Definition of a Significant International Experience    

International Experiences for Harvard College Students

The number of students going abroad at some point during their career at Harvard College has increased steadily over the past several years, and the new David Rockefeller International Experience Grants program extends the opportunity to significantly more undergraduates. Faculty comprising the Committee on Education Abroad, tasked with monitoring the quality and appropriateness of international opportunities available to Harvard College students, have established guidelines for students planning an international experience, which are detailed below. Naturally, safety concerns are also important to assess.

Students are fortunate to have many sources of potential support for their time abroad, including funds based at the Office for International Programs, the Office of Career Services, and at the international, area, and regional centers. The Rockefeller International Experience grants will be offered to students whose plans adhere to the following three criteria, which the Committee on Education Abroad has articulated as defining a significant international experience:

• cultural immersion,
• involvement or consultation with faculty, and
• curricular integration.

Harvard recognizes that students have widely differing interests and will seek international experiences that they personally find most challenging and rewarding. Students will develop creative possibilities and combinations as diverse as their interests and imaginations dictate. Some students will choose a formal course of study abroad during term-time or in the summer; others will seek out paid or non-paid internships that allow them to work or serve in some interesting or meaningful capacity abroad; still other students may undertake research, perhaps in a scientific laboratory; while others may combine organized study with an internship or independent research. Some students may opt to go abroad once in the course of their Harvard career; others will pursue repeated international opportunities.

Regardless of their plans, students are encouraged to think of the Harvard international experience as a dynamic and complementary part of their Harvard intellectual trajectory.

Cultural Immersion
The value of international experiences comes above all from deep and meaningful interactions with foreign peoples and cultures in their own lands (and—to the extent possible—in their own languages), which cannot be acquired in Cambridge, despite Harvard’s intellectual resources. Cultural immersion is a central goal, and the Committee on Education Abroad believes that eight weeks is the minimum value period required to ensure this kind of in-depth experience. Students should construct their planned activities in such a way as to require participation in, not merely observation of, the culture in which they are living.

Facility in the native language is of course a key aspect of cultural immersion, and there is no question that any time abroad in a non-English speaking country will be affected by one’s proficiency in the native language. However, it is also possible to imagine an effective experience in an international science or medical lab, for example, where the lingua franca may be English, but where the lab in various ways reflects the particular culture of the country in which it is located and where students also have the regular opportunities to engage with the culture outside the lab. Similarly, it is also possible to envision experiences in countries where English is commonly or widely spoken but where the cultural signs and norms are significantly different from those in the United States. In the end, the goal here is an extended experience of significant and thought-provoking, potentially transformative, cultural difference.

Faculty Involvement
A student’s plans for time abroad should include some kind of active involvement by at least one Harvard faculty member, whether it be one of the student’s teachers, the head tutor in their concentration, or some other appropriate member of the faculty, such as one of the faculty in Harvard’s rich collection of research centers. Such faculty involvement might include helping the student initially to define and develop a plan, providing occasional guidance and assistance during the course of the experience itself, and working with the student on return to effectively integrate it into the remainder of their Harvard experience.

Faculty involvement may range from the direct leading of a summer school program abroad, to the oversight of term-time research or course-work at another university, helping a student arrange an internship abroad, connecting the student with an international colleague for research in a scientific laboratory, or working with the student to develop a plan for coursework before and after the international trip which will help maximize the benefits of the experience.

Curricular Integration
Whatever mode of international experience a student chooses, whether a formal course of study, independent research, or some kind of internship or service project, or some combination of these, its significance will correlate directly with the extent to which it is integrated, both before and after, into the student’s course of study at Harvard. One example of curricular integration would be a student’s continued engagement with a concentration-related topic or language, but in the context of another country and culture. On the other hand, a student could use time abroad to explore a new intellectual avenue that either complements their current curriculum or takes it in an entirely new direction.

A student might choose to combine a formal language or cultural program in a particular country with an internship of some kind in that country that reinforces or enhances the formal program; or a science student might shape a program that integrates their coursework in Cambridge with an internship in a foreign laboratory during the summer, or vice-versa. The opportunities are boundless, and each student should carefully consider and be able to articulate how his or her intellectual experience, in combination with their Harvard curriculum, contributes to their overall intellectual goals.

Updated December 2008