Good evening. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Matt Drex I'm the director of Study Abroad here at the Global Programs and Services. Before we click the button. I'm just going to let everyone know that we'll record this session so that we can share it out afterwards. You can watch the recording. We'll also follow up with some links. So just to let you know we're starting now. Go ahead, Marie. Okay. All right. Again, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the pre departure orientation from the Center for Global Programs and Services for all of our 24 J, that's summer and 24 F. That's fall. Study a broad students. Se some faculty in too. So welcome to all our faculty directors. Thank you for joining. Joining us this evening. I hope everyone's excited. I know we're in the middle of the end of the school year, so we'll try to be efficient with this. You'll hear from me throughout the presentation, and there'll be some time for questions at the end. So, again, if you're not traveling on a summer or fall program, you don't need to be here. If you are. Thanks for coming. Here's a quick overview of our agenda this evening. By way of introduction, we're done with that one already. I'm Mat, Drexel. There's a few of the study team members in the room. So I'll just shout out. The ones that I can see on top here. Marie is here helping she's on the controls. So thank you Marie for being the Zoom Controls. And then Suzanne Stanley is with a nice image of. I've never know where that is. Denmark or Germany, maybe. And then Des Wright is here. And I suppose the others if they're not in yet are on their way, Eileen Peters, Jamie Golden, Valerie Shipman Sara Dole. So thanks for joining everybody. Again, this session will be followed up with an e mail with all the links and a copy for the recording or the link to the page with the recording case, you want to revisit this or show it to your family members later on. You'll be able to reference back to all the things that we say today. So we're going to walk through a little bit of preparture preparation. So this will be one part getting ready mentally for what is a really exciting and life changing experience, we'll overview some of the policies that you'll need to keep in mind. We'll go over some help. Support resources for health and well being, as well as safety. While you're abroad, we'll talk about preparing for the actual travel, a couple of little hips and tricks, checklists, towards the end. And then we'll talk a little bit about sharing your story through either our broad storytelling contest when you get back or through our photo circles and social media while you're abroad. So we know that you're really excited. I would be, too. I'm always jealous during these meetings that all of you are about to spread out around the world, where we stay back here in Newark, making sure everything's running okay and helping out your faculty and partners as needed. But a few things to point out and think about we dive into this. One, is certainly that travel is a privilege. We're lucky to have the opportunity to travel. I'm sure for many of you, it took a lot of work, a lot of saving. There may be still more savings to come as you think not getting into your summer jobs and saving up the rest of the money you'll need to have a good time and travel while you're abroad. So we're thankful for this privilege, and I hope you'll treat it as the privilege that it truly is. Tonight is all about preparation, knowing the rules from UD, your host institution, the host country, reading e mails and following steps. So we'll say this a few times tonight, but tonight is about preparation. So bear with us, some of it's not the most exciting part of the process, but all really necessary to set you up for success. We would like you to walk away tonight with a few big ideas in your head. One of them being to travel with intention. Venturing out into the world comes with impact and a footprint that you'll leave behind as you travel, whether that be impressions that you leave on people in your host country, your host institution, or whether that be the environmental impact that we all have from flying and traveling. So we hope that you'll travel with intention that you'll focus on things like depth of experience about really engaging with your hostation your host country, host culture, or the program that your faculty directors have put together for you. This is not your average trip. You can go on travel website and book a trip book a vacation. And one every one. Study brought is special. It includes academic content that links what you're seeing to what you're learning in the classroom and things that will benefit you for your career and your academics when you get back to UD. The tension there is always with breadth. Everybody wants to knock off all the items from the bucket list and go everywhere. Of course, that's part of the experience, but we want you to be balanced and take an intentional approach to that. We're also really proud that you represent part of a huge global community here at the University of Delaware. If you're not aware, there's over 4,000 international students and scholars from around the world right here at UD, from 100 plus different countries. More than 1,100 students a year study abroad. We've been doing this for 100 years. So you can imagine the size of the global community at UD, and you're officially becoming a part of that now. If you haven't already studied abroad, spent time in the global community here on campus, been a part of our Delaware diplomats program, our world scholars program. Welcome to the UD Global Community. We hope you'll be a good steward of the opportunity and wear the badge of UD Global well as you travel. So I'll say it again. Prepare. We'll get to the details of that in a minute. But first, I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about experience, the learning journey that you're going to go on. So this will be kind of quick, but I hope these are little seeds that will help you prepare yourself mentally for what can be an awesome adventure and also a really challenging experience. So just a little bit stepping back here to the idea of some learning theory, leaving your comfort zone, is the nature of study abroad. That's the foundation of what study abroad does for you as a learner, as a college student. It helps you get out of the normal day to day cycles of campus life, which hopefully have been comfortable to you by this point. If they're not, please let us know, try to help you with that, too. But leaving your comfort zone to study abroad diversifies how you learn. This is a new method of learning. It's experiential. It's through deep encounters with host cultures. It's through confusing experiences that can be really frustrated. But really, it's an intention to move towards growth. And you can see here from the little graphic, the idea of moving out of your comfort zone through what can be a scary period of fear, where you might be anxiety. You might feel a little bit of lack of self confidence as you're like, I'm not ready for this. I don't know how to speak Spanish well enough to go to Gernada. I have no idea what I'm doing. That fear is normal. That's