Studying abroad during your sophomore or junior year can be a complex process in itself – picking a country, arranging credits, getting visas. But students who wait until their senior year to travel overseas usually face an additional set of hurdles.
The university requires students to take their final 30 credits on the campus, essentially preventing seniors from studying abroad without making their way through bureaucracy. But if the University Senate approves a new measure this afternoon, students would be able take advantage of off-campus opportunities during their final semesters without postponing their graduation date.
The new policy would instead require that any combination of 30 of the last 60 required credits be taken at this university – giving students more flexibility to study abroad, accept job offers in other states or pursue internships, as long as they have fulfilled all major requirements.
“The way the rule stood was not flexible at all,” said Zackaria Chacko, a physics professor who serves on the senate committee that authored the report. “The logic behind this is to give students more flexibility. It’s very important to expose yourself to as many outside cultures as possible. There’s no better way to broaden one’s horizons.”
The university policy as is presents a challenge junior government and politics major David Zuckerman knows too well.
In order to study abroad in Argentina next year, Zuckerman has had to negotiate waiving six of the 18 credits he will be receiving while abroad – a sacrifice, he said, that is not unusual for seniors who want an off-campus experience.
“I’m going down a month early to take an immersion class and I had to sign away six of those credits,” Zuckerman said. “I’m not in need of the credit, but it’s still required me to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to study abroad.”
While the policy was originally intended to allow students more opportunities to study abroad, it may have further-reaching effect, said Claire Moses, who chaired the senate committee that is proposing the change. She noted other cases in the past where students were unable to accept job offers elsewhere because they needed to stay on the campus to graduate.
Not all professors in the senate’s committee system were as receptive to the change. While language professors expressed concern about students missing out on the opportunity to study abroad due to university policy regulations, some science professors said taking upper-level courses on this campus was of utmost importance, Moses said.
“All it is, is introducing some flexibility,” Moses said, adding the policy doesn’t make it easier for students to get a degree from this university. “What’s the difference between courses last-semester junior year and first semester senior year, as far as how many courses are upper level credits?”
Though critics of the proposal expressed concern that the university degree might lose merit if students didn’t have to take their upper-level courses on the campus, University Senate Chair Ken Holum does not expect the issue to face much opposition at this afternoon’s meeting.
“[The new policy] is a very workable way to solve the problem of students who want to study abroad during their senior year,” Holum added. “It seems to do the job without diluting the degree.”
In some cases, like Zuckerman’s, deans were already approving students to bend the current rules to work around study abroad and other off-campus opportunities. But this would open it up to everyone regardless of whether they knew what strings to pull, Moses said.
“A policy like this will really help,” Zuckerman said. “At the very least it will encourage students to look at study abroad and other off-campus opportunities as real options rather than closing the door on them completely.”
The policy will not affect how a student obtains permission to study abroad and departments will still be required to approve any study abroad applications.
“The university sees study abroad as an enriching or valuable experience,” Holum said. “This will enable [students] to do that with greater flexibility.”
Senior staff writer Marissa Lang contributed to this report. taustindbk@gmail.com
