Emily Bastian, IEM ’18

Student-Athletes Abroad

As a Graduate Intern for Student-Athletes Abroad, a study abroad provider with a mission to ‘connect the world through sports,’ I worked on projects related to university partnership development, online orientation development, marketing and student recruitment, and more. My biggest project of the semester was related to cultivating new institutional partnerships with U.S. universities, and promoting our semester long study abroad program in Costa Rica.
I utilized my knowledge base of international education marketing and recruiting from my on campus coursework in the planning and implementation of this entire project, and collaborated with colleagues on the SAA team to produce a strategic plan for partnership cultivation.
In conjunction with developing this plan, I attended three professional international education conferences: Diversity Abroad (Miami), The Forum on Education Abroad (Boston), and the first ever Sports Diplomacy Conference held at the University of Arizona. At these conferences, I had meetings with over 20 universities to discuss potential partnership development, and learned quickly the trends and most common feedback from university stakeholders regarding our programs, our company, and how we may be able to work together.
I also had the opportunity to go down to Costa Rica, where we operate programs year-round, visit the staff there, and meet with our local partner organizations. This site visit helped me understand the on-the-ground operations of the programs I would be discussing with universities while on the road at these conferences.

“Me attending a NAFSA Regional Conference and representing my practicum organization, Student-Athletes Abroad. I attended three professional conferences as part of my practicum experience to continue to learn more about partnership cultivation and university relations management, as well as to gain more exposure to industry standards and best practices.”

Click here to check out Emily’s project, “Developing Institutional Partnerships”

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