6 — Wednesday, September 1, 2021
News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

GOT THE SHOT?

Report your vax info after you get your final dose.

All U-M students who submit their proof of vaccination will be 
entered into weekly drawings for valuable prizes.

Scan the QR Code or visit myumi.ch/O4W0K

SO WE CAN STAY TOGETHER

STAY SAFE
MASK UP
STAY WELL

*Social distancing is recommended for individuals who are not fully vaccinated.

 Summer semester in South Korea draws mixed reviews as study 

abroad opens for 2021-22 school year

Students to travel to Germany, Iceland, the United Kingdom and South Korea for six programs this fall

LSA senior Tiffani Ihrke 

was supposed to return home 
from the South Korea trial 
study abroad program in early 
August with fellow students. 
Instead, frontline workers 
dressed 
in 
hazmat 
suits 

picked Ihrke up and rushed 
her to a treatment facility in 
Seoul after she tested positive 
for COVID-19 just a couple of 
days before her flight back to 
the U.S.

Ihrke had been a part of the 

Yonsei International Summer 
School (YISS) program for the 
Spring/Summer 2021 term. 
It was the first study abroad 
program to take place at the 
University of Michigan since 
all were suspended in March 
2020 due to the pandemic.

Despite testing positive at 

the end of the program, Ihrke 
said she sincerely enjoyed 
her time in South Korea. 
She attributed her positive 
experience 
to 
living 
off-

campus due to both financial 
reasons and the desire to 
experience more of South 
Korean society. 

“I personally learned so 

much about myself, and 
I gained so much insight 
about different cultures and 
the different ways that the 
pandemic is being handled in 
different areas,” Ihrke said. 

Once 
her 
10-day 

quarantine is finished, Ihrke 
can 
request 
confirmation 

of her recovery from the 
local center of public health 
and reenter the U.S. with 
documentation 
confirming 

her recovery starting Aug. 21. 
Ihrke was fully vaccinated 
when she tested positive for 

the virus, as the University 
has required all students 
participating in on- and 
off-campus 
programs 
— 

including study abroad — to 
be vaccinated. 

For 
now, 
Ihrke 
is 
in 

quarantine at the treatment 
facility with a government-
assigned random roommate 
who also tested positive and 
is dealing with the downsides 
of studying abroad during a 
pandemic. 

“I’ve 
been 
very 
well 

taken 
care 
of, 
and 
I’m 

really fortunate that the 
Korean government is so 
accommodating for COVID 
specifically, but it’s definitely 
been a headache, to say the 
least,” Ihrke told The Daily 
while in the Seoul National 
University Treatment Center. 

The Centers for Disease 

Control 
and 
Prevention 

currently 
classifies 
South 

Korea 
as 
a 
“Level 
2: 

Moderate” out of a scale from 
“Level unknown” to “Level 
4: Very High” in terms of 
COVID-19 risk. Both new 
daily infections and deaths 
have increased since June, 
and roughly 21% of the 
country is fully vaccinated.

Business junior Gabriella 

Jakubczak, another student 
who 
participated 
in 
the 

program but lived on campus 
at YISS, said physically being 
in South Korea was “better 
than anything else I would 
have done this summer.”

But as rising COVID-19 

cases in the country led to 
YISS’s and South Korea’s 
increasingly stricter social 
distancing rules, Jakubczak 
began to realize how much 
the pandemic still inevitably 
impacted the program. 

“Eventually 
you 
could 

only go out in pairs after 6 
p.m,” Jakubczak said. “They 
shut down all the street food 
in Korea, which is insane, 
considering how much that’s 
a part of their culture and 
how prevalent that is within 
the city. It was like walking 
in an empty Times Square; 
you’d just see storefronts 
empty.”

Jakubczak 
said 
if 
she 

knew how bad the COVID-
19 situation was going to 
be earlier in the year, she 
probably 
would’ve 
opted 

to complete the program 
online from the U.S. instead. 
According 
to 
Jakubczak, 

studying abroad amidst the 
pandemic also sometimes led 
to miscommunication from 
CGIS staff about program 
details like dates for certain 
activities.

“I think the problem is 

there 
was 
an 
increased 

demand for support and 
responsiveness 
that 
we 

needed because it was a 
COVID program (during the 
pandemic),” Jakubczak said.

CGIS 
Director 
Michael 

Jordan said he has yet to 
send out surveys and receive 
feedback from students who 
were in South Korea. He 
told The Daily that CGIS 
often communicated with 
students in the program, and 
he asked for “flexibility” and 
“patience” 
from 
students 

when traveling abroad given 
the current circumstances of 
the pandemic.

