Students who are reluctant to study abroad cite the limited time to take advantage of academic opportunities at Harvard.

“I wanted to take full advantage of the four years that I have at Harvard, and I thought that sacrificing a semester would be something I’d regret down the line,” says Joseph D. McGeehin ’06, who had considered studying history at University College London for part of his junior year.

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby, who says that his “personal aspiration is that every Harvard college student have some sort of significant experience abroad,” says that Harvard would eventually offer a “variety of models” of time abroad to eliminate concerns like missing out on classes in Cambridge.

“I don’t have a quota for those that should be formal term-time study abroad” as opposed to summer, Kirby says.

For now, the available models are relatively slim.

The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies maintains an office in Santiago, Chile that supports Harvard students in the area, helping them find internships and host families and coordinating a two-week orientation.

But Harvard has nothing like Georgetown University’s program—where 52 percent of students study abroad, many in school-sponsored programs in places like Italy and Turkey.

Edwards says she hopes to establish other regional centers on the Santiago model, perhaps in South Asia, Africa, Greece, the United Kingdom or Mexico, the earliest of which could open during the 2005-2006 academic year—assuming donations to start these programs come in.

“I am thinking of a modified version of a Santiago center...I think of it as the embassy model,” Edwards says.

NAVIGATING THE INTERNATIONAL WATERS

Kirby says that current students who studied abroad have had to overcome an institutional “criminalizing” of spending time away from Harvard—in the past, it was difficult for them to get credit here, and the rules for the types of courses taken overseas were highly regimented.

Those who chose to navigate the difficult procedures, though, generally rave about their time abroad.

They say that they had easier times within the classroom, but found their experiences with foreign cultures to be both challenging and rewarding.

“When you go abroad, you get a new appreciation for what you have here. I felt like maybe I wasn’t getting as much out of my experience here as I could...and I came back much more excited,” says Elizabeth G. Anderson ’04, who spent a semester studying English, Australian culture and film at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

For Chioma J. Duru ’04, studying abroad in Ghana changed her perspective on Harvard in a slightly less positive way—although she says she recommends study abroad for everyone.