College of Lake County (CLC) aims to inspire students through study abroad programs in which nearly 700 students were sent around the world between spring 2001 and fall 2017, CLC said in a recent release.
Violeta Ramirez, currently studying abroad in South Korea, experienced her first trip outside of the U.S. through a three-week field study trip to Japan in 2015, and it has changed her life forever, the release said.
“We got to know each other despite the language barrier,” Ramirez said in the release about her first encounter with Japanese students. “Because of that experience, I realized that I had a passion for travel and wanted to build a career related to travel and learning international languages.”
Ramirez went on to major in global studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee after receiving an associate degree from CLC. Had it not been for the CLC’s Center for International Education scholarship that funded half of her trip to Japan, she would have never been able to afford it, the release said.
“When you’re traveling abroad, you learn to respect other cultures and build friendships that transcend cultural differences,” Ramirez said in the release. “And having international students in the classroom at CLC is so important because we get to hear opinions and questions from a different cultural perspective.”
In the release, CLC also said it has enrolled more than 1,200 international students from over 50 different nations since 1999.
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