Dear Alumni and Alumnae,
I hope your study-abroad time is as vivid a memory as my year in Italy has been for me – and that’s 40 years ago! In fact I can’t imagine my life and career without it. When I was appointed as director of the UCSB campus office of EAP, one of my goals was to keep in closer touch with our alumni. I believe our study-abroad time remains for each of us a significant moment in our educations – and our lives – and I thought you’d enjoy being informed about the progress and new developments in EAP.
Some of you will remember me as the director of the EAP study center in London for the UK and Ireland between 1992 and 1994. I think of that time in London with my family as a chance to have another study-abroad experience, this time as a faculty member aiding some 400 UC students make the most of their year abroad. It was truly one of the high points in my academic career. In “real life” I was, and still am, a professor of English at UCSB, teaching Renaissance literature (is this a legacy of that Italian year?). Since I returned from our time in London, I’ve stayed involved in EAP.
After 9-11-2001 we worried that a more dangerous world would make fewer students eager to undertake a period of foreign study. In fact just the opposite has occurred. Not only did numbers not drop in the 2001-02 academic year, but they’ve continued to rise. Last year some 700 UCSB students studied abroad through EAP. From all the University of California system, it’s expected that around 4400 students will study abroad this year. This can only be heartening news for those of us who believe that true security in our complex world will come from men and women who have the breadth of vision that comes of having lived and studied abroad. “Now, more than ever” has become something of motto for EAP in the last several years.
I’d like to begin sending alumni of EAP a newsletter to keep you informed of new programs and to solicit your advice from time to time. We’d also like to make our returned and graduating students a potential resource to you in your professional and business lives. And we’d enjoying hearing your news, particularly about the impact study abroad has had on your lives and careers. To this end, I hope you’ll send us your current email and postal addresses to our campus email address. And please feel free to contact me directly.
More EAP students, of course, means more need for scholarship aid for current students. Should your memories of EAP prompt you, the current generation of students would be enormously grateful for whatever gift your means allow. Sudi Staub, who is the development contact for EAP, would be glad to hear from you about any gift, large or small, that you should wish to make for study-abroad scholarships.
But more than anything, we in the campus EAP office want to remain connected with our EAP alumni. Please let us how we can send you our newsletter – electronically or through regular mail. And since EAP is now 43 years old, we wonder how many families have second-generation EAP students.
With all best wishes,
Michael O’Connell
Campus EAP director, UCSB
Professor of English