Jordan said CGIS has 

been communicating “quite 
frequently” with students 
in the South Korea program 
especially because it was the 
office’s first ongoing program 
in a year.

“Information 
has 
been 

and continues to change 
very 
frequently 
under 

these circumstances, so I 
can imagine it could get 
confusing,” Jordan said. “But 
again, it is a situation that’s 
changing on a daily basis, 
so we definitely require our 
partners’ and the students’ 
patience 
and 
flexibility, 

because this virus and the 
pandemic just keep throwing 
curveballs at us.”

Looking ahead to the fall

Six 
programs 
will 
be 

running this fall semester 
in South Korea, Germany, 
Iceland 
and 
the 
United 

Kingdom, 
including 
a 

different program in Yonsei.

Jordan said CGIS had to 

cancel numerous programs 
for both the fall and winter 
semesters after evaluating 
the status of the pandemic in 
various countries.

“We’ve worked for years 

to expand the options for our 
students’ interest among our 
students and destinations 
outside of Western Europe,” 
Jordan said. “But at this 
point in time, those are the 
countries that are letting 
Americans in and that meet 
the University’s criteria for 
health and safety during a 
pandemic.”

Some 
of 
the 
criteria 

include infection rates and 
vaccination rates among that 
country or city’s population, 
quality 
of 
the 
country’s 

healthcare 
system 
and 

potential overuse of that 
country’s healthcare system 
by U-M students.

“Even though our students 

are vaccinated they could 
still transmit the virus, so it 
seems unethical to be sending 

them 
into 
unvaccinated 

countries,” Jordan said. “If 
the local medical system is 
already being overtaxed by 
the pandemic, then obviously 
we don’t want to exacerbate 
that.”

LSA junior Jorge Blanes 

will be studying in Germany 
this fall to earn credit for his 
double major in International 
Studies and German.

Though he admitted that 

potential 
lockdowns 
and 

risk of being sent back to the 
U.S. were “daunting,” Blanes 
said he considers the pros 
of meeting new people and 
venturing into a new country 
worth the challenges. He 
said studying abroad this fall 
is the best time academically 
for him to do so. 

“It’s basically a risk-reward 

thing, and the rewards seem 
to outweigh the risks right 
now,” Blanes said. “They 
won’t really let the program 
happen unless they see that 
we’re going to be, for the 
most part, safe.” 

LSA 
junior 
Garrett 

Ashlock also contemplated 
the benefits and drawbacks 
of 
studying 
abroad 
and 

ultimately chose to enroll 
in a program at University 
of 
Cambridge 
Pembroke 

College in the fall. Feeling 
like his time was running out 
in addition to being accepted 
into his “dream school” of 
Cambridge, Ashlock said he 
felt it was necessary to seize 
the opportunity. 

“Ultimately, it came down 

to the fact that this was 
basically going to be my 
only chance to study abroad 
that I had left, and this was 
such a great program and 
one that is very selective to 
get into,” Ashlock said. “So 

after weighing the options, 
even though there are some 
inherent risks with traveling 
abroad during the pandemic, 
I thought it was still the best 
thing to do.”

Though Ashlock is fully 

vaccinated, 
he 
said 
he 

remains 
worried 
about 

potentially contracting the 
virus. However, he said he 
is grateful CGIS and the 
University are able to support 
him if he must navigate a 
foreign system.

“I think the amount of 

effort that Michigan puts 
into sending students abroad, 
and the amount of resources 
that they have, helps me 
feel a lot better about going 
somewhere, 
especially 
in 

the middle of a pandemic,” 
Ashlock said.

After the challenges she 

faced during the program 
in South Korea, Jakubczak 
said she is debating whether 
or not to follow through 
with another study abroad 
program planned for the 
winter semester. 

“It’s very isolating in a 

way that you already know 
what COVID feels like in the 
United States,” Jakubczak 
said. “Now imagine you 
have no friends, you have no 
family support and maybe 
now you have a language 
barrier, depending on where 
you’re going. So now you’re 
really truly alone. I was 
supposed to go on a study 
abroad program to Madrid in 
the winter semester this year, 
and I’m wondering whether 
or not I want to go through 
that again.”

Daily Staff Reporter Martha 

Lewand can be reached at 
mlewand@umich.edu. 

MARTHA LEWAND

Daily Staff Reporter

