Unfolding COVID-19 Crisis in a Study Abroad Program: Voices of Stakeholders Involved in the Evacuation Process

• In Event: Innovative International Research

Abstract

This qualitative case study documented the unfolding of the COVID-19 crisis that impacted a study-abroad program in Paris between December 2019 and May 2020, culminating in the urgent evacuation of U.S.-affiliated students from France. Framed by complexity and chaos theory, as well as past research on study abroad and crisis management, rich data from extensive interviews conducted with nine undergraduate students in the program and the four educational staff members responsible for them were triangulated with external correspondence (e.g., official university emails), local media sources, and governmental documents (e.g., White House statements) to provide the full contextualization necessary to capture the singular voices of these stakeholders, as they experienced the different phases of the rising of this unprecedented crisis.

Authors

• Aurore Mroz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Tricia Thrasher, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign