CEA is excited to unveil our Ready Set Custom! initiative to you, our university partners. Ready Set Custom! is a different approach to international education, meant to provide both flexibility and structure in the form of ready-made programs that can be adjusted to fit your university’s unique needs.

Each Ready Set Custom! Program is built around one course and includes active learning activities, cultural activities, excursions, and housing. Ready Set Custom! programs do not require a faculty member of your university to lead and teach the course, as these courses are hosted at CEA Study Centers and taught by CEA faculty. Your university could, however, choose to add your own courses to any of these special programs, tailoring them to your university’s vision.

 

 CEA’s six Ready Set Custom! programs include:

• Cross Cultural Management in Dublin, Ireland 

• First Generation Abroad in San José, Costa Rica

• Leadership in Barcelona, Spain

• Smart Cities in Rome, Italy

• Food and Culture in Florence, Italy

• Sport and Culture in Buenos Aires, Argentina

 

Ready Set Custom! programs are a great jumping off point from which your study abroad office can talk to academic departments about customized programming. With so much flexibility built into the program model, combined with CEA’s academic and student support services at your disposal, Ready Set Custom! is the perfect way to dive into the world of custom study abroad programs.  

Contact your CEA University Regional Director to see any of our six Ready Set Custom! program proposals.

 

 

Barcelona, Spain is one of the most popular study abroad destinations in the world for good reason. Whimsical architecture, fascinating museums, delicious Spanish food, and other cultural features give students ample opportunity to learn from the city itself. Business majors can see their discipline through a new and uniquely Catalan lens in the heart of Barcelona, where business professionals are engaged in lively, dynamic work across the sustainability, manufacturing, tourism, and science sectors, among others. CEA is proud to offer your students the chance to study or complete an internship in Barcelona.

While CEA accommodates a broad range of majors in Barcelona, we’ve focused on building a strong catalog of business programs there, with no fewer than five business-specific program options and both of our internship models available. Thanks to onsite partnerships with several of Barcelona’s most reputable universities, we’re able to give students a comprehensive list of courses to choose from, in addition to the benefits available in our CEA Study Center classrooms.

 

Our business programs in Barcelona include: 

• Liberal Arts and Business at the CEA Barcelona Center (Summer)

• International Business at the CEA Barcelona Center, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, and Pompeu Fabra University (Semester and Year)

• Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the CEA Barcelona Center and University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia (Summer and Semester)

• Exploring Spain: Business and Culture in Seville & Barcelona at the CEA Study Centers in Seville and Barcelona (Summer)

 

We continue to enhance our business programs with specialized courses designed to create well-rounded business students. We’re also committed to growing the number of courses that cover specific business topics, allowing students with particular concentrations to study what they’re most interested in.

 

Recently added CEA business courses in Barcelona include:

• Principles of Leadership
• Entrepreneurship: The Art of Creative Business
• Business Consulting
• Negotiations
• International Finance 
• Financial Statement Analysis
• Sport Marketing
• Intermediate Microeconomics

 

Barcelona is an excellent choice for students who want to do an internship abroad, as the city is overflowing with internship-ready organizations across a variety of career fields. For business students wanting internship credentials, Barcelona is an especially smart choice: the city is in the midst of a start-up boom. Students can choose between CEA’s Study + Internship and Internship Only models and spend either a summer or whole semester accumulating hands-on experience in their career field. In addition to business, students could also potentially secure a Barcelona internship in fields like marketing, public relations, tourism, and more. Whatever a student’s chosen career field, an internship abroad is the ultimate way to prepare for the post-graduation job search, and Barcelona can offer students internship placements with a maximum amount of relevance to their projected career path.

CEA is now accepting student applications for Spring 2020 programs in Barcelona, with a deadline of October 15 for most programs.

Want to find out more about CEA’s Barcelona programs, including custom and faculty-led program opportunities? Contact your CEA University Regional Director.

 

CEA’s Internships Abroad program emphasizes the development of career competencies and career readiness as the ultimate indicator of student success. Through locating personalized internship placements that match a student’s specific professional goals and interests, CEA presents students with the unparalleled opportunity to gain relevant, hands-on experience in their career field of choice. Due to the particular demands of an internship abroad, it’s important for CEA’s internship specialists to make sure every student who enrolls in the program is truly prepared for the projected workplace responsibilities and the unique challenges of living and working in a foreign country. Our Readiness Rubric is the primary tool we use to assess each program applicant and help the students who enroll work on any gaps in internship readiness they may have prior to departure.

The CEA Readiness Rubric evaluates students in five key areas: relevant experience, self-awareness, engagement, capacity to manage uncertainty, and motivation. Through a series of scripted and unscripted questions, our internship specialists determine whether a student approaches, meets, or exceeds expectations in these five readiness areas. Based on a student’s total score, our placement team concludes whether or not that student is a good fit for an international internship. If we have concerns, we begin a dialogue with our university partners to learn more about the student and collaboratively assess whether the student is ready for an internship abroad or better suited to a study program.

 

The elements of each rubric area are as follows:  

1. Relevant Experience
   • Academic Courses
   • Work 
   • Ability to relate past experiences to the internship
2. Engagement
   • Preparedness
   • Punctuality
3. Self-Awareness
   • Culture
   • Professionalism 
   • Goals
4. Capacity to Manage Uncertainty
   • Decision-making
   • Adaptability
5. Motivation
   • Internal/External 
   • Curiosity
   • Initiative

    

We make the Readiness Rubric available to our university partners and their study abroad offices for their own evaluation purposes, and we also disburse the rubric to CEA’s onsite staff, so they can use it to identify and guide students who may be struggling in any of the readiness areas.

Our Readiness Rubric reflects CEA’s overall approach to internships abroad: keeping student success the central goal of the program and treating each student as an individual walking a unique path. 

To request a copy of CEA’s Readiness Rubric or find out more about how CEA internship specialists coach students, please contact Cynthia Engel, Director of Internships Abroad, at cengel@ceastudyabroad.com.