Returning From Abroad: A Comparative Review

Reintegration into the once-familiar community after a sojourn abroad poses unique challenges to the undergraduate population and more could be done to help returnees process their experience. Seven institutions of varying size were surveyed using a qualitative data collection instrument to determine how this sample pool supports their undergraduate students emotionally once they have returned from a credit bearing semester abroad. This capstone examines how institutions are moving students toward the fourth stage of Kolb’s (1984) Experiential Learning Cycle: Active Experimentation. Through this lens, a multitude of reentry approaches are explored with the aim being a comparison of the several support methods used to address the question of how to help students navigate the emotions associated with returning from an academic semester abroad. Education abroad professionals can adapt the variety of support tools presented herein to construct their own protocols best suited to their returnees