Broadening Horizons, Abroad

A world-class faculty, a student body from every corner of the globe, and access to the largest private library collection on the planet was good. But it was not good enough for Katherine L. Peisker ’09. After spending her first two years inside Harvard’s ivy-clad gates, Peisker decided to look beyond the Yard to broaden her education. Bidding farewell to her blockmates in Leverett House, Peisker took off on a year-long journey, spending the first half of her junior year living in Moscow and the second studying in a Ukrainian Greek Catholic university in Lviv.

As support channels open up across the University, Harvard students are increasingly debunking the myth that study abroad and a Harvard education don’t mix. Last month, David Rockefeller ’36 donated funds that will be used by students to travel during the summer.

Last April, Rockefeller donated an additional $100 million that has been earmarked for other study abroad programs and arts education.

Since the 2002-2003 academic year, study abroad has increased nearly three fold, bringing the number of students who studied outside the country at some point last year to 640, as students are finding that academic credits can be fulfilled and a thesis enhanced from experiences abroad, according to Office of International Programs officials. But for a certain subset of these students, mere months are not enough time away from Cambridge. Last year, nine students went their entire academic year without ever setting foot in a Harvard classroom without having to sacrifice their Harvard degree.

A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Peisker said she knew she wanted to go abroad before ever setting foot on campus, having already spent three summers in Ukraine. And she knew that Harvard, home to the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, would provide an opportunity to return.

Freshman year she made sure to frontload courses that fulfilled the requirements for her concentration: social studies. But a problem arose mid-way through her sophomore year, when she decided the required thesis and intensive tutorials did not fit well with the pressures of a year abroad.

“Social studies was pretty upfront,” she says. “They’d love for you to go abroad for a semester, maybe not a year.” While the social studies concentration has the highest proportion of students who go abroad, according to Director of Studies for social studies Anya Bernstein, only one person has concentrated in Social Studies after spending a full year studying off-campus.

“I’ve watched people crash and burn trying to do it,” she says, referring to two students who ultimately changed concentrations after returning to campus.

With the clock ticking, Peisker turned to the Department of Government, presenting her situation and her plan to spend a year abroad.

“Are you still going to take me?” she asked. “They said ‘sure.’” The department gave Peisker credit for all of the classes that counted for social studies credit and agreed to consider Social Studies 10: “Introduction to Social Studies” as one of the government-required sophomore tutorials. By the end of her sophomore year, Peisker had met six of her 11 Government requirements, and, deciding to go forward with a thesis, had found a thesis advisor—something she was warned would be far more difficult to do 3,000 miles away. She also had the OIP approve all eight half credits for the electives she planned to take at the university in Moscow.

Peisker spent the summer before her year abroad in Ukraine and decided that she wanted to go back. Nearly six months after initially having her classes approved for a full year in Moscow, she e-mailed a new proposal for her second term abroad: a program in Kiev, Ukraine. Receiving both approval and support, she thought she was set. Then, a month before her flight to Kiev, she was informed that the program was canceled. “We’ll figure something out,” Peisker recalls the OIP telling her.

Through contacts at the HURI, Peisker finally found a spot at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, where she says she was the only international student—ever. Her four classes, all in Ukrainian, were approved by the College for elective credit. Upon arriving at the university she says she found the atmosphere to be generally more laid back, a feeling she would miss upon her return home. Even though Piesker encountered a fair number of surprises while living in Ukraine—including cholera, daily power outages, and having running water only eight hours a day—she says her only complaint was minor.

“The quality of teaching was not the same,” she says.

Though not having access to the Harvard library system for her research was a challenge, she says that sitting at meetings of high-ranking government and church officials conveniently worked out.

Finally back at Harvard, Peisker is completing her requirements while putting her thesis to paper. And she says the benefits of going abroad were not purely academic. Ealier this month, Peisker, who was raised Protestant, was confirmed at a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Jamaica Plain, Boston. Now, older, wiser, and Ukrainian Greek Catholic, Peisker says she plans to return to the university in Lviv next year to coordinate a master’s program in ecumenical studies, specifically on interchurch relations.

THE WORLD AS A CLASSROOM

Chanequa N. Campbell ’09 says she had a different outlook on her year abroad from the outset. She chose not to write a thesis and had no prior relation with the two countries in which she would spend a semester each.

“I really wanted to build my study abroad experience around traveling,” she says.

To achieve her goal, Campbell visited 12 countries on three continents over the course of the year. Between her side trip to Morocco and her adventure skydiving in Switzerland, however, Campbell was getting credit towards her sociology concentration and for electives.

“On the academic front, that stuff is all stuff you can work out,” she says. Like Peisker, Campbell received credit for one core requirement per semester abroad.

Campbell spent her first semester abroad taking courses in Milan, Italy. Her class on Leonardo da Vinci, “The Last Supper,” was conveniently located just around the corner. Another course was about television and media communication.

With the huge American influence on such a subject, she says, she was “seeing our culture reflected in their eyes.” She related her classes on the streets of Milan to her concentration back home. “Sociology is the interaction in society between groups,” she says. “So I think it’s easy to study abroad.” David L. Ager, the co-director of undergraduate studies for the sociology department, says that study abroad helps students “place what they‘ve learned here at Harvard in a larger context.”

For her second semester, Campbell enrolled as a student at Queen Mary, University of London. Again, she took four very different courses, with varying degrees of focus on sociology.

Despite one class change that had to be reapproved and an extended period of time before she received her grade for another class, Campbell eventually received four full credits from her year abroad. This was the same amount she would have received had she taken four courses for two terms back at Harvard. As for the thesis: “after the experiences I had abroad, this wasn’t something I needed.”

‘SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE, FOR EVERYONE’

Campbell has joined a group of volunteers at the OIP, each with at least a term of study abroad experience, who advise others about the opportunities abroad.

The OIP is using these students—and a new staff—to reach out to the student body. The volunteers serve as representatives to each of the Houses. They have also put together the Student Advisor Course Paths, a collection of each student’s plan of action that allowed them to fulfill their requirements, providing a guide for students in nearly any concentration.

“We’ve literally put our plan in a book,” Campbell says. “There’s something, somewhere, for everyone.”

The OIP is not alone in encouraging study abroad.

In the past, programs run by or directly linked to Harvard and Harvard faculty have been rare, and, for the most part, confined to the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. But across campus, departments are taking study abroad more seriously, says Cheryl Welch, the director of undergraduate studies for the government department. “There’s a lot more excitement about it than there used to be.”

The Committee on Degrees in Social Studies currently sends four students each spring to King’s College, Cambridge, where their social studies-oriented program is designed to link their time abroad back to Harvard.

Bernstein described the program as “more of an intellectual experience than just cultural.”

Welch said that the government department is looking into “how we can basically get programs or faculty interested in students studying abroad so it becomes more a part of the undergraduate program.”

The department has also altered its requirements, allowing thesis writers in the class of 2010 to drop one of their two junior tutorials.

“We’ve been trying to think through how we can make it easier, especially for thesis writers, to go abroad,” Welch says.

—Staff writer Noah S. Rayman can be reached at nrayman@fas.harvard.edu.