part of what PDO, pre departure orientation is all about. That's what your faculty directors and program coordinators and host institutions are there to help you with to move you towards learning and growth. The learning zone in this picture is outside of your comfort zone. So none of this is going to be entirely easy. For those of you who have traveled in the past, you already know this. It's uncomfortable. You don't know which way is up in and out. You can't read the signs. There's all kinds of confusing experiences. But it is a space where you'll acquire new skills, whether that be how to navigate a foreign culture or the logistics of a foreign airport, knowledge and insights that you gain from both the classroom and from the experiential opportunities that you'll have throughout, and it's continuous. So the learning zone in the study broad experience is a continuous learning and development phase. Whether it's a summer program of three weeks or eight weeks, some of them are or a full semester abroad this fall. The learning will be continuous. Whether it's about yourself, with knowledge, whatever it may be, there's learning around every corner. A little bit outside of that, of course, is the growth zone. That you start to feel like a little bit more of an expert, and you start to feel like you know what you're doing. And that's where you can sort of embrace the failures that you experience, make sure that you seek support, and then celebrate your successes because that growth zone is the story that everyone tells about study Bro. It's the unique experience that you can sit down and talk about in your interview for your first job someday to set yourself apart from other candidates to say, I've been out there in the growing zone. I know what that means. I know what continuous improvement is. I know how to survive outside my comfort zone. A little note here just outside the growth zone, some of the graphics that you would see of this learning theory would show you sort of a zone of chaos, where things aren't going well, where support isn't there, where failures can be dangerous, can be risky, and where success is limited. That's where things get a little bit chaotic. And that's what we're here to say tonight is that there are a lot of ways to gain support and make sure that that doesn't happen for you. In the case that it does, we have a plan for that, too. Zooming in a little bit, one of the big ideas that you're run into is the idea of culture shock. Culture shock. I'll show you a different graphic in a second. You've probably heard of it before. You've already been through this by coming to college, you know, the first month on campus as a first year student or if you're a world scholar, the first month in the spring when you got back from abroad, you went through it for the second time. That's where a different culture causes you to have different feelings and emotions, and it's a roller coaster. It can range from stress and depression to excitement and harmony and learning. New relationships. It can bring about acceptance. You see the word about here. It's full of great ideas that result from the culture shock curt. But here's the little graphic that I hope you can just kind of burn in your brains. This one's nice and simple, maybe oversimplified, but nonetheless, for you to use as a tool as you get ready. So right now, you're the studious one in the book, getting ready tonight is about preparation. Once you have your ticket and all the checklists done, You'd be excited to go. Here we go. Let's go. That's the nervous period, right? That might be where you're breaking through a few of those fears in the comfort zone journey. But nonetheless, you'd be on your way. You arrive abroad. I love the MOG with the little bagette sticking out of the grocery bag. You're going to try the new foods. You're going to be having fun seeing things for the first time, the sights, the smells, the first few photos when you get there, hopefully, really exciting. But then comes a little bit, the dark side of the culture shock curve, homesickness, you know, disbelief, discomfort. There are all kinds of little problems that pop up that you might not be expecting. And even for those of you who are going on three week journeys on faculty led programs this summer, you will go through this. It might be day two or three, and it might wrap up by day four or five. But nonetheless, you'll feel that day where you've got the homesick blues. And then the journey on the way up has a lot to do with frustration. So you'll find yourself frustrated with the way that things work in your post country. Not everybody likes to get in line in a nice clean way like we do here in the United States. It might be just, you know, a mob rush to the cafe counter. And you'll be frustrated. Like, why can't people just get in line, right? Little things like that can really get under your skin. And that's part of the journey. So it's patience with yourself. And it's a little bit of a counter intuitive approach to getting through the downside of the culture shock curve. And that is to engage. That's to get out. You have to go do things. You have to get through those experiences. Whether you want to call them fears or frustrations, you have to push through a little bit. Of course, that's all stressful, and we want to make sure you're doing it in a healthy and balanced way. And then a little bit, we'll talk about some of the resources and ways that you can make sure that you have the support to do that. Of course, the upside of this is when you start to feel like I could be from here. I could move here. I could live here, or you're ready for the next thing, right? It's a fantastic experience. Getting ready to come home, I was another tough part of the experience. We'll talk about coming home when you get home, but the whole thing starts all over again. You'll come home and be like, Why is there so much traffic? Why can't there just be better buses? Why aren't there good subways in the US, right? You'll have all these grand ideas from your wonderful experience abroad and come home to run into the reality of life back in the US, which you may have a different perspective on. Hopefully, you will. But your mind will certainly change. I say all that to just plant a few seeds here quickly in the beginning of our orientation meeting. It's something that we have programs and services to help you with all throughout your experience and when you get home. And just to let you know sort of that we're here when you get back, especially. I mean, while you're gone, we'll be watching and keeping tabs on what's happening to make sure that we're supporting anything that you need. But at the same time, when you come home, it's the reflection on your experience that will matter. If you haven't thought of this already, I really encourage everybody to make sure that you journal while you're traveling, that you engage with the program that's set up by your faculty directors and your host organizations. They build in this reflection on your experience and a day to day on a week to week basis to make sure that you're processing the experience and really getting yourself through it with learning and with a chance to digest what's