As Harvard designs more of its own programs in the years ahead, it is also encouraging individual faculty members to design their own projects abroad.

“As we find an array of various kinds of study abroad opportunities, Harvard faculty will play a role in organizing them or leading them or teaching in them, certainly in designing them, and at the very least identifying them,” says Coatsworth.

Last month, Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby approved a pilot fund of $100,000 to support faculty-led projects allowing for undergraduate experience abroad, which was recommended by the CEA in its April report, according to Coatsworth.

The CEA will administer the fund and give grants to faculty members planning their own projects.

“The number of students seeking and needing support for international study is growing very fast,” Kirby wrote in an e-mail. The fund will be geared “primarily” toward “faculty-led programs designed for students,” he added.

Professor of Anthropology Theodore C. Bestor, who teaches Foreign Cultures 84, “Tokyo,” says the fund may help support his interest in developing a trip to Tokyo based on the class.

Bestor says that he has envisioned “structuring a course around learning the geography of the city at the same time that you’re getting a sense of the historical development, hopefully, through quick immersion.”

“There would be an awful lot of background work getting something like this set up,” says Bestor. “One of the ways in which I think funding from the College would be really helpful would be enabling a department or an individual faculty member to hire some local coordinators” to manage the logistics of a trip.

Coatsworth calls the amount given to the fund a “small number but not insignificant,” and says that if the pilot goes well, investment in it might increase.

“As demand increases,” Kirby adds, “we will seek to mobilize opportunities—from Centers and elsewhere—to expand the international experiences open to our students.”

Harvard’s push to be more systematic in enlisting the Faculty in developing more programs is also motivated by an effort to ensure the quality of the study abroad programs in which its students participate.

Edwards says faculty members can use their contacts with colleagues in foreign institutions to better fit students with host institutions.

“The best experience for the undergraduate depends on the best relationship with the institution or faculty with which the student is studying,” says Edwards. “And the best relationship is if the faculty here know the faculty there.”

And some department head tutors agree.

“What works well is placing a student in a high quality laboratory under the direction of a well respected scientist, preferably someone known to a member of the department,” Biochemical Sciences head tutor Richard M. Losick wrote in an e-mail.