Union News

Wingate’s signature study-abroad program will get a restart this spring, with the University planning its first W’International excursions since 2019. The program, which includes a semester-long seminar culminating with 10 days of travel, has helped Wingate students broaden their horizons since it began as a winter-holiday study-abroad option in 1978. In more recent years, Wingate had expanded the program to include winter and spring sessions, both of which were paused at the beginning of the Covid pandemic.

Jennifer Armentrout, the University’s executive director of global engagement, says her office will reveal five new W’International destinations via an Oct. 13 virtual event, during which juniors will hear from the professors who will be teaching the two-credit-hour seminars next semester. Travel will take place in May 2023.

“W’International is one of many ways our Office of International Programs strives to cultivate courage, connection and curiosity in everyone we serve,” Armentrout says. “We are thrilled to be able to offer this program once again and believe five destinations is a healthy number.”

To apply for W’International, students must have junior-class status (minimum of 57 credit hours) and a GPA of at least 2.5. Cost of participation, which continues to be heavily supplemented by the University, will be $1,500, regardless of destination.

Armentrout says keeping the costs minimal and using a lottery system to fill slots makes the process affordable and equitable for students, even as the logistics of travel and programming are more complex than ever and the window to sign up shorter than in past years. In the past, students had three to four months between sign-up and enrollment to ensure that they were travel ready and to take care of administrative issues, a process that will be compacted into about a month this go-around. Students who are not chosen in the lottery will be placed on wait lists and assigned if slots become available.

“We’re in the process of building a new study-abroad-management system, a platform that will be more student friendly all the way around, to help students find summer programs and internships abroad,” she explains. “And we’re hoping to time the rollout of that system with W’International sign-ups.”

Following this month’s reveal of the study topics and travel locations, eligible students will have a chance to sign up, indicating their top three destination choices.

“Based on their choices and a randomized lottery, we’ll let them know where they are placed,” Armentrout says. “Then they will need to decide pretty quickly if they’ll be able to participate so that they can enroll before Thanksgiving.”

Armentrout said those hoping to take advantage of the subsidized study-abroad opportunity will want to reserve Tuesday evenings on their spring-semester calendar for their W’International class and may also want to consider next steps such as applying for a passport and updating their vaccinations, including those for Covid-19. 

“As of right now, all of our on-site partners strongly encourage vaccination but do not require it for participation; it’s hard to predict what requirements will be in place in May of 2023,” Armentrout says. “Wingate will require whatever our partners require, so we’re encouraging students to be fully vaccinated by the time of departure, meaning two initial Covid shots and one booster.”

She said that group travel abroad is more feasible since Covid regulations have been somewhat relaxed in many parts of the world and since the United States no longer requires Covid testing prior to boarding incoming flights. But, in addition to the current CDC recommendations, she wants students to be prepared for varying rules they might encounter.

“Mainly what we’re seeing now is the requirement of masking on public transportation, but we’ll rely on our partners in these destinations and follow their rules,” she says. “The best way to prepare for international travel is to be fully vaccinated and to be willing to wear a mask when asked to.”

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