been going on. It happens too fast. So if you take the time to write it down by a classic journal, use a pen and paper, it's wonderful feeling to do that. So I highly encourage everybody to put that into your plans to give yourself an opportunity to track what you're doing and then reflect on it a little bit later because that's when you'll really learn and be able to put together the ideas that we have a longer term impact on you. That's the part that gets me really excited. So I'll just take a quick deep breath there because I'm going to move on to some of the nitty gridi and nuts and bolts of this whole thing. And that is preparation. So preparation is a screenshot, right? If you Google preparation, quotes, you get 1 million ideas, but I like this one that I don't know who half of these people are with these quotes or if they're even accurate. But nonetheless, the idea that success is where preparation and opportunity meet is a very real thing for study abroad. If you're not prepared, if you're not doing some of the things that we're going to talk about through the next ten or 15 slides, it'll be confusing. It'll be frustrating. You'll be scattered and losing pieces of yourself along the way. So we want to make sure that you're prepared to focus on the success and come out the other side with the kind of confidence and terrific experience that we expect that you'll have. So here's a list. There are a few final pre departure steps that we want everyone to keep in mind. And I realize that some of you leaving this summer might be a lot closer to finishing these steps than those of you that are leaving in the fall. So if you're leaving in the fall, great. You have even more time to prepare if you're leaving in the summer? And some of this sounds like, what is he talking about Please take action immediately because you're leaving in a few short weeks and it's a busy end of the school year, and we want to make sure you're good to go. So especially for summer students, you will need to submit updated contact and flight information into UDs Crisis 24 system and share that with your host institutions as requested. So host institution in this case, may also mean your faculty director. So if your faculty ask you to send send them a copy of your flights, please make sure you've done that. The Crisis 24 system We'll talk about a little bit more later. But that's our way of tracking all of your travel. So that lets us know who's on what flights if something were to happen, if there's a shutdown at Heathrow Airport and dozens of you get delayed because of it. That system will give us a alert so that we can snap into action and try to help out. So it's really important that you put your accurate flight information into that system, especially if you're a summer traveler. If you're a fall traveler, I'll repeat this a few times, but if you're a false traveler, you're going to receive specific instructions for how to do this. Crisis 24 is switching from the old platform to the new platform, and so we'll need the fall students to do this exclusively in the new platform. The summer students, you have the pleasure of being part of the transition. So please follow the instructions that you've received so far to upload your flights into Crisis 24. You'll need to download two important apps, the Go Blue app, which we'll talk about in detail a little bit later. We'll show you the links to get it and the timely care app. If you don't already UDs timely care app, you'll want to download those. So if you want to look them up and get started now, so they're on your phone while we talk later, that would be terrific. As I mentioned, Crisis 24 You will have seen maybe the name drum Cusac out there. Funny name. Sounds like a law firm. That thing, drum thing is going away. So the new name of Crisis 24 will be Crisis 24 horizon. This is great. Horizon scanning for risk, for intelligence. It does all kinds of really powerful things that help us make sure that you're all safe while you travel. It also helps us keep track of you if you enter your information. So Crisis 24 Hizon is the service. It's not quite set up yet. So please look out for the e mails over the next couple of weeks to make sure you're in the right version. The drum cuac thing will go away. It'll redirect you over to Horizon if you go to the wrong place, but still Horizon is the new thing. And then attend orientation meetings and follow specific instructions for flights and border crossings. So a lot of these site by site will be discussed by program coordinators and faculty directors in your pre departure orientation meetings with them. Okay. Traveling responsibly. We're going to go through a few things that are your responsibilities while abroad and a couple of ideas about how to travel responsibly. I love the idea of leaving nothing behind but your footprints. We could probably expand that to say the impressions that you leave on others. We know that this is ecologically minded thing, please don't leave your trash behind as you go, whether that be your attitudes or physical trash, I think it all counts. So some of your responsibilities while you're abroad, upload your free time trips into the Crisis 24 app. So we know you all will run around on free weekends and take breaks to go to different countries and knock off items from those bucket lists. That's fantastic. If you upload them into Crisis 24, It allows us to support you even more. So it's quick. You just enter your flights. You can do it while you're sitting in the airport before you take off. Oh, yeah. That guy from UD said, upload my flights. That way, same thing. If you're traveling to You know, a place where we don't have students or a place where we might not have a study broad partner, and we know you're there through the alerts that come out in the Crisis 24 app. We can help you. If you're off on free time travel and we don't even know you're there, it's going to be a lot harder for us to respond and help if something goes wrong. Of course, that's, you know, old man in the room thinking about what could go wrong, but nonetheless, upload your flights so that we can support you. You need to have an active phone plan that can make and receive local and international calls. We need to be able to reach you. Your family needs to be able to reach you. Faculty director needs to be able to reach you. This will happen in a variety of formats. Some of you are staying longer will get a local number. That's great. I think that's better. It's easier to make friends when you have a local number. Some of you might just be turning on your US plan or you have T Mobile that just works anywhere in the world. Sorry, that's not an ad for T Mobile, although that's what I have, and it works great. So you don't want to rely on WiFi. You can't be, you know, WiFi scavenging around the town to see which cafe has what? You need a real plan. If you need to dial 911 or use the Crisis 24 app to hit the SOS button and ask for help, you need to be connected at all times. Our systems rely on that. That's the world easiest day. I can't imagine you all traveling without that. Admirable if you want to try to disconnect, but I don't think now is the time. So please have a local phone number