to learn about medieval medical practices. Pickerell said he enjoyed the lessons on the history of mental health treatments and its practice across Europe. 

“Being able to go out of the country and experience all that history in context, like where a development occurred or where a historical figure worked, and not just learning about it from a textbook, was super cool,” Pickrell said.  

This experience was Pickrell’s first time out of the country, and he took full advantage of the opportunity, exploring places like the city of Bath or a food court hidden inside an old church. The cohort took advantage of the plethora of opportunities to explore on their own and could be found singing karaoke in London and hiking Arthur’s Seat in the rain.   

“Karaoke was the first fun non-class thing we really did as a larger group,” Pickrell said. “It was a lot of fun to be able to just hang out with the big group, and acting like fools doing karaoke was a really good way to break down walls and really get to know each other as people rather than as classmates. Definitely not something I would have been likely to do in a normal classroom setting.”  

A sea away on the Eastern side of Germany, another UTD student found herself deeply immersed in the rich culture of Prague, Czechia. Prachi Bohra, a biomedical engineering junior, spent five weeks learning about human-computer interactions and technical communication from UTD professors Christina Montgomery and Erika Orrick. Bohra said that staying afloat with her assignments for her two classes was no easy task with two content-heavy project-based classes; it took some juggling to balance schoolwork and the seemingly endless sights to see in Prague. Regardless, she and her cohort spent three of their Fridays on guided day trips to Kutná Hora, Karlovy Vary, and Pilsen. They also had the opportunity to experience traditional Prague food through a cooking class, tour Prague castle and explore the city.  

“We were playing music on a speaker at the cooking class, [and] we were working on a bunch of dishes at once cause there’s like 19 of us,” Bohra said. “We started out with just cutting carrots and it was fun. It was a long table, and everyone had their own little station. It was a good time.” 

Outside of Czechia, Bohra traveled to Italy and Germany with friends from her cohort, to explore Vienna and other European cities like Stuttgart. Bohra dove into each culture, visiting the Schönbrunn palace, historical castles and cathedrals. The group ended their day with a small quartet orchestra performance.   

“I had only ever traveled with my family before, this was the first time traveling with friends my age, and I thought it was really fun,” Bohra said. 

In Morocco, Nathaniel Collins, an international political economy senior, spent two weeks studying Arabic and history. Collins said the Arabic lessons taught by the Council of International Education instructors came in handy as the cohort spent multiple days outside of their host town in cities like Fez, Chefchaouen and Marrakech. In addition to the language classes, the Maymester included a project the students completed independently by meeting with local residents to research a topic such as women’s rights, the economy or Morocco’s education system. In Fez, Collins and his cohort spent three hours on a guided tour; jumping from olive markets to tanneries to mosques, the group saw the vivid culture intertwined in all aspects of Moroccan life. The group was split among host families, so each student had a unique experience.  

“It ranged where you were, you could live in someone’s basement or you could live in a two-story house,” Collins said. “They don’t really pick and choose based on financial status but based on how well they can maintain a student. I had a family that spoke both Spanish and English and corrected my Arabic, everything I thought I knew and didn’t know, so I had a really good experience myself.”  
 

With multiple different opportunities to choose from, resources like the Comets Abroad Instagram page and faculty-led informational sessions are designed to help students pinpoint where they want to travel in their upcoming semesters as UTD students.  

“I absolutely would recommend this to any student; being able to have that opportunity to go out of the country was so eye-opening on its own,” Pickrell said. “The experience was truly life-changing.”