Aitor Sendino Fernández from Spain Shares What he Took Away From the ECD Program

My experience at SDSU was very rewarding at a personal, academic, and professional level. I first came to SDSU as an exchange student for two semesters, taking several classes in the Child and Family Development department. Needing to adapt to such a different educational environment and methodology, compared to my country of origin, was a really interesting challenge.

All the professors and classmates were very helpful and I soon started enjoying the learning experience at SDSU, finishing with great academic results as well! After my two semesters as an exchange student, and thanks to one of my professors from the Child and Family Development department, I had the opportunity to come back to SDSU for a third semester working as a research assistant at the Youth Violence Research Lab, supervised by Dr. Emilio Ulloa and Dr. Audrey Hokoda.

I'm sure that the experience and the skills I gained working with such a great team will be very useful for my professional future. With the help of my mentor at the lab, I developed my own research project on dating violence, which resulted in a research manuscript. This manuscript in particular, and my international working experience at SDSU in general, are now helping me find better job opportunities back in Europe, giving me a competitive advantage over other candidates without any experience working or studying abroad.

In the next months, I'll be starting an internship abroad with a program sponsored by the Basque Government and the European Union through the Leonardo da Vinci scholarships.