International education is a once-in-a-lifetime transformative experience integral to Saint Leo University's mission. We make it easy and affordable, with options including a full semester abroad, shorter faculty-led trips, and service learning opportunities across the United States and world.
What are you waiting for? Take the leap.
Visit The Center for Global Engagement's app to learn more!
Why Study Abroad
- Learn about yourself: Get out of your comfort zone by experiencing another culture firsthand. The opportunity is yours to discover new strengths and interests, and tackle new challenges through fresh eyes.
- Learn a language: The best way to learn a foreign language is to spend time in a foreign country, where you'll interact nonstop with native speakers, and hear sounds, rhythms and inflections in their natural context.
- Build your career: Gain a sense of direction. Make friends and professional contacts around the world. Set yourself apart from other job applicants—prospective employers see studying abroad as an indication of motivation, independence and open-mindedness.
- It's affordable: Don't let costs deter you. You might be surprised to find out that Saint Leo financial aid travels with you. Plus, Saint Leo offers short-term faculty-led trips and partially funded service-learning trips that cost a lot less than a full semester abroad.
Semester Abroad
When again in your life are you going to have the ability to spend a few months fully immersed in a foreign culture? College is your time for growth—take the risk with an extended encounter in another country, and return with a deeper understanding of the world and your place in it.
Locations
Saint Leo maintains close partnerships with more than a dozen international universities, including schools in Brazil, England, Australia, Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Germany and Ecuador. But don't feel limited by these partnerships—the possibilities are endless. Earn Saint Leo credit for the courses you take abroad, and even participate in internships as for-credit professional development. Saint Leo students have interned at Outdoor Australia magazine, the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the Italian Red Cross in Rome and the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia.
Eligibility
Students interested in studying abroad must be juniors or seniors, and demonstrate good academic and judicial standing. Your academic advisor can help you devise a four-year plan that includes studying abroad and graduating on time. Where can you study abroad?
Faculty-Led Trips
Climb Florence's Duomo cathedral in the crisp November air. Walk the footsteps of Shakespeare, Jane Austen and King Henry VIII through the winding, storied streets of London. Retrace Saint Paul's physical and spiritual journey through Turkey and Greece. Meet on-site with multinational companies in Shanghai and Beijing, then climb the Great Wall of China.
Each year, Saint Leo professors lead trips around the world, often during semester breaks. These for-credit courses in a variety of academic disciplines—from business and theology to the arts and humanities—are shorter and more structured than the traditional semester abroad. Rather than straightforward tourism, Saint Leo's faculty-led trips promote a unique combination of dynamic classroom-based learning and eye-opening global immersion.
Service Trips
What better way to explore the world than as a volunteer, dedicated to improving it? Saint Leo's Students Engaged in Rewarding Volunteer Experiences (SERVE) is a student-directed initiative where education meets altruism, in a global context.
Participants are required to pay a 25 percent out-of-pocket deposit. For spring break trips this is required by the last weekday of the November prior to the scheduled spring break trip. This 25 percent deposit will be matched by the University. The remaining 50 percent of the trip balance is the responsibility of the participant. S/he can choose to pay this amount out of pocket or through fundraising.
Past trips have led to life-defining leadership experiences across the U.S. and the world—rebuilding the Gulf Coast post-Hurricane Katrina, working at an Alaskan national park, constructing adobe brick homes in the mountains of Honduras, helping at a Costa Rican orphanage, and mentoring at-risk boys in Ecuador.