This Saturday marks the fifth anniversary of when students in Florence abruptly returned home due to COVID-19.
Kent State, along with thousands of universities worldwide, faced the impact of the pandemic, so the university and its staff quickly made decisions to ensure the safety and well-being of their students.
Isabella Lang was one of the students who couldn’t wait to return home from Florence. After all, Kent State had already brought most of the 230 students home due to COVID-19, leaving her one of the last to go.
“Get me on this plane. Get me home. I’m done,” Lang said recalling her last hours in Italy, where the virus was spreading rapidly. “All my other friends had already left, so I was all alone.”
Lang worried less about missing out on the study abroad experience and more about getting home safely as the pandemic cut her time abroad short.
“We were supposed to go to Milan, but they had cases of COVID in Northern Italy so the trip got canceled,” Lang said. “Then, I’m not sure how long it was—maybe a few days later—they emailed us at 11 p.m. that we were all going home.”
Vice President of Global Education Marcello Fantoni explained the immediate effect the virus had on global education.
“I remember very well,” Fantoni said. “At the very beginning we were alarmed, because three cases of COVID became 300,000.”
Kent State first brought students home from this largest study abroad zone once the country became a hotspot for COVID-19 cases. The university’s decision quickly became clear: students had to return.
“The president, the provost and myself all met and monitored the situation for a week,” Fantoni said. “In one week, we decided to bring them all back home”.
In under 48 hours, Kent faculty had to arrange 230 flights for students, find them housing and enroll them in classes back in Kent.
Lang flew home on March 6, six days after the university contacted students and told them they had to return.
“Feb. 29 was when they first told us we were going to be brought back and then they had to put everyone on emergency planes,” Lang said. “We were all pretty spread out. I came back on March 6, but all of my roommates had pretty much already gone back at that point.”
As Kent State Faculty worked to get students home, protocols for social distancing and less crowded spaces led to the separation of students to follow regulations.
Kristin Stasiowski, the assistant dean of International Programs and Education Abroad for the College of Arts and Sciences, said she knew COVID was affecting Italy before the United States, so the university followed the news during the decision-making process of bringing the students home.
“Everyone knew it was going to happen, but it was like looking at the clouds and waiting for the rain to fall,” Stasiowski said.
Since Italy was affected before the United States, Kent State Administration had to follow the regulations closely. Stasiowski explained that she and university officials watched the quarantine mandates, followed flight regulations and monitored the rules set in place by each country after deciding to bring students back.
“At the airports, they had to take your temperature, and I remember them having us fill out a form that asked if we had experienced any symptoms and you just had to say no, or else we would have been kept in quarantine,” Lang said.
Lang, a now Kent State alumna with a degree in fashion design, returned home safely, but at the cost of her study abroad experience.
Five years later, Kent State’s study abroad programs are still feeling the effects of COVID-19.
Fantoni said the number of students abroad decreased from 840 in 2019 to 220 in 2020, 195 in 2021 and finally in 2024, 604. As pandemic regulations decreased worldwide, study-abroad numbers have steadily increased.
While the programs have fewer students now than pre-COVID, in just 10 years, Kent State has sent 5,598 students overall to the Florence program alone.
“We will not be content with just getting back to the same numbers,” Fantoni said. The university and faculty members are working to bring international students to Florence, developing alliances with other universities to build a stronger community abroad and so much more.
Stasiowski said the first decline in student interest in studying abroad had no connection to the pandemic.
“There was an initial uptick in student interest for study abroad right after COVID, but it has begun to drop off,” Stasiowski said. “However, numbers are fluctuating and rising again.”
As student interest rises, numbers of students abroad rise as well.
“We are expecting this year to be back to the same number of students abroad pre-COVID,” Fantoni said.
As the cautions of COVID-19 lessen as years pass, students are more willing to travel and gain new experiences.
Regarding the university handling the students’ return, Lang said, “I think they did well, seeing as they couldn’t have really known how to prepare for that.”
Olivia Scott is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].