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High school students get BSU credit studying abroad
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Idaho high school students who travel abroad as part of an educational exchange program can now earn college credit at Boise State University.
Participants typically spend four weeks, one semester, or a full academic year studying abroad during their junior year of high school.
Students who follow state guidelines for documenting their experiences are eligible for one humanities internship credit at Boise State.
This new agreement between Boise State’s Concurrent Enrollment Program in the Division of Extended Studies and the State Department of Education is the first of its kind in the country, according to Dan Prinzing, coordinator for international education for the state.
“Senator Larry Craig co-sponsored a resolution proclaiming 2006 as the Year of Study Abroad,” Prinzing said. “Other states, just like Idaho, have been engaged in programs and projects to encourage study abroad opportunities.”
According to Prinzing the student gain is three-fold: the experience will reinforce students’ understandings of the Idaho Achievement Standards for the Humanities, the learning experience will be captured in a product that can be shared with the students’ school and community, and students begin to consider opportunities available at the university.
“One in every six jobs is linked to international markets,” Prinzing said. “Consequently, students (future workers) will need to be equipped with an understanding of other cultures, a geographic awareness of the world around them, and a realization of global interdependence.”
BSU’s Concurrent Enrollment Jump Start Program sets several prerequisites for students; they must be 16-years old, have successfully completed half of their high school graduation requirements, and have a minimum grade point average of 3.0.
In order to earn the credit they must complete several learning objectives, document their trip, and complete a paper.
Along with the price of the trip, students have to provide a discounted rate of $50 per credit. Fabiola Juarez-Coca, concurrent enrollment coordinator at BSU, said the goal of the program is to help students make transitions into the university setting at a low cost.
According to Juarez-Coca, students will earn credit at their high school as well as at Boise State.
She said they want the students to have studied a second language for at least a year before going on the trip.
The students also are required to stay with a host family for a week.
The credit the students earn will be transferable as an elective.
“The goal is that while they are at the high school the students will be exposed to these other countries and the idea of traveling so that when they get to the university
setting they will continue with that,” Juarez-Coca said. “They will share what they learned, but also look at the study of our programs at whatever university they end up with and continue with that journey of traveling and meeting people and learning.”
The first students who took advantage of the new arrangement were a group at Meridian High School who just returned from a four-week stay in Germany.
Six out of ten students are planning to obtain college credit.
Anne Hay, who has been a German teacher at Meridian High school for 20 years, accompanied the students on the trip.
Hay said the most important things that students learn while studying abroad is that, “there is a whole world out there which is quite different from the world in which they have grown up; with other ideas, customs, and value systems, not to mention language.”
Jaclyn Wight, a student from the group at Meridian High school, said she is planning on earning college credit for the trip.
According to Wight, the most valuable experience was learning about another country’s culture and history.
Joslyn Salow
News Writer