Undergraduates studying abroad in spring 2007 will be able to take their fall exams early—if their instructors approve—rather than having to lug their books overseas for in absentia exams.

Registrar Barry S. Kane made the announcement at Wednesday’s Faculty Council meeting, emphasizing that the new rules were aimed at providing more flexibility as the College works to increase the number of undergraduates studying abroad.

Under the registrar’s current policy, students abroad during exam period have to take their finals in their host country. This means that students whose spring semesters abroad begin in January have to take their Harvard fall term exams in their new home—just days or weeks after arriving.

“The Office of International Programs [OIP] believes that this issue could actually cause students to choose not to study abroad,” Kane said in an interview yesterday. “It’s been a problem for a while.”

But starting next fall, professors will be allowed to provide up to two other options: either letting the Registrar’s Office administer a version of the exam before its scheduled date, or assigning a substitute exam—say, a take-home paper over December break.

Kane said that professors at the meeting “embraced” the new policies. The only objection, he said, came from a faculty member who “felt that the way her final exam works, it really would not work under the new model.”

In response, Kane stressed that the traditional in absentia method will remain a possibility.

“Clearly it’s a very positive development,” Kane said yesterday of the new policy. “I don’t see how anyone can interpret this any other way.”

Kane made his presentation to the Council—the Faculty’s governing body—together with the OIP’s director, Jane Edwards, who could not be reached for comment yesterday evening.

MATERNITY LEAVE CHANGES

At the same meeting, Dillon Professor of International Affairs Lisa L. Martin, who last July became the first Faculty of Arts and Sciences diversity advisor, solicited the Council’s views in advance of possible changes to the Faculty’s maternity leave policy.

While Martin yesterday called Harvard’s current policy of offering all primary caregivers one semester’s teaching relief “relatively generous,” she said she may propose amendments to the rules when she appears again before the Council in the spring at one of its biweekly meetings.

Professors who give birth to their first child may get more time off under a revamped policy, Martin said. She said she may also ask that faculty fathers get a leave from their teaching responsibilities after the birth of a child.

Martin’s position as diversity advisor was proposed by the two task forces on women created in the wake of University President Lawrence H. Summers’ comments on women in science a year ago.

Evelynn M. Hammonds, whose post as senior vice provost for development and diversity also grew out of the task forces’ reports, is now leading a new task force on work and life that will issue University-wide recommendations for possible changes to maternity leave policies.

Martin said the timing of her spring appearance before the Council will largely hinge on when Hammonds releases her group’s recommendations, which Martin expects to come out later this winter.

Martin’s examination of the policy, she said, comes primarily in response to an announcement by Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby last May, as well as the May report of the Task Force on Women Faculty, which recommended that a “minimum maternity leave policy” be instituted across the University. That task force was also chaired by Hammonds.

At the Council meeting Wednesday, some professors raised questions about the relative importance of maternity leave for faculty parents, Martin said.

“Some people were talking about whether maternity leave is really the most important thing that junior faculty need,” Martin said. “How do we compare the benefits of maternity leave as opposed to greater access to child care?”

Martin also noted that maternity leave remains a key problem for professors in the sciences, who receive maternity leave in the form of teaching relief but still “have to be in the labs.” Martin said there was “nothing very concrete yet” in terms of ideas to remedy the problem.

—Staff writer Anton S. Troianovski can be reached at atroian@fas.harvard.edu.