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Introducing the Global Arc: A New Tool Allows Students to Plan for Travel Abroad
Students who want to travel abroad must balance several questions: Where? To what ends? And when is the right time? Now, using a new online tool called the Global Arc, students can take a measured approach to planning for time abroad.
This website, Princeton International, was launched last March to create a centralized source of information for students and faculty wishing to work or learn across borders. In addition to providing important administrative information, the site also contains the Global Arc, with which students can search on-campus courses (drawn from the previous year of course offerings) and Princeton’s various overseas programs, such as study abroad, fellowships or internships. Using the search, students can place classes and international experiences onto a four-year timeline. Courses can be searched by department or keyword, and experiences can be filtered by language, country, academic-term timing and program type.
While semester-long study is normally not permitted in a student’s first three semesters, the timeline will allow users to consider the courses that will best prepare them for their desired journeys and to determine the ideal timing for an overseas experience. After devising a trajectory within the Global Arc, students can share their outlines with their academic advisers and incorporate adviser feedback into their plans.
“The Global Arc is intended to facilitate more structured planning of student international experiences, and to highlight the possibilities for integrating these with on-campus course material,” said PIIRS Deputy Director David Jarvis, who was the project manager for the creation of the new website. “The timeline component in particular helps students to envision opportunities for building on these connections throughout their undergraduate careers and to identify the best times for them to travel. We are excited to see how they will use this new tool and look forward to further developing it in response to their feedback.”