or a plan that can make and receive local and international calls. Knowing the number for 911 is the real deal. It's not 911 in all of the world. I'm not going to try to rattle off all the one one and four fours around the world right now, but you'll need to know what that number is in your host country, how to reach emergency services is a pretty good thing to have in mind. And then you need to know policies. So your host institution, your faculty directors, they're all going to have specific rules for the program, ranging from normal stuff, like what time you're expected to show up to different behavioral standards of conduct, community standards. Academic standards vary slightly from place to place, so you need to know all the rules. That's a classic ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law kind of policy. And then your responsibility is to explore and consider your impact as you do so. Okay, quick note about COVID. We're still talking about it because it still is out there. I know we don't care about it as much as we used to, but some of us who remember pandemic travel are still a little bit shaken. And want to set. So, here it is. You know the rules from your host institution and host country. Some places are a little bit more careful or a little bit more strict. Some places still have alert systems that will let you know if there's a local outbreak and you need take action. So you need to be compliant with local rules and regulations, including vaccines, testing, masking, quarantining, isolation, any of those rules. I still really recommend wearing PPE as you travel. It's just become a habit of mine. There's no reason to get sick on a plane and planes are nasty. So just try to avoid getting sick during transit, so you don't lose days during your program. Just kind of a smart thing to do, and now that the world is used to seeing masks. No one really looks at you as funny as they used to. So take care. Be aware of COVID 19. There's plenty of other things out there, too. Of course, the seasonal flu is a big deal around the world right now. And if you get sick, we got to plan for that. So I'll talk about that in a little bit. Okay. A few travel policies. I wanted to talk a little bit about this idea of risk and security assessment for while you travel. Just so you know, I think it is often reassuring, especially, especially with all the crazy stuff that we see in the news these days. All of our programs are reviewed by a group called the UD Risk I Security Assessment Committee. That's a committee that looks at the safety and risk associated with traveling anywhere in the world at any time. So whether that be your, you know, seemingly safe and benign trip to Rome or something that tons of people do all the time, or whether that be, our students who go to anzania and stay in tents in the Bush. We check it out. We make sure that it's safe and ready to go through a multi part process. So the first and foremost on that list is the US Department of State Travel Advisory. They use a level one through four scale. Levels one and two are, you know, pretty standard levels of safety. Good to go. No problems there. Level three and four, level three is reconsidered, travel level four do not travel. So it's a very clear system that we abide by any programs that are level three or four destinations require a whole other set of approvals and a long process to make sure that the plan in place is safe and secure for everybody. Unless something changed in the last few hours, everybody's traveling, this summer and fall is going to places that are level one and two on the US Department of State travel advisory levels. Crisis 24 then is our other resource to assess and analyze intelligence and risk. If you haven't been in the app already to enter your flights when you get in there or if you want to go back and check this out, it's pretty neat. You know, from a Yeah, I just think it's neat. Anyway, they'd monitor several different categories of risk, including security. So they'll have alerts in there. For example, I just saw one today about upcoming transit strike protests in London that could affect operations at Heathrow Airport. It told me that there's one UD person in the area. If they were planning to travel today or tomorrow, They might be stock or delayed just because things are shutting down for a moment for a local protest. So that kind of security and infrastructural risk is something that they consider. Environmental risk is exactly what it sounds like from weather events to you know, if a chemical plant had a leak or something like that, right, they keep an eye on things like that. Medical risks talk about how the country's healthcare system is operating if it were to be overwhelmed by a pandemic or the flu or some other thing that happened, we would get alerts to let us know that going to the hospital might come with a long wait time or it is only reserved for people with certain conditions. So the Crisis 24 system is fantastic. It really gives us an overview of everything. We use another organization called the Overseas advisory security Advisory Council OSACOv to formulate a questionnaire, an audit of each program so that we're sure that all the people, places and partners that we're using meet certain standards and that we have all the information we need to know exactly what's happening throughout a program. We require all programs that have a high level of local support. So your faculty directors will be working with local partners or if you're traveling for the fall semester, you're working with long term partners who know us well and have similar standards of care and emergency responses we do. And then, of course, reviewing the program itinerary to make sure we've thought of everything. So we spent a lot of time on this. It helps make sure that when you're sending over 1,000 students a year, they're all around the world that we really cover all of our faces. So if you have any questions about this or how your destination may have made it through the review process or want some advice on something you see within Crisis 24, please reach out. I'll be happy to either connect you with experts at Crisis 24 to learn more and try to answer any questions that you may have about risk insecurity. Okay. This is the long arm of the UDL slide, as I like to call. This means, right? The study abroad policies include safety and conduct policies from the University of Delaware. So UDs Office of Community Standards and Conflict Resolution maintains standards here at UD. Those rules follow you while you're abroad. So if it's, you know, not an activity or a behavior that you should engage in here on campus, don't do it while you're abroad. Likewise, host institutions have their own policies and are aware of ours. It's part of the process of becoming a partner with somebody. We make sure we talk about our community standards and their community standards and the processes that go into helping students when something goes wrong or when they violate certain standards. So we're aligned with our partners on this. It should feel fairly familiar. If you're on a faculty led program, it's really just possible. You'll be in and out of all kinds of different