CHANGES AT HOME

Edwards and the Office of International Programs—as well as departments that choose whether to grant course credit—have some control over the academic rigor of programs abroad.

But administrators cannot change Harvard’s highly competitive extracurricular atmosphere, or prevent students who study abroad from feeling left out of their clubs once they return. For study abroad to take hold at Harvard, students and administrators say, the leadership timelines of extracurricular groups will have to change.

In both large and small student organizations, students say that spending time away prevented them from achieving leadership roles.

Lewis had planned to run for a board position in Fuerza Latina, but says her trip to Brazil in fall 2002 made that impossible.

“It did throw me out of the loop for several organizations I was in,” writes Lewis, who had also been involved in tutoring and helped found a salsa group.

Leaders of student organizations say that while their members can easily become involved again when returning from abroad, leadership positions are a different story.

“I knew running for president as a sophomore that I could never do study abroad and I think that is how it will always be,” Ethan L. Gray, president emeritus of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra (HRO), writes in an e-mail.

The presidency of HRO is a series of positions lasting nearly three years.

It “is one of the longest time commitments that I have heard of in terms of student group leadership positions, and because of that, study abroad is not a realistic option,” Gray writes.

Stephanie R. Hurder ’06, the current HRO president, was accepted to a program in New Zealand and was all set to go when she decided to run for president two days before the HRO election.

She still hopes to go abroad after graduation.

For some student athletes, giving up extracurricular activities is also a hard sell.

McGeehin, a midfielder on the lacrosse team, says one reason he didn’t head to London for a semester was the thought of losing a season of game eligibility.

But Anderson was able to play water polo in Australia and says she “didn’t have any trouble getting back into it.” She co-captained the team this spring.