Study abroad scholarships are crucial for enabling access to international education, fostering cultural exchange, promoting global understanding, and empowering students to pursue enriching experiences beyond their home countries.

With support from the Stanley-UI Foundation Support Organization, the Global Access Ambassador Scholarship program provides up to 10, $1,000 Global Access Ambassador Scholarships for the spring and fall semesters or academic year, and up to 10 scholarships for the summer and winter sessions.

The scholarship is intended to support students who study abroad with the intent to serve as Global Access Ambassadors upon their return to the UI campus, with special consideration given to students with a history of overcoming adversity to pursue personal, academic, or professional goals.

Noa Jones, a fourth-year majoring in French, English and creative writing, and sociology from Ankeny, Iowa, is studying this spring on the USAC Lyon program.

“The thing I’m most excited for in studying abroad is experiencing a place with as much history as Lyon, and France in general, and the culture and society that has resulted from that compared to the United States. The U.S. has a self-referential and self-contained nature that makes it hard to look at from an exterior perspective while inside and makes it harder to examine other societies and cultures in detail. It sounds very academic, but mostly I am excited for the experience of it all, seeing what it is like, and immersing myself in another language and culture compared to what I am used to.

I chose USAC Lyon specifically for academic reasons. The USAC programs allow for more credits to transfer back towards a single major than some of the other programs. I’m doing study abroad primarily as a way to grow my language skills and get ahead in the French major, since I have made much more progress towards my BAs in sociology and English & creative writing compared to it. The Lyon program itself has some specific classes I want to take, and the city is one with a lot of history to it, which is why I picked it over the other USAC programs in France.

The ability to live and immerse myself in another language both inside and outside the academic setting and thereby become much more skilled in communicating in and understanding the language than I would staying here, is the most important thing about studying abroad to me. It is something I have been considering since coming to college to grow my skills in French beyond just progressing in my studies. It also will allow me to experience a different culture, history, place, and people than I am used to, thus growing my view of the world and experience with it. This will shape what constitutes me as a person, my views of myself, and my expression through language and other forms of art by extension.”