Study Abroad Office Moved

In an effort to make it easier for students to fit going abroad into their academic plans, Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby has placed the Study Abroad Office under the jurisdiction of the dean of undergraduate education.

The move from the Office of Career Services (OCS), which went into effect last month, was one of Kirby’s first decisions since he took over as dean on July 1.

Moving the Study Abroad Office was one of several recommendations for study abroad reform made in a March report co-authored by Kirby and William L. Fash, who is the chair of the Faculty Standing Committee on Study out of Residence.

Only about 10 percent of Harvard students go abroad while undergraduates, a figure that Kirby and others in the University hope to see increase.

“Our hope, simply put, was to reduce the perceived hindrances for students who wished to study abroad, and, in time, to make international study an important part of a Harvard education for a larger number of students,” Kirby wrote in an e-mail.

Study abroad at Harvard has been targeted for reform ever since University President Lawrence H. Summers declared his support for international learning in his inauguration speech last October.

The recent move follows two major changes to study abroad procedures that were approved by the Faculty in May.

The Faculty approved a “two-track system” in which students going abroad will be able either to choose from a list of pre-approved courses, or to develop their own plan of study as they do now.

They also voted that students should no longer be required to take a year of classes in their host country’s language before going abroad.

Additional efforts to help students study abroad are in the works.

According to Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Wolcowitz, the Faculty Standing Committee on the Core Curriculum will work this fall on allowing coursework done abroad to count for Core requirements other than Foreign Cultures—which is currently the only requirement that students can fulfill away from Harvard.

And in an effort to help students meet concentration requirements abroad, the Committee on Study out of Residence, which reviews petitions to study abroad, and the office of the dean of undergraduate education will ask the various concentrations to be more active in encouraging foreign study, Wolcowitz said.

Concentrations will be asked to identify international programs appropriate to their area of study and to inform students how to fit in a term of study abroad, even if they wish to study outside of Harvard to pursue an interest outside their concentration, Wolcowitz wrote in an e-mail.

In addition, international internship and work opportunities will also be worked in as possible for-credit experiences, Wolcowitz said.

The Study Abroad Office will probably be given a new home in Harvard Yard this fall, but for the moment the office will stay at OCS’ Dunster Street location, according to Wolcowitz. He also said he expects the size of the office’s staff and budget to increase in the near future.

Wolcowitz said his office may also work on expanding the limited number of Harvard Summer School classes that are taught abroad by Harvard Faculty. Currently these programs include the Italian Language and Culture program in Calabria and Sicily, and the Latin American Literature and History program in Cuzco, Peru.

While the petition process will be simplified and the language requirement lifted immediately, the list of “automatically approved” programs will not be ready by the fall, Wolcowitz wrote in an e-mail.

Students who have studied abroad said the move to help students meet requirements abroad is overdue.

Psychology concentrator Briana R. Cummings ’03 said she did not even try petitioning her department to get concentration credit for psychology courses taken at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she studied this past spring.

“When I heard my tutor describe the requirements, I didn’t find any that met with them at the Sorbonne,” she said. “I would really have loved to fulfill credits while I was abroad.”

Instead, Cummings was forced to use up her electives.

But S. Andrea Sundaram ’02, who studied physics and Italian culture at the University of Bologna his junior year, said Harvard should be wary of going too far to encourage students to study abroad.

“If they make it too easy, Harvard could have the same problem they have at other universities, where people just go for a change of scenery their junior year,” Sundaram said. “It’s good if the people who go are the ones who really want it.”

—Staff writer Eugenia B. Schraa can be reached at schraa@fas.harvard.edu.