Indiana University’s Office of Overseas Studies is indisputably one of the most successful externally focused programs, not just at Indiana University, but at any public research university in the United States.
The facts speak for themselves.
Before the pandemic, according to the Institute of International Education, IU was ranked 5th in the nation for the absolute number of students studying abroad and 3rd for those studying abroad for extended full semester programs.
These students can study in hundreds of enormously diverse programs in over 70 countries and in 20 different languages.
Until the pandemic, the number of graduating students at IU Bloomington who had studied abroad had risen to over a third, nearly a quarter of whom were minority students.
This is a remarkable achievement for a large public university.
Collectively, all of this defines excellence in any of these languages.
In this year then, the 50th anniversary of the founding of the IU Office of Overseas Study, the outstanding staff of the office, both past and present, deserve IU’s most grateful thanks and congratulations for half a century of magnificent achievement.
But to fully appreciate the impact of all of this, we must look beyond these numbers.
What they collectively represent, over 50 years, are tens of thousands of students whose lives were changed forever by their experience of studying abroad.
It exposed them
- to the profound richness and diversity of humanity and human cultures,
- hugely expanded their understanding of the world,
- and through this, enhanced their growth as human beings -- all to the ultimate betterment of their lives as citizens and to the benefit of this country.
And for much of the latter part of this 50 years, the office has been superbly led by Associate Vice President for Overseas Study and double IU alumna Dr Kathy Sideli, whose retirement, after over 40 years of dedicated service to Indiana University, we celebrate and honor today.
Kathy’s glittering career has truly been all-encompassing.
- She has been a dedicated long-time teacher in IU’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese,
- an author,
- a superb and skilled administrator leading her office with energy and devotion, while also tirelessly contributing these skills in other areas of the university,
- and she has been a consummate professional, contributing at the highest levels for decades to the principal national organizations in her field.
Her sustained excellence in all these endeavors has been recognized and rewarded with numerous awards of prestige and importance.
Indiana University is rightly considered to be one of America’s most international and internationally engaged universities. Many can take a share of the credit for this.
But the share that is rightly Kathy’s is immense.
Indiana University, and all of us who value the fundamental importance of international engagement to IU’s educational and research bedrock, are in her debt. It was a great personal pleasure working with her in my years as IU president. We wish her the very best for the next stage of her life and career.