Reforms Spur Students to Pursue Study Abroad

The Faculty’s push last year to streamline the “onerous obstacles” that discourage students from studying abroad has resulted in a marked increase in student and departmental interest, officials say.

Departments, House tutors and proctors have begun to take steps to publicize study abroad, and students are taking notice.

But this is only the beginning, says Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs John H. Coatsworth, chair of the Committee on Study Out of Residence.

Coatsworth says the committee hopes to double the number of students studying abroad in the next two to three years. Currently, about 8 percent of each Harvard graduating class has studied abroad.

According to Coatsworth, Harvard students study abroad at alarmingly low rates when compared with other schools, where he estimates 20 to 40 percent of students study abroad.

“If Harvard is to become just as international as any other university,” he says, “numbers need to increase by two to four times.”

Departments have already begun to discuss changing requirements to make it easier to study abroad. The University is also looking to create its own Harvard-run programs abroad, beginning with a pilot effort in Chile this spring.

This new push to internationalize the University began in earnest last spring with a Faculty vote to make it easier for students to study abroad.

Students no longer need to prove that their international experience will provide a “special opportunity” unavailable at Harvard, and they are no longer required to study the country’s language for two years before leaving campus.

Coatsworth says that the Faculty committee wants to “proceed as rapidly as we can [to promote study abroad] while ensuring quality.”

And students say Harvard’s new international focus is having an impact on their priorities.

“The fact that everyone is talking about how it’s now easier made it a viable option in my mind for the first time,” says Rosa P. Wu ’03, who recently decided to spend spring semester in China.

University encouragement has made study abroad “come to the forefront in people’s minds” across campus, Wu says.

A Spirit of Reform

Many departments have taken new steps this year to promote study abroad among their concentrators, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive, say administrators and professors.

According to Anita A. Mortimer, coordinator of undergraduate studies in the economics department, interest in study abroad has increased greatly this year.

“We’ve always had a meeting in October [about study abroad]...at the last meeting we had many more students than in the past, at least twice as many students as we’ve ever had,” she says.

Other concentrations have also seen a similar rise in student interest.

Director of Undergraduate Studies for Social Studies Anya E. Bernstein says she has had sophomores inquire about study abroad, something that has not occurred in previous years.

Bernstein believes the increased interest is due to changing perceptions about study abroad.

“Students get the sense that there are onerous regulations from the College, so many hoops to jump through,” she says. “My goal [this year] has been to publicize study abroad since there has been this initiative.”

Departments are also considering structural reforms that would make it easier to have an international experience.

The history department has already changed its requirements for the class of 2005 in order to facilitate study abroad by eliminating the spring junior tutorial and course-intensive subject “tracks.”

Professor of English and American Literature and Language Elisa New, who is also a member of the Committee on Study Out of Residence, says that many departments now have an “overall readiness” to discuss changing the way study abroad will fit with other aspects of their concentrations.

New says that the English department aims to make study abroad “a more normative part of student experience” and wants to “see how study abroad fits within the concentration rather than threatening it.”

Specifically, the English department is looking to the history reforms as a possible model for how to restructure its concentration requirements.

New emphasizes, though, that some difficulties lie in the way of departments trying to create reforms to promote study abroad.

“Departments need to work so that

mechanisms of approval aren’t too inhibiting yet aren’t a rubber stamp,” she says.

Coatsworth says his committee’s goal is to work with departments to ensure that opportunities abroad are up to Harvard’s standards. The best way to do that, he says, is for Harvard to begin to create overseas programs of its own.

Harvard’s New Frontier

The pilot program for this approach will begin later this academic year in Santiago, Chile.

Sponsored by Harvard’s Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the program offers opportunities to study in three Santiago universities in a wide variety of fields while living with Chilean families.

The Rockefeller Center has a regional office in Chile, and Harvard will organize a special orientation program, as well as internships and activities, for students during their stay.

Coatsworth says such Harvard-created programs are vital to the growth of foreign study at the University.

“We won’t get the number [of students going abroad] up until we organize Harvard programs,” says Coatsworth, who is the director of the Rockefeller center.

He hopes the newly created Office of International Programs (OIP) will create new Harvard programs more easily and quickly once it appoints its first director.

OIP Assistant Director Leslie Hill says the office is currently engaged in a “grass-roots effort” in which departments disseminate the office’s information about studying abroad to promote student interest.

A Buzz in the Houses

Changes growing out of study abroad policy reforms are also evident within the College’s Houses and first-year dorms.

Many senior tutor offices have begun regularly sending out news about the OIP’s services and informational sessions. They also report increased student interest in going abroad.

“I would say the number of study abroad applications I signed have doubled this fall compared to last fall, and most students report that the process does seem easier,” Quincy House Senior Tutor Maria J. Trumpler writes in an e-mail.

The House also hopes to use the experiences of tutors and students to foster interest in study abroad.

“Quincy House has many resident tutors who have spent time or grown up in other countries and I know that they have been talking to students,” she says. “As of next semester, one of our tutors will organize welcoming receptions for those returning from abroad to share their adventures with anyone who is thinking about studying abroad.”

Melinda G. Gray ’88, senior tutor of Pforzheimer House, notes the House has a study abroad tutor this year for the first time ever.

According to Dean of Freshmen Elizabeth Studley “Ibby” Nathans, while her office has always asked proctors and non-resident advisors to encourage first-years to consider spending time abroad, they too have re-vamped efforts to inform first-years about their options.

“We have reminded proctors and non-resident freshman advisers of changes that will make the process of arranging an international experience far easier for students, and of changes in how students will gather information about programs,” she writes in an e-mail.

With these changes in addition to current reform efforts, Coatsworth believes that study abroad at Harvard will soon be what now it is not—“routine.”

—Staff writer Margaretta E. Homsey can be reached at homsey@fas.harvard.edu.