College To Revamp Study Abroad

Study abroad has never been a central part of the Harvard education—but that may soon change.

Faculty members and administrators have recently begun to focus on reevaluating and revamping Harvard’s study abroad program.

And encouragement from new University President Lawrence H. Summers has definitely helped to add fuel to the study abroad fire, administrators say.

“The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) has embraced President Summers’ interest in this issue, and his voice has certainly been influential in carrying the process forward” says William L. Fash, chair of the Standing Committee on Study out of Residence.

Harvard currently lags far behind other research institutions in the number of students it sends abroad each year.

Roughly 160 Harvard undergraduates participate in study out-of-residence programs each year, according to the Office of Career Services (OCS).

In contrast, Dartmouth, for example, which enrolls approximately 3,500 fewer undergraduates than Harvard, sent 700 students abroad in the 1999-2000 academic year.

Some Faculty members see no reason why international study cannot be as accessible at Harvard.

As a first step the Faculty commissioned a report on the state of study abroad at Harvard at the end of last semester. James T. Grimmelmann ’99, a former member of the Undergraduate Council who devoted a great deal of his time at Harvard to studying and suggesting ways to improve the Core program, was selected to perform the study.

The Grimmelmann Report will be distributed to Faculty members next week so that it may be used to stimulate a discussion on study abroad at the next full Faculty Meeting, scheduled for Nov. 13.

Administrators say that they hope to pass study abroad legislation as early as next semester that will take effect at the beginning of the next academic year.

“I think there’s long been some ambivalence—both among Faculty and students—about the value of time spent elsewhere as opposed to time spent at Harvard,” Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Wolcowitz says. “But I think the balance has shifted and it’s time to reassess how we present ourselves to the world.”

Study Abroad in the Past

According to Wolcowitz, the first time that improving study abroad at Harvard was raised as an issue was during the 1949-1950 academic year, when students concentrating in certain areas such as Romance Languages in Literatures, Germanic Languages and Literature and Linguistics obtained the right to earn credit for work done abroad in their concentration.

Until the 1970s, the only additional liberalization of study abroad opportunities that occurred were additions in the number of concentrations that were allowed to count work done abroad for credit.

The next major step came in 1982, when the Faculty passed legislation that essentially cut the link between concentration credit and allowed students from any concentration to study abroad.

“The expectation was that it would be permitted for students to study language or a foreign culture—even if none of the work was going to be related to their particular concentration,” Wolcowitz says.

The Standing Committee on Study Out of Residence established a procedure for reviewing petitions for study abroad.

This procedure was reviewed and essentially reaffirmed by the Faculty Council in 1991.

Over time, Wolcowitz says, the nature of the paperwork changed in an attempt to make the process simpler. For example, the requirement that students petitioning for study abroad had to get signatures from the heads of the departments of each course they were seeking to take was eliminated.

Wolcowitz says, however, that the process remained complicated.

Today, Pedersen says it is her impression that there is a growing recognition among the Faculty of the importance of study abroad as part of the undergraduate experience.

“I think we have the view now that some understanding of another culture is part of a liberal education,” Dean of Undergraduate Education Susan G. Pedersen ’81-’82 says.

Some wonder if Harvard’s current housing shortage is a source of motivation behind this recent push to improve study abroad at Harvard. But most administrators say that, although a potentially convenient side-effect, it was not a reason for this decision.

“The effect that an enhanced study abroad program would have on housing is very much an incidental benefit,” Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 writes in an e-mail. “The liberty or restrictiveness of our study abroad options...should be determined by purely educational considerations.”

Rules, Rules, Rules

Many Faculty, administrators and students alike say the first step towards expanding study abroad opportunities for students at Harvard is simplifying the petition process.

“In the current system, the actual application process can be quite burdensome for students,” Pedersen says.

Currently, a student has to visit OCS, the Standing Committee on Study Out of Residence, his or her concentration tutorial office, the Core office, the housing office and the Senior Tutor before obtaining approval for a petition to study abroad.

Rohit Chopra ’04, chair of the Undergraduate Council Student Affairs Committee and one of five student representatives advising the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) on this issue, calls for a centralization of the application process.

