June 13 (UPI) — The State Department on Thursday gave 37 grants to U.S. higher leaning institutions to expand opportunities for American students to study abroad.
“U.S. students who study abroad play a crucial role as global citizen ambassadors,” the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs posted Thursday on X.
The 37 grants totaling nearly $1.3 million were given to U.S. colleges and universities through the 2024 Increase and Diversify Education Abroad for U.S. Students Program grant competition, also known as the IDEAS grant.
The IDEAS grant winners this year include 10 community colleges and 14 serving minority communities across 24 states and Washington.
The grants will enable the creation and further expansion of study abroad programs “that align with U.S. foreign policy goals,” and provide international experience for American students “to develop new knowledge and skills that will serve their future careers and capacity for leadership,” the State Department said in a news release.
A journalism professor at Miami University in Ohio said Thursday on social media she was “stoked” that MU had won.
“I co-authored the grant and it will allow me to take students to Lithuania & Latvia to study journalism, democracy & social change summer 2025,” Rosemary Pennington, an associate professor at Miami University’s media, journalism and film school posted on X.
According to the State Department, the IDEAS grants will also go toward supporting the development of new international partnerships and programs, the training of faculty and staff, creation of resources to engage students in study abroad and the development of virtual and hybrid exchanges.
Pennington said on X she recently was in eastern Europe “to work on setting the program up.”
“I think we’ve got some good potential partnerships working in both countries,” she said.
The grants will support programming to 36 world destinations at all points across the globe, for example, in Tunisia and Botswana on the African continent, Croatia in Europe, Uruguay in South America and Nepal and Indonesia in Asia.
About 20% of all U.S. undergraduate students report having a disability. Worcester Polytechnic Institute said their IDEAS grant of up to $34,970 will cover a new WPI initiative to increase the number of their students with disabilities in study abroad programs.
“Nearly 85% of our undergrads participate in an off-campus project,” WPI posted on X.
“Our mission is to ensure every student has the opportunity to access the Global Projects Program and to take into account the varying needs of students with disabilities,” said Kathleen Head, director of The Global School’s Global Experience Office, which administers the Global Projects Program.
Two “consortium grants” were awarded to State University of New York at Oswego, who will partner with Monroe Community College, and West Virginia’s Marshall University, partnering with BridgeValley Community and Technical College.
The two consortium grants for the institutions in New York and West Virginia are intended to build capacity, programming and resources at American community colleges to prep students for careers in STEM, technical or vocational fields consistent with the bipartisan 2022 CHIPS and Science Act — a bill that aims to energize the domestic manufacturing of semiconductor chips and other technologies critical to many U.S.-based supply chains.
The 2024 IDEAS grantees are: