University President Lawrence H. Summers is set to embark next week on the most high-profile trip a sitting Harvard president has ever taken to South America.

Summers plans to stop in Santiago, Chile and Sao Paulo, Brazil during his three-day trip. He will give a major speech in both cities and plans to visit with students, faculty, alums, government officials and other local leaders, according to Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs John H. Coatsworth.

Coatsworth, who directs the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, helped plan the trip and will accompany Summers. The trip is also sponsored by the Rockefeller Center.

Coatsworth said next week’s trip was mapped out with the dual purposes of furthering Harvard’s efforts to globalize and reaching out to Latin America.

“This is part of his effort to promote the internationalization of the University and to involve foreign alumni in that effort,” Coatsworth said. “It also corresponds to Larry Summers’ conviction that Latin America is very important to the U.S., and specifically to Harvard.”

Summers, who is scheduled to depart Cambridge Monday night and return Friday morning, plans to spend Tuesday in Santiago, and Wednesday and Thursday in Sao Paulo.

While in Santiago, Summers is scheduled to have lunch with Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and the members of his cabinet. Summers is also slated to meet with the 12 to 15 Harvard students, including 7 or 8 are undergraduates, currently in Santiago for a seminar. He will discuss their study-abroad experiences with them, Coatsworth said.

Summers will also be joined in Santiago by Dillon Professor of International Affairs Jorge I. Dominguez and Fasid Professor of International Development Andres Velasco, Coatsworth said.

While there will be no additional faculty in Sao Paulo, Summers will visit with rectors from a number of local universities and hold an approximately 30-person class for graduate students at schools involved in an exchange program with Harvard. Three of those students have studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Summers will meet with yesterday. But he added that development was not the purpose of the trip.

He said he would be taking a look at the Rockefeller Center’s year-and-a-half-old regional office in Santiago, which coordinates study abroad and other University efforts in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Peru. Seven or eight undergraduates are currently studying in Santiago through the program, Harvard’s only official study abroad center, according to Rockefeller Center Associate Director Ellen Sullivan.

“I wanted to have a chance to visit a study abroad success, given that many students are studying and giving the work that the Latin America center is doing in its Santiago office,” Summers said.

Coatsworth said the Santiago office might well serve as a model for future University study abroad programs.

“One of the questions on his mind will be, ‘Is the David Rockefeller Center in Santiago a model that could be replicated in other parts of the world to promote the globalization of the university?’” Coatsworth said. “I assume the answer is ‘yes.’”

While Summers said he plans to expand study abroad, he said it remains to be seen exactly what the University will do to further that goal.