When finance senior Katie Grace studied in Dublin, Ireland, she had a life-changing experience, she said. But before she left, she had a lot of work to do.

“It was up to the students to do everything themselves,” Grace said. “No one held my hand.”

Many students had an experience similar to Grace’s. They were often confused about financial aid, transfer credit, cost and scholarships available through each program.

However, the opening of the Center for International Study has changed study abroad on campus. The center, which opened Aug. 1, offers a wide variety of services to students hoping to study abroad.

These services include peer counseling, links to online services and a library of brochures detailing study abroad programs all over the world. International business senior Kristin Penaloza serves as a peer advisor at the center. She said that the center exists to be a resource that encourages students to study abroad where they want to go. Director of the Center for International Education Debbie Danna said that it is important for students to visit a place they really want to visit.

In the past, she said, students have assumed that they could not study abroad because Loyola did not offer a program to suit their needs. This, however, is not true.

“There are as many programs as there are people,” Danna said. “Students can go wherever they want. They just have to find the right program.”

She said that the center grew from a university-wide desire to support study abroad. The center’s goal is that 40 percent of Loyola students will study abroad by the 2006-07 school year.

“A lot of people have been working for a long time to make this center a reality,” Danna said.

The Center for International Education is actually a combination of the study abroad programs and the Office of International Student Affairs. Danna said that the merger will help to promote diversity and awareness of other cultures.

“The programs work together to teach students that Loyola isn’t the only place in the world,” she said.

Communications senior Miriam Warren, who is also a peer advisor at the center, agreed that students who study abroad have a greater appreciation for other cultures.

More important for her, she said, studying abroad raised a greater awareness of her own background.

“When I studied abroad, I was immersed in another culture,” she said. “That immersion helped me appreciate my own culture so much more, because it was so different.”

Warren said that the center’s unique “to a student, from a student” approach to study abroad counseling will raise the number of students willing to go away for a month or even a year.

“We’ve been where they want to be and can get them where they want to go,” she said.