Committee OKs Credit for Study Abroad

Students will be exempt from one Core requirement for each semester spent studying abroad, under a new policy approved last week by the Faculty’s Standing Committee on the Core Program.

The change advances efforts made last year to encourage students to study abroad, which included a streamlining of the application process, a new office devoted solely to international study and an increase in the number of University-accredited programs.

Jessica M. Matthews ’04, a religion concentrator who will spend the fall semester in India, said she is “thrilled” about the new policy.

“I was going to have to come back and take a Lit and Art B Core during the second semester of senior year, and I was really not looking forward to that,” she said. “Now I don’t have to take one.”

Under the new policy, as outlined in an e-mail sent to all undergraduates going abroad next fall, students will be exempt from one Core requirement for each full term—or four courses—of Harvard credit they earn, with a maximum of two exemptions allowed.

Additionally, students may apply to satisfy the Foreign Cultures area of the Core with their summer or partial term of study abroad, provided they are receiving an exemption from only one Core area.

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby wrote in an e-mail yesterday that the changes have been discussed “in some version” since the Faculty commissioned a report last year to more closely examine Harvard’s study abroad policies.

Kirby was one of many, including University President Lawrence H. Summers, who pushed for changes that would facilitate foreign study.

“The aim of the proposals this year is to bring to bear on study abroad the same principles that the Core uses for evaluating advanced standing,” Kirby said.

Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Wolcowitz said the intention of the new policy is to make studying abroad easier for those who have already chosen to do so as well as to encourage those who might have been “deterred” by the need to fulfill stringent requirements.

Wolcowitz said he was not sure if the new policy would apply retroactively to students who have already studied overseas.

Dean of Undergraduate Education Benedict H. Gross ’71 said the administration is working to ease requirements within concentrations, as well.

“We have been asking departments to grant some credit for courses taken abroad, to encourage students to consider such a term abroad,” Gross wrote in an e-mail.

But some students said they feel that obstacles remain.

Samantha G. Alston ’05, a concentrator in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies who will spend the fall semester in Paris, said that obtaining her department’s approval for the courses she plans to take abroad was the most difficult part of the planning process.

“The departments don’t really understand or don’t really believe Harvard’s new approach, and so they’re kind of a little bit hesitant about encouraging students to do so,” Alston said.

Though last year’s policy changes made things simpler, Alston said, the process remains too complicated, and still involves too many meetings and forms.

Matthews, a religion concentrator, said she thought the policy itself will not encourage undergraduates to go abroad, but that it will factor into the extensive planning that precedes a student’s departure.

Alston, however, said she thinks the new policy reflects the administration’s commitment to foreign study.

“It just shows that the school is actually serious about encouraging people to go abroad,” she said. “In theory they would encourage it, but there weren’t any structures set up to make it easier for you.”

—Staff writer David B. Rochelson can be reached at rochels@fas.harvard.edu.