spaces, university spaces, museums, event spaces. So it's a good thing to just be aware of that our community standards will help guide you through all of that. Okay. Independent travel, like I said, checking all those things off of your bucket list is a big deal. We want you to do that. We want you to have fun doing that. But we need to remind you of a few things here. One is that phone number. I want to make sure you have that phone number so that we have your information. If we need to find you or reach you, if your parents panic and we have to help them get ahold of you that happens. But nonetheless, we want to make sure that you're prepared to be reached. Travel outside of the official program dates is your own responsibility. So if you're going before your program starts or if you're staying after the UDD support is really during the period of your program. So we're going to make sure you know that. If you're going early, things like UD health insurance covered won't cover you for those first couple of days before the official program start date, and they won't cover you for a few days afterwards. So you need to make sure that you have your own health insurance that would cover for you for those days, you know that your faculty are either in transit or getting ready for everybody to arrive, so they're not there to help you. And just like UD, host institutions aren't open until they say they're open. You can't move into campus like a week early just because you feel like it. So you can't expect to just show up at your host institution and move in outside of their rules and boundaries. So the part that's outside the official program dates that are on our pages and then our acceptance instructions are your responsibility. And then I've said this I think four times already, but nonetheless, please enter all your independent travel in crisis 24 so that we can help you. So when things go wrong and they do. We're ready for that, too, and that's not just because we're the global office and the knowers of all things global. We collaborate with all the same campus support units and campus offices that you're used to working with. So in the event of almost anything, we'll be working with these partners here on campus to help resolve whatever might be happening, whether that be emergency management, environmental health and safety, student health services, student wellness and health promotion, all these different Student Support offices and the Division of student life, I will be there to help you similarly, academically. The resources of the Dean of Students Office, Office of Academic Enrichment, are all still available to you. You're just UD students abroad, nonetheless, UD students. So all those support services are there for you. I know you're going to be far away from Newark, and it's easy to forget that. But you're still UT student, and all this stuff is here to help you. We see this a lot, and I can't emphasize it enough, especially academically. If you're having a hard time meeting the standards, understanding the standards, whatever it may be. You need to reach out back home and say, Hey, you told me this would make sense, and it's not making sense. So we'll help you figure it out. I'll make sure things are going well for you academically, you know, outside of you with your own time management and putting in the effort. So please don't hesitate to reach out. These offices, know how to help students abroad, and we're ready for it. Okay. Onto the topic of health. And I'm going fast, but again, it's recorded, so I'll watch back if you want to hear it again. Travel health is a big topic. It can be complicated. I mean, the American healthcare system is complicated. Now you have to do it in different country, different language, different rules. So we're going to walk through a lot of resources and a couple of screenshots here to help make sure you're familiar with it and that you can get the apps on your phones and be ready to go. But from physical health, to mental health and well being, you need to consider all of it. We take a holistic understanding of what it means to be healthy abroad, just like we do here on campus. So these, again, along the theme of UD stuff is available to you while you're abroad. These are UD resources that you can use while you're abroad, the UD helpline. 302-831-1001 is a 24365 support line. That's the real life line. If you're not sure what to do, call the help line. They will triage your issue that will get you in front of the right counselors, the right support services, direct you back to our office. If it's that kind of thing, the UD help line can be terrific, especially when you're feeling anxious and overwhelmed and not really sure what to do next. The timely care app I mentioned, I'll show you a few shots of this, so you know how to get in there if you haven't already. But this is, you know, mental health and emotional support crisis management through UD. It's from the Center for Counseling and student development. You can connect with therapists online. You can access virtual care online. It's a terrific app and works pretty quickly, too, you get ahold of someone to talk to like right away when you log in there. The LiveSafe app from UDPD has a little bit of limited functionality, but you can access the UDPD. You can call them through the app, and I mean, they'll find us, they'll find me or Marie or whoever's next on the call list to try to help out. So if everything else escapes you and you reach for the LiveSafe app, that'll help get an alert back to campus that you would need help. Some of you few of you may have received messages from student health services about travel health consultations. For those who needed required travel vaccines outside of COVID, things like yellow fever, for example, student health services would set that up for you. But also, if you're in need of medical accommodations, starting with student health services, then moving along to Go Blue, our International Health Insurance Company, letting us know what you're going through, will help everybody set a plan in place to make sure that you're safe. Okay, this is feeling redundant, but I just wanted to let you know we're being prepared. I'm going to walk through timely care next so you guys can have a look at that. The timely care talk now feature provides emotional support when you need it. So it's a 2047 mental and emotional support. Feature can help you with crisis management. You see that it connects you with masters level behavior health professionals. So you'll get a health coach, a counselor, someone who's able to help talk you through whatever you're going through. They can set up a care plan with you. They can share your record back to the counseling center. So if you have an existing relationship with UD center for counseling, student development, it will link your existing care record with the timely care folks and make sure that you're getting the right referrals and support that you need while you're abroad. There it is. 5 minutes or less. I'll get you in front of a And then here's the app. So you can go to the web based version, and I'll give you the link to the app. You can go find timely care for students and the app stores. As ways