Kate Freyhof ’11 and Samantha Brandauer, assistant director of Off-Campus Studies at Gettysburg College, were recently quoted in a Chronicle of Higher Education article about the gender imbalance of students who study abroad.

From the Chronicle:

From its inception, more than a century ago, study abroad has had a reputation as a female pursuit, the lasting image one of Seven Sisters students steaming overseas for a grand European tour of art and culture, a refining gloss for a marriageable young woman. "Women were sent overseas to be culturally educated ladies who could entertain their husbands' business partners," says James M. Lucas, of Michigan State University, who has written extensively about men and study abroad. "The mantra became that study abroad is feminized and a dalliance."

The gender imbalance is readily apparent to Kate Freyhof, a recent Gettysburg College graduate, who spent part of her junior year in Aix-en-Provence, in southern France. Perhaps one in 10 of her classmates, she says, was male.

Once back in Pennsylvania, Ms. Freyhof, who had so wanted to travel overseas that she saved her babysitting money throughout high school, teamed up with Samantha Brandauer, the college's director of study abroad. Half of Gettysburg's students spend at least a semester overseas, but just 30 percent of that group is male. Ms. Brandauer and Ms. Freyhof wanted to know why, so they assembled a series of focus groups, male and female: those who had studied abroad and those who had stayed on campus.

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Off-Campus Studies at Gettysburg College