Looking towards the future of SST
Study-Service Term (SST) was created in 1968 to provide students with a fuller education by going abroad for a full semester of study.
SST in 50 years has sent over 8,000 students around the world to 24 different countries. In each location students study for the first half of the semester and then they spend the second half of the semester doing service in a community. They spend the entire semester with a host family, one for each location.
While SST has been an integral part of the Goshen College Curriculum, the students opting to take alternate courses has grown over the years. In the 1980s the number of students going on SST were around 80%, but today the number is around 50%. So with the decline in students going on SST and it being 50 years of the program Goshen College decided to take a look at the program and figure out what is working and what could be improved.
The college began the search with a conference in the fall of 2018. The conference was made of students, faculty, and staff and they talked about what was, what it is, and what it should be going into the future. The start led to work for months that led to another conference in the spring of 2019 where the findings were presented to the greater community.
The work of SST is not over, as none of the decisions are concrete, but the legacy of SST will change because the way SST operates will not be the same.