we show the iPhone ones with the front Android, it looks the same. Get the app download, sign in. You use your UD credentials to get in there. And then once you're in there, take a little tour. There is self care content. A lot of us on study abroad and travel get separated from our usual routines. You can't go to the same classes in a little Bob. You can't go to the same yoga studios. You won't be with your same roommates to do those practices on a daily basis. So you'll need to come up with a plan B and figure out how you're going to do that while you're abroad. Family care has that kind of self care content that'll help you manage your stress and take a moment to yourself each day. There's mindfulness resources and then on demand access to things like group discussions and different options for self care. So it's a little bit more than just connecting with a counselor. You're able to send to your self care plan through the Tim to care app. You know, that stuff works well for me. I imagine it would be good enough to get you through a couple of weeks abroad. Same time appear in some place a little bit longer back to the beginning when we were talking about depth versus breadth finding these kind of activities in your host city, in your host town, at your host University, would be a great chance to dive a little deeper, make some friends and connect to people who are, you know, in the world of doing the same practices and routines and self care priorities that you have. So Okay. You use that local option as an opportunity? Okay. The next one is blue. Blue is health insurance company. This is blanket member insurance is that all UD travelers while you're on UD business or UD study broad program are covered by this plan. Because it's a group thing like that, there's no individual IDs. There's just the one group ID. It's there on the screen. We sent it out. It's on our web pages. If you still can't find it after that, just let us know we'll send you the documentation. But the member guide that you can find on our website has all the details of the plan. The Go Blue app. It's just Go Blue app. It's something special. But the same resources available on the website are in the app. I think it's a lot easier to use on the website. So if you access it through a browser, at least the first time through so that you're sure you see everything that's really recommended. One of the things that you really should do and it is easier on desktop version is to fill your HIPPA release form and make sure that at least one of your family members is authorized to talk to Go Blue on your behalf. You adults, and this is your insurance plan, so they can't automatically go telling your parents and everybody else what's happening with your care plan. If you want to do that hip or release ahead of time, it can speed things up if you need to seek care while you're abroad. So J Blue can provide medical assistance, safety, security, and evacuation services in the event of a medical emergency or a medical condition. They can help you find care while you're abroad. Click the next slide as we talk about it. There's all kinds of fun features in the portal about figuring out the medication names, things that you take here that you might need there, they can talk to you about it, it will be like to take a whole supply of your medicine with you, across the border into another country. So if you need to take a medicine with you, that is a really big thing to be able to collaborate with Go Blue to know what you need to ask for from your doctor to make sure that you're ready to cross the border with a month supply or three to four month for the fall students, three to four month supply of your medicines. You want to check because not all of the same medications that we use here are available abroad. There's quite a few examples of those. I won't name any right now. I don't want to mislead anybody, but it's really important to check your specific medications. The recommendation is to take the full supply with you so that you don't have to get stuck without them, and then Go Blue can advise on, you know, what letter you might need to have on your person as you cross the border with that much medicine. If you know you're going to need specialty care, If you have a specific medical condition where you kind of want to learn the phrases that you need to be familiar with in order to tell people about it when you get to your host country, they have all the health tools that can help you plan that out ahead of time. And then the 844 or the 610 number that are there, you know, 2047 customer service numbers where they'll route you through their care team and help with anything that you need. Again, this is true, a lot of the things that we're talking about today? If you pick one, you need to help, you pick the one that you're most comfortable with that feels right. If it's not quite right, they'll help you get back around to the next thing that you need. So GO Blue in the background talks the Crisis 24. If you needed a medical evacuation, they call it Crisis 24. They're the ones that send in the helicopters to get somebody out of the jungle if needed, right? So they have all this stuff figured out, and we really encourage you to use the care providers to make sure that you're planning well for your medical needs abroad. A quick insurance note for semester students. Provider is probably also going to enroll you in insurance plan and a similar thing to Crisis 24. So you're super covered. A lot of times you'll be using the service that they give you first because you're in their country. They gave you that service. They're the experts on it. They're the ones that are going to be helping you. So they might have you use, for example, in Spain, I know it Sanitas is the one that a lot of organizations use to be using the local insurance plan first. That plan doesn't cover something or you can't find what you need tough that plan. Then we'll use Go Blue. If that still doesn't work, you might also have family insurance that you could check with to see if that works. When it comes to mental health, I would recommend doing things in reverse. If you have a current mental health care provider, please talk to them to see if they'll be available to do virtual care for you through your existing insurance setup with them. A lot of times they'll be willing to switch over and see you for a few sessions while you're abroad. That can be a little hit or miss. Some providers aren't willing to do that because you'll be too far away for them to help you if something is really wrong. So they'll want to set up a continuity plan, in which case, you can turn back to our providers. So that coordination of care can be very complicated. I'll just say it again, if you get confused, let us know we can sort of make sure we walk through the right hierarchy of care so that you're as covered as you need to be. Okay. Okay. Were time with the scary stuff. Now I'm going to go get there. The next couple of slides, just a few checklist, tips, things to think about as you travel. Careful on your layovers as you transit to yours country? I myself have been lost in plenty of an airport and missed the flight. Several several times in my life. So be very careful on the layovers. Some countries, you have to go through customs and border, and then re enter the make sure as you get on the flight. Sometimes you go through security more times than you could imagine. Make sure you're leaving yourself a lot of time. The quick layovers like 90 minutes and things like that are pretty risky, especially international layovers, international transits. If you're connecting within the US, make sure you follow the recommended rules for that few questions, just let us know. And then here's a little checklist. So we're talking about packing now. This means really getting ready. Time to go, get the bag out, it's not already. Soon as you get home after finals, get the suitcase out. Of course, pack for health and safety, pack some masks and sanitizer. You never really know what's going to come up. This is the hardest one. I know it's the hardest one, and I'm going to say it anyway. You have to pack light. You have to pack light. Even if you're going first semester, you're going to buy stuff. They sell suitcases everywhere in the world. So you'll be able to buy an extra bag if you need it. So better to pack the extra, you know, what is a suitcase cost 5,000 bucks to get a suitcase. Better to save that money and get it while you're there after you buy everything. You know, you have to carry your stuff around. When you make your connection, you might have to get all your luggage and drag it across another airport. If you're switching on a faculty led program, you'd be taking buses and trains. You'd be responsible for lifting that stuff overhead onto the train rack compartment, you know, climbing under a bus to get it in and out. So you need to be able to actually handle all your own stuff. You don't have Redcap service on study abroad, you'd be on your own to lug your stuff around. So make sure you pack light, you're allowed to accumulate as you go and bring home more than you left with, and you can purchase the bags that you need. Once you see how big that accumulation is during your time abroad. Make sure you know about what power adapters and converters you need. And then especially for semester students, I recommend not taking electronic personal care items like hair dryers, or curling irons, things like that. Don't even just buy one when you're there or see if there's if you're There might be one class student there probably left there is behind, so there might already be one that you can use. If not, most of the beauty brands are universal to society of road destinations. You can get something similar to what you're used to having without having to worry about blowing yours up or starting to fire because you got the wrong power adapter for your hair dryer. Again, downloading the apps and being prepared, The other item is leaving a copy of important materials at home. So we want to make sure that, you know, your family have a copy of your passport, flight info, credit card information, vaccination record, health insurance card, the GO blue stuff. Make sure they all have a copy of that I you know, something happens and you lose all your luggage and your carry on bag because you were frazzled and left it in the bathroom, and it wasn't there when you got back. You know, things like that happened. And if somebody has a copy, it makes life a lot easier to get replacements to travel on a copy for a little while to know who call it a credit card, things like that. Histic expectations with your family about contact Probably talk to our families every day. That might not always be the case on study or grad we busy, might want to, you know, just dive in and not have to worry about documenting everything that you're doing over text or social media. So let them know if you plan to, you know, Be out on your own for a little bit, and you're going to reduce the amount of communications. It's a healthy conversation to have ahead of time. Also stops them from calling us in a panic. So if that's your intention, let them know so that families know what to expect. Okay. A couple of little tips here to finish with. Leave yourself as much time as possible. If you haven't already purchased your flights and you're looking at flight itineraries, give yourself the longer connections. Let yourself have a little bit more time. It's easier to sit and wait than it is to run and lose things and get sweaty in the airport. So leave yourself time. Make sure you have all the phone numbers, analog version. So print it out, have it written down somewhere so that you can reference things quickly when your cell phone dies and you have to borrow a line from somebody, you know, make sure you have numbers written down. So you know who to call. Make sure you're thinking of who to call if you're delayed at your destination, whether that be our faculty directors or the host institution contacts. Make sure you know who to call during travel to let them know about any delays. Watch your belongings. The number one thing that we get to report every year is cell phone thefts, you know, so hang on to that thing. Put it on Lanyard. Don't worry about being dirty. Just do it. Upon arrival, make sure that you focus on your personal and environmental safety. I know you'll be tired when you get there, but it's always a good idea to, you know, do a little scan, walk around the block. I go up and down the building a little bit, make sure you know what have a sense of get your bearings about you, make sure you have a sense of where you are. Case anything happens. Make sure that your doors have locks and that you have the keys and that there's fire alarms. Like, take a quick peek at that stuff. We take it for granted sometimes. You know, on campus housing and things like that, you've got Ds awesome facilities crew that's always checking and double checking all of those safety things for us. So just make sure you take a look for yourself. Yeah. And then same thing in the daytime, make sure you take a scan, get a sense of the differences between day and night in your neighborhood and ask around, you know, there's always great local knowledge from the program host to the faculty who have been there before about, you know, safety differences in a big city can be the difference between turning right and left at certain spots in a town. So you want to have a sense of that. Make sure you ask. Don't just assume that everything is as safe as it is here on campus. All right. Onto the storytelling side of things. So like I said, I hope you're excited to be part of this community of Blue hands abroad and the global community here at UD. You clearly have plans, and I hope you'll think ahead of even a little bit more through research before you leave about experiences that you can build upon. I mentioned once already, but the study brought story is a fantastic advantage in job interviews someday kind of thing that set two apart from other applicants being mindful versus big part of it. And then, yeah, you're not the first to do this. We started back in 1923 with eight students going by boat to Paris for a year. And it won't be the last trip for you, either. So we hope that if it's not your first trip, if it's your second or third study broad program, that it continues a lifelong desire to