The faculty are responsible for hosting one field class per course, but they are otherwise free to travel independently during time in port. Staff members differ from faculty because they are not involved in the instruction of the academic material, but are involved with more administrative or functional job roles. This includes, but is not limited to, the medical team, the field office, the student life team, the comms team, and the academic admin team.
Because the staff are involved in key functions needed by the shipboard community, they are often expected to work certain hours while in port. This could mean being on call, being on duty, administering field programs, etc. As such, staff members are not usually as free to travel independently while the ship is in port.
I like this inclusive term because the divisions between the faculty and staff should be insignificant. The community needs these two groups of people to work together for a successful voyage.
I found that our staculty really bonded together, creating a sense of unity despite the diverse job responsibilities of the people on these teams. Lastly comes the crew. The crew members are the true heroes of the Semester at Sea experience, but are so often unseen or unappreciated. I can genuinely say that the crew of Semester at Sea are some of the hardest working people I have ever met, and they deserve an abundance of respect. Their day-to-day experience and operations are totally separate and distinct from the Semester at Sea staculty.
In fact, they are hired on a third-party contract and have an entirely different set of rules and responsibilities from the Semester at Sea faculty and staff. Although you might develop a casual relationship with your cabin steward Hi Rosa! As such, you will not travel with them in port or hang out with them during their off hours. This is mandatory for all staculty and should be respected. Semester at Sea has a unique organizational structure in the sense that there is the shipboard staff and the home office staff.
Staff members at the home office work full-time for Semester at Sea performing jobs in the operations, finance, marketing, recruitment, etc sectors of the company. They are the staffers who make the long-term strategic and operational decisions that allow Semester at Sea to thrive YoY.
You might be interested to learn that the permanent full-time employees rarely travel on the voyage in full. Several staff members from the home office might travel to the ship for embarkation or disembarkation, or might travel for a leg of the voyage, but otherwise they remain in the home office performing their normal job responsibilities.
Of course, if there are emergency situations such as Coronavirus, then the home office will be much more involved in decision-making. Each voyage, roughly half of the staculty are new to the SAS community and half are returning for a second, third, or fourth voyage. But the entire team turns over each voyage with a few exceptions so the mix of people on the staculty will vary every semester.
Bringing back returning staculty helps to preserve institutional culture and navigate the unique challenges that come from hiring a new staff for every voyage.
As such, I can really only speak in detail about my employment experience as part of this team and this post will not address what it is like to work as a faculty, medical team member, or RD for example.
On my voyage, there were 5 comms team members — myself, the videographer and three student assistants i. The videographer was responsible for producing 10 videos on predetermined topics over the course of the voyage, along with short video recaps of our time in port. The student assistants supported all of our social media, photography and videography work and we would assign specific projects to them on a weekly basis. I worked extremely closely with the videographer, Mike, during my voyage even though our actual deliverables had very little overlap.
It was so nice to have someone else to think creatively with or complain with when I was stressed. Mike and I were thick as thieves. In fact, some students thought that I was married to Mike and not Sam because of how much time we spent together working. From what I have heard of previous comms teams, this tight relationship is usually the case, but I was nonetheless very thankful to have such a dedicated and close colleague to rely on.
I think the comms team, along with the RD and field team, have one of the tougher jobs of the shipboard team, the reason being two-fold.
Firstly, the social media coordinator and videographer have to consistently work throughout the entire time in port, unlike the faculty and most staff. I was almost always on a field program, sometimes for up to 5 days in a row. But it is very exhausting to be working for days straight and by the end of the voyage, I was definitely burnt out. Secondly, the comms team is the face of the voyage for everyone NOT on the voyage.
You are producing content that your shipboard community rarely sees because of the lack of internet on the ship; yet their family and friends at home watch it super closely and intensely. This leads to a strange sense of isolation in not being recognized for your work in your direct community and simultaneously being responsible for telling the stories of your entire community.
Regarding the field programs I covered during my tenure, the programs were pre-selected for me by the home office based on content needs and demands. For example, one of my programs was a new program that SAS wanted to promote on future voyages so they needed coverage. Because these programs were part of my job responsibilities, I did not have to pay for them or be a TL for them more on that further down. The application process for Semester at Sea voyages is pretty extensive, and it happens roughly months before the voyage begins.
For some positions, the interview process is even longer — especially for higher-level administrative positions. In this process, the hiring team is looking for people who are simultaneously a good fit for the position and for the community overall. You will meet people during field programs and field classes who will become your new friends.
Waiting to see is not worth the risk of missing out on something you really want to do. Find the group of people that you travel best with and who match your values. Choose your experiences, choose your plan and then stick with it.
Choose what you want to do and do it, because there is no possible way that you can do it all. On my first voyage, Semester at Sea offered a currency package as a service but not for my second voyage, so I was happy that I remembered it from my first time around. A lot of the ports are cash-only places where credit cards are not widely accepted so, finding cash on your first day in port becomes a priority.
This can be really stressful if something is wrong with your card or the closest ATM is mobbed with SASers waiting to pull out cash, so having even a small amount of cash in the local currency ahead of time can be a huge relief.
Most major banks allow you to order foreign currency from home, and it usually takes a few days for it to arrive. They were able to get all currencies except Myanmar and Ghana, which was such a relief when we arrived in port. I could just get off the ship the first day and not worry about how I was going to pay for a cab or shuttle to the city, instead choosing to pull out cash when it was more convenient. There are typically two streams of thought when it comes to dealing with cash.
Personally, I almost always use an ATM to get local cash instead exchanging currency. These are a few reasons why I prefer to use ATMs:. Everything you purchase on the ship from laundry to postage to snacks gets charged to your shipboard account, which is tied to a credit card that you register on embarkation day. If you have more than one credit card, I would recommend charging your shipboard account to one and then locking it in your safe.
It is a HUGE pain to update your shipboard account if you lose or have that credit card stolen. For US-passport holding voyagers, there are several visas that you are required to get before embarkation. You can use a visa service, like Travisa, to get these visas or you can apply for them on your own.
But there are several visas that you will get once you arrive in the port on the ship. These visas may have a cost associated with them which then gets charged to your shipboard account.
There are lots of random costs that you will share with your friends throughout the voyage. Whether its a late night meal, buying extra sunscreen from them or settling your Uber bill, these costs happen. Snacks are life!!! You will want to eat a lot more snacks than you think because you will probably get sick of the ship food. Pack lots of snacks because you can always share or give them away if you have too many!
Also the snacks on the ship are expensive and get repetitive after a while. The crew is super clever about repurposing ingredients from lunch to dinner. For example, there will always be a pasta salad for lunch the day after pasta for dinner. I was always really impressed with that creativity, and then voyagers get even more creative! I saw some really clever salad combinations, incorporating ingredients from the hot and cold bar, as well as clever sandwiches using the daily bread rolls.
My voyage ate 2, pounds of peanut butter…. That is A LOT of peanut butter. It is going to be your best friend in the dining hall, especially if you are a vegetarian or vegan.
I personally liked pairing them with fruit like apples or pears for a dessert or on an English muffin with banana for breakfast. Semester at sea students turn into first graders on chicken nugget or taco day. People go NUTS for these meals. They are almost always for lunch and it happens about once a month. There will be a line, you will be irrationally excited for it, and it will taste better than you remember from elementary school.
Get excited! I have no patience for bad coffee which the ship coffee is and I need coffee every day, so I knew finding a coffee solution was a priority prior to the voyage. After trying a few different brewing methods, including pour over and French press, I have determined that an Aeropress coffee maker is the best method for ship life. It is compact, lightweight, easy to clean and you can make only a cup at a time. You have to sort coffee grounds separately on the ship, so the little puck of grounds that the Aeropress makes is super easy to clean up.
For your bank account and your waistline, try to avoid buying food from the pool deck or grill until the second half of the voyage. It makes it feel more like a treat and helps keep your budget in order. How the lessons I learned from my first Semester at Sea voyage helped make my second voyage even better! Although water is all around you on the ship, fresh water is a precious commodity on the ship.
As such, there is a lot of chlorine in it. There will be a line of people waiting to fill up their water bottles and people get a little competitive about it. Get comfortable with that. It will be really slow, it will be non-existent sometimes, and yes, doing projects without internet is about as hard as you could imagine it would be.
And it is glorious. There are a lot of opinions on which phone plan to get for SAS and whether getting local SIM cards is a better option.
It is with a heavy heart that we share the passing of our joy filled friend and fellow Semester at Sea has been hard at work behind the scenes this summer running itineraries through our health and safety rubric to plan for future voyages, and is pleased to Semester at Sea is thrilled to announce that the Spring Voyage has reached capacity!
As Semester at Sea and study abroad emerge from a temporary hiatus, we are gratified Please enjoy a short update on how our team is navigating the pandemic and pushing our program through one of the most challenging periods in our year history.
After watching All office personnel will be unavailable during that time and will respond After assessing the current worldwide vaccination rates and projected vaccine distribution timelines in anticipated port stops, we have updated the itinerary to align with ports most likely to have the Our plans to sail this fall were made with the expectation that the You are using an old version of Internet Explorer.
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