COVID-19 travel bans crushed their college dreams. UK program allowed them to attend anyway.
When COVID-19 destabilized higher education and halted the world last spring, Ana Sampaio was convinced she’d never be able to attend her dream school.
Sampaio has been bound for the University of Kentucky since January, but she couldn’t make it to Lexington, couldn’t enter the state and thanks to a myriad of pandemic-inspired global travel bans, couldn’t fly into the United States.
But because of the Global Wildcat program, a university program born out of the crisis, Sampaio is able to attend her UK classes this fall right from her home in Belo Horizonte in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Through Zoom, she’s able to hop into her freshmen general education-type classes alongside her classmates from across Kentucky and the country.
“Most of my colleagues know that I’m in Brazil right now and it’s very surprising even for the professors,” said Sampaio, an international studies and political science major. “Because now even with this new reality, like some people are calling it, you never expect it’s possible to have a student that’s from Brazil who’s actually in Brazil.”
Twenty students from 14 countries make up the program, said Sue Roberts, the associate provost for internalization at UK. Predominantly all of them are first-year freshmen who qualified for and planned on attending the university for a four-year degree, but because of border closures, the closing of visa-issuing U.S. consulates or just a general concern around traveling in a pandemic were not able to make it into the country by early August.
Because of the way her scholarships and financial situation shook out, Sampaio said she thought if she wasn’t able to enroll this fall, then she’d likely never be able to go to UK.
“I wouldn’t go to UK if it weren’t for this program,” Sampaio said. “It was a big opportunity for me and it’s working pretty well.”
The university wanted to offer a program that prepared these students for a college career and for four years in Lexington, a place that many of them have never been to. Plus, “we just felt bad,” Roberts said.
“These students were intending to come,” Roberts said. “They really wanted to be Wildcats and they just couldn’t for reasons that weren’t of their making.”
Sampaio is over 4,700 miles away from Lexington, but since she’s still in this hemisphere and only an hour behind in terms of time zone difference, she’s able to attend lectures while they happen live — in a synchronous format. But for other students, example South Korea’s 13-hour time zone difference, it’s more likely that they’d take classes that are offered in an asynchronous format — in other words they watch recordings of their lectures. Because of the pandemic, the vast majority of UK’s classes — in-person or not — are available in some online video form.
All of the students in the program have a weekly freshmen orientation class together every Thursday, and because of the time zone differences, students can check into the class at 9 a.m., 11 a.m. or 6 p.m., said Karen Slaymaker, the assistant director for international student and scholar services, who teaches the class.
It’s the goal of nearly every one of the students to be in Kentucky by January, or at least by next fall if they’re still not able to come, Slaymaker said.
As part of their orientation, UK faculty try to show the international group of freshmen what it’s like to be in Lexington and on-campus. Roberts said they’ve shown video montages of what it might be like to go to a farmer’s market, a trip to McConnell Springs or just a general night dining out downtown.
The international freshmen are encouraged to join student groups on campus and many have already done so, Slaymaker said. A group of the students actually joined UK’s model United Nations and participate in their meetings via Zoom.
Some of UK’s older international students have made contact and try to find ways to answer questions and support the global Wildcats in the program. The students in the program also have a shared Whatsapp where they can ask each other questions or just talk. There’s no true language barrier between them, Slaymaker said, because all of these students had to pass certain language requirements to attend UK.
Aside from the expected technical difficulties, Slaymaker said the program has run pretty smoothly so far.
“We feel that things are going really well and the students are loving it,” Roberts said. “They’re very engaged and almost every week Karen has great stories about this or that student who’s doing amazing things and sort of thriving in this unorthodox start to their career.”
The program will continue in the spring for other international freshmen who can’t make it to campus. International students in general have faced unique challenges in the pandemic. Roberts said several who were unable to return home this summer had to live on campus, instead of potentially returning home to see their families.
There were some international student freshmen who were able to make it to the U.S., Roberts said, but they’re not in this specific program. There are also some non-freshmen international students who are taking all of their UK courses online, but receive other support from the university’s international center and from their respective colleges within the university.
This story was originally published October 16, 2020 at 9:40 AM.