Record number will study abroad next semester

By Andrea Vukcevic
Features Editor

It was hard to ignore the German influence on the men’s soccer field this semester as they helped the team see its first national championship game and top-10 ranking.

But the half-dozen exchange students will return to their homeland at the end of the year, and will take some of their teammates with them.

Don’t worry. Our regulars will become exchange students for a semester and return for next fall’s soccer season.

Several other UNCP students will go to universities in Sweden and Brazil in the spring, making this the largest group to ever study abroad.

“Our hard work has finally paid off,” said Beth Carmical, director of the International Student Services and the Multicultural Center. “It is important that students experience other languages and cultures because it helps them mature and assert their independence,” she said.

Carmical credited assistant soccer coach Marco Genée for the soccer team’s significant participation. Genée himself is from Germany and was instrumental in recruiting the talent that boosted team performance and led to the best season in school history.

British citizen and soccer player, Graeme Little, will join some of his new friends at their native school next semester.

He looks forward to “just getting thrown into the deep end” and learning a new language, but of course, there’s Germany’s reputation for beer consumption and “ending up in a drunken stupor,” he said.

Little’s Spanish teammate, Rafael Parra Román, is also going to a German university and hopes the historic monuments and European influence will improve his artistic ideas and techniques.

“I want to study art and see the way [Germans] live,” he said.

Junior Leah Bailey is one of a handful of students headed for Sweden and is interested in seeing the sun shine continuously for 24 hours. She looks forward to traveling around the country and learning about Nordic culture, and can’t wait to “meet some people who can show me what’s fun to do.”

Bailey has never rode on a train or left the continental U.S.

At least two members of the women’s soccer team are going as well. Jacqueline Bower and Erin Rowley will be the first UNCP students to participate in a new exchange with Umea University, also in Sweden.