“What is needed is a good, student-friendly study abroad program,” Chopra writes in an e-mail.

Many students also complain that Harvard’s unique exam schedule and tutorial requirements make fitting study abroad into their plan of study nearly impossible.

Another hurdle faced by students wishing to study abroad, one which has been addressed by Summers, is guaranteeing that they will receive credit for work done abroad.

“There’s a balance that needs to be struck between requirements and allowing greater flexibility,” Summers says.

Administrators acknowledge that the great differences in requirements across the concentrations makes this a difficult task.

“Each department has different criteria and needs for their students and their curriculum, so I don’t think we should expect there to be a ‘one size fits all’ solution for the question of study abroad,” Fash says.

Many departments, particularly in the natural sciences, have historically discouraged the use of study abroad to fulfill concentration requirements, explaining that the quality of their courses would be hard to match.

“I think that study abroad would work for our students if appropriate courses were taken at qualified institutions,” Physics Department Chair Gerald Gabrielse says. “Of course, I am proud of the physics education that we provide to our concentrators, and honestly feel that it would be difficult to duplicate the opportunities and teaching quality offered in our department.”

Fash says he understands that some departments would prefer that concentrators engage in summer study, or internships in lieu of term-time study abroad.

Indeed, Harvard is beginning to sponsor a number of study abroad programs for non-term-time study and work experience.

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, for example, is putting together two new summer programs for 2002, one in Italy and the other in Peru, according to Fash.

Making it easier to use study abroad course work to satisfy the Foreign Cultures and Historical Studies B Core requirement might also help open the door to study abroad a little wider, Chopra says.

Currently, no single course taken abroad can substitute directly for a Foreign Cultures course—an entire program of study abroad may do so, but only if the program of study combines a study of a foreign language with courses on literature, history, politics and/or the arts.

Some suggest that the creation of Harvard-sponsored study abroad programs would encourage more students to study abroad.

But administrators like Lewis point out that studying abroad at Harvard-owned institutions might detract from the “abroad” part of “study abroad.”

“I do not think we should have Harvard campuses abroad,” Lewis writes in an e-mail. “The point of going abroad is to live with students of another country, not with other Harvard students,” he says.

There’s No Place Like Harvard

Some Harvard administrators worry that structural problems with the actual study-out-of-residence program are not all that is holding students back from studying abroad.

“There is a pervasive sense among students that it’s very hard to study abroad,” Pedersen says. “In some ways the reputation for difficulty deters students before they can even investigate [the options open to them.]”

Outreach is one way to combat this problem. OCS Study-Out-of-Residence Advisor J. Jane Pavese says that OCS has been and will continue to make outreach a central focus of their efforts to encourage Harvard students to study abroad. OCS currently organizes meetings with department heads, groups of concentrators, and an international study and volunteer fair.

Even if restrictions on study abroad were relaxed, many feel that Harvard students still might not be inclined to take advantage of study abroad opportunities.

Grimmelmann says that during the course of putting together his report, he found that many students feel the cost of missing a semester at Harvard is just not worth it.

“People are afraid to leave their houses, their friends, their extra-curricular activities,” Grimmelmann says. “There is a great residential community here.”

Grimmelmann says one student said to him, “We don’t even leave Harvard to go into Boston—why would we study abroad?”

After the Attacks

Administrators say that improving and expanding opportunities for study abroad is an awkward project in the post-Sept. 11 world.

“We are certainly counseling students about health and safety,” Pavese says.

But, Pavese says, Americans are at a point where they know they must have intercultural skills.

Wolcowitz says he thinks the current state of international affairs may prevent mean that Harvard’s study abroad numbers will not skyrocket right away, regardless of any changes Harvard may make. But he does not think that this is a reason to postpone the discussion.

“I would not be surprised if students—and more especially their parents—are reluctant to study away from here,” Wolcowitz says.

“But regardless of what happens immediately, we should be reviewing our procedures and our general stance towards study abroad—given the unfortunate circumstances of this fall, it’s on all minds about how important it is for Americans to gain an appreciation for understanding another culture.”

—David H. Gellis contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.