travel and see the world and learn from other cultures. And if this is your first, we hope you come home ready for the next. Follow up on at UD Global on Instagram. Ah tag, UD abroad while you're traveling and join us for the Study Abroad storytelling process. I'll call this a process because there's a couple pieces of it. You'll get an e mail from us before you leave. This comes from Stephanie Farrell. She's our communication specialist. She curiates at UD Global Account on Instagram, which is just beautiful if you ask me, and so exciting. But she wants your stories on there. So she'll follow up with some tips and tricks. A way to make photo sharing easy. Opportunities to have your photos and stories shared across UT's main accounts, UT Global, UT web pages, campus partner materials. She wanted me to include this quick slide about some photography tips for your study broad experience. So these are just three, four quick tips here. And if you feel like a photography expert, I'm sorry that you've heard this before, but the rule of thirds. If you haven't heard this before, it's like the magic of taking photos. So that's the upper left hand corner of the slide where you put the subject material that you want everyone to focus on in one of the cross points of the grid of thirds. For whatever reason, our eyes are more attracted to that kind of photo. And then when you're splitting like the sky, the land and foreground split that into third, so you'll be able to divide things into three pieces. For whatever reason our eyes like that, it's a lot more aesthetically pleasing. It stands out on social media, increase the likelihood that your photo will get picked up and used by our accounts. Showing a sense of place is a really important one because we get a lot of photos of UD students out there doing stuff. But it's sometimes hard to tell where you are. So, you know, like you see here, the red phone booth in London or the, you know, street photo there that has some Spanish flags on some of the other folks in the crowd, the angle of the eiffel tower. Those things really let us know where you are. So try to include that little hint at least, of where you are of sense of place in your photo. Angles are great. You know, there's 1 million stock photos out there of the Eiffel Tower from across the city, but a view like that from underneath gives a new look, something that we're not used to seeing, something that's a little bit more inspiring. When it comes to people, we want to make sure that you're following an ethical process. So you need to ask permission. You can snap a picture of someone you think is interesting, but We can't really do anything with that, right? We don't know who that person is, why you thought they were interesting. There needs to be permission, a story, a relationship, a connection behind that photo. So make sure that you're asking permission to be respectful when you're going to cultural ceremonies, religious ceremonies, anything like that. If Dgrapy is even even permitted or respectful. And then, you know, there's very strict rules for UD, and I think should be for you to about photographic minors. So you know, kids can be adorable, but nobody really wants some stranger just snapping a picture of their kid. So make sure you're engaged with the subjects in your photos or like the crowd photo that you see down there. It's the back of everyone's head, so we can't really identify. They all get to be anonymous in that photo. Bonus points, if you capture some UD, merge, some hoodies and hats and T shirts in your photos. We love blue hens abroad stuff. It gives a great feel to what we see as UD Encourage you to do that. So there's a place for you to submit photos for us to pick up and use on social media and share with Office for Communications and Marketing. It's called Photo Circles. If you scan that QR code, it will take you to Google Doc. Summer programs are set up in the fall. You'll have to check back, but you'll see the e mail before you go. I'm letting you know it's already. But you can link to the photo circle for your program, if all of you get in there for your particular program, you see all of each other's photos. It's a great way to share photos within your group. So we've set that up for you. It lets us see it too and really see the full experience as you share things throughout. So faculty directors in the room. I really recommend that you nominate photo ambassador to be one of the people who put some of the photos day to day into the photo circle so that we all see it. Then opportunity to take over on Instagram, something that Stephanie would really like to invite all of you to consider. If you've followed us already, you'll have seen takeovers. We did a few this spring. Actually, the screen shot right there is one of the ones that happened this spring. So taking over Instagram to recap a site visit, show us where you're staying. That's like the biggest question we get from suits. What's housing going to be like? What's the apartment? What's the dorm look like? Documenting the food, just giving us a fresh live perspective on City Broad experience is something that's awesome. So if you want to do a takeover with us, we're happy to hear your ideas and set that up for summer or fall. And getting to the end here. When you get back, we hope you'll consider joining the study Broad ambassador program. It's a program that helps us do outreach for study abroad with the storytelling process. It helps us provide advice and connections to students who are in their first year, and thinking about study abroad in the future helps us put that idea in front of groups of students who may never have considered studying abroad to talk to them about how to get there someday. So it's a fantastic program. It's a great leadership opportunity within our office. Great career development program. If you ever think you want to be an international educator someday and work as a study road office or post organization. It's a great pathway to career. So we hope you'll think about that for when you're back. Yeah. And then this is how to reach us, study road at dot U and our phone number. And I know we're ready at 5:30. We have any questions would be the next thing. I haven't been watching the chat at all. I don't know if anything came in there, but if you're ready to go, you can go. We're officially done, and I wish you safe, exciting adventures abroad and hope to see you as an ambassador when you get back. If you have any questions feel free to stick around. We can answer anything travels, everybody. Thank you.

Study Abroad Pre-Departure Orientation all 24J & 24F Students

From Stephanie Ferrell May 08, 2024

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In the Study Abroad Pre-Departure Orientation webinar, CGPS provides important information for your study abroad experience, including UD travel study guidelines, preparing to travel, important health and safety resources, apps you will want to download, and what to expect abroad.

Tags: study abroadorientationsafety

Department Name: Center for Global Programs & Services
Date Established: May 07, 2024
Appears In: Center for Global Programs & Services

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