By studying abroad, University students enhance their overall academic pursuits while learning new cultures and languages.

Education abroad gives students the opportunity to practice diversity, not as a concept but as an experience, said Manfred Keune, associate professor of German and coordinator of education abroad for the German department.

"It gives our students the opportunity to achieve intercultural competence," he said. "This is the best kind of experience that students can have, particularly now and in the future."

Margo Groff, coordinator of program support services for the Office of Education Abroad, said, "We are an ethnocentric culture. With study abroad, you get a renewed, but more critical appreciation of the United States because you are seeing it as others see it."

Michael Laubscher, associate director of Education Abroad Programs, said there were more direct professional benefits as well. Programs like journalism in Manchester and economics in Oxford are designed to prepare students for careers while introducing them to a different country.

Students traveling abroad do face certain problems however. Groff said a major problem is culture shock.

"Everything you're used to is not there," she said. "All of the familiar sign posts are gone. Some of the social mores are different -- you don't know how to behave, how to respond."

How students cope with culture shock and adapt to a new culture is part of the learning experience, Laubscher said.

For students in the German program, there tends to be more a culture shock, Keune said.

"What students find is they share common concerns with the other students," he said. "Discovering them contributes to a common understanding and will help them to deal with the other culture."

Laubscher said a problem also exists with some students suffering from reverse culture shock when they return to America.

"They have had a unique experience and they feel they can't share it with anyone -- no one wants to listen," he said.

There is also the possibility of physical danger when abroad as evidenced by the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland last December. The crash killed several Temple and Syracuse University students who were studying abroad.

Groff said the unpredictability of air travel is always there. "In many ways, (terrorism) makes a lot of us feel that maybe this would not happen if we looked beyond our own culture and learned about other cultures," she said. "If we say we are not going to go anywhere, we are not going to learn about other cultures."

Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., a professor of Middle East history involved with the Tel Aviv and Cairo education abroad programs, said he thought it was safer in Cairo and Tel Aviv than in State College. The threat of rape and burglary is significantly higher here, he said.

"The effects of Flight 103 were on the parents, they became jittery," he said. "I don't think the kids worried."

Officials associated with education abroad programs take steps to ensure the mental and physical safety of the students.

The program schedules a full semester of orientation which covers the basics of the new culture to the student. "It makes them aware of what to expect," Laubscher said.

Groff said the education abroad office keeps in regular contact with its on-site coordinators. The office here is aware of when the students arrive and where they are traveling about the country, she said.

"This year, there is a stronger statement about health issues. We inform the students about AIDS and about drug use overseas," she said. "We make them aware that United States citizens are not exempt from local laws. "

Keune said the orientation program is effective, but it cannot prepare a student for everything.

"Everyone is different. The program does as much as can be expected but it can't tell them everything," he said.

The program helps more with the administrative process. "Transferral of credits, travel arrangements and passports are handled expertly," he said.

The Education Abroad Program is working with certain clubs to inform students about its programs. A recent meeting of the Society for African- American Growth, Enlightenment and Scholarship -- commonly called S.A.G.E.S. -- was held to acquaint and recruit students to study abroad. The meeting included a panel of study abroad students who talked about their experiences.

Arlene Cheatham, a counselor and liaison to education abroad in the Office of Academic Assistance Programs, said students are especially intrigued by what they hear from their peers.

"Students revealed that serious scholarship is expected of them. Going doesn't mean it's a vacation tour," she said. There is so much to take in, extra-curricularly as well as academically, that it takes a well- disciplined student to benefit from the program, she said.

Lions Abroad is an organization designed to provide a place where students who have studied abroad can share their experiences and help each other deal with reverse culture shock. The organization also helps in education abroad's orientation program by participating in panel discussions.

The United States Information Agency and the Institute of International Education offer new scholarships to all university students to spend a semester studying in Hungary or Poland.

To be eligible, applicants should be U.S. citizens under 21 with at least one year of undergraduate education and a 3.2 cumulative GPA.

The application deadline is Oct. 31, 1989 for the January 1990 semester abroad.