At this rate, Dartmouth students may be going nowhere fast.
Within the past two years, Dartmouth has created only one new foreign study program "" the anthropology and linguistics FSP to Auckland, New Zealand.
This newest FSP is also one of only 13 out of 36 programs that Dartmouth offers outside of Europe and the United States -- despite what may be rising student interest in traveling to non-Western countries
Executive Director of Off-Campus programs John Tansey attributed the lower number of non-Western FSPs to a lack of interest from Dartmouth's faculty and students. But the slow, cautious process by which Dartmouth creates off-campus programs may perpetuate Dartmouth's preference for European destinations.
Limits on Non-Western Programs
Of the 36 off-campus programs that Dartmouth offers, 23 programs take place in Europe or the United States. Three programs take place in Central or South America. Two programs take place in the Caribbean. Three programs take place in the Asia, and two programs take place in Africa.
This disparity is mostly due to a lack of interest by Dartmouth's faculty and students, Tansey said.
Academic rigor does not create a huge limitation on Dartmouth's ability to host foreign study programs in non-Western countries, Tansey said, because Dartmouth professors always teach at least some of the courses Dartmouth students take while abroad.
However, the academic calendar and the expense of travel is often a limiting factor for non-Western programs, Endicott said.
Certainly for the New Zealand FSP, the sponsors had to make sure that the University of Auckland could fit Dartmouth students into their summer school -- Winter term at in Hanover corresponds to the New Zealand summer.
"One of the reasons we wanted New Zealand was that that area of the world is underrepresented from Dartmouth foreign study," Whaley said.
"It would be nice if we had a few more programs in the South Pacific. That area has become very popular for students," Endicott said.
A Multi-Year Project
The creation of new LSA and FSP programs is a lengthy process that involves many people within the sponsoring department and the approval of multiple committees within the College.
Though Tansey said this process can take up to a year or more, Lindsay Whaley, a department chair who co-sponsored the New Zealand FSP last year, said the creation of these programs can take even longer.
"From its conception to reality, it was a two-year process. It's hard to imagine it going any faster than that. I suspect in many cases it could be three or four years from start to finish," Whaley, who is the chair of linguistics and cognitive sciences, said.
Birth of an FSP
After a department generates the idea for a new program, the first and most important step in creation of an LSA or FSP is for its sponsors to make contacts with the institution that the program is going to be associated with, Whaley said.
For the New Zealand FSP, co-sponsor Kirk Endicott, chair of the anthropology department, went down to New Zealand in the summer of 2001, almost two years before the first Dartmouth students arrived in New Zealand.
During his time in the South Pacific, Endicott traveled to various universities before finally settling on the University of Auckland because of its facilities and the large number of indigenous persons in the student body.
"I met with people who dealt with student housing, transfer credit and travel," Endicott said. "It began to look like it was doable."
The Proposal
Once a program works out the logistics with the partnering institution, the sponsors of the program must write an extensive proposal to be approved by the college.
The proposal is "very elaborate. You have to know exactly all the financial implications and every little detail of what will happen on the trip," Endicott said.
The proposal needs to convince the College that the area of the world will be safe for the students and faculty and that the proposed program is academically rigorous, Tansey said.
"Our main concern is to assess what's safe and secure for our students and faculty," Tansey said.
The programs must also stay within the funding available to the College, he added.
The proposal must be approved by the Committee on Off-Campus Activities and the appropriate associate dean for the sponsoring departments.
From there, different parts of the proposal have to be forwarded and approved by other College Committees. There are five committees in total that must approve the proposal.
Prospects for Non-Western Programs
With the success of the New Zealand FSP, the prospect of new non-Western off-campus programs is encouraging, said Tansey. "There's an interest on behalf of the College to look into other geographic areas," he said.
Students who went on the New Zealand FSP were excited to able to study a group of people from that region.
One of these students, Tate LeFevre '04, said, "It was also very fortuitous that the FSP was in the Pacific region because that's a region of the world that I'm fascinated by. With a discipline like anthropology, it's really important for students to have the opportunity first hand to interact and learn from members of the culture they are studying. The FSP definitely gave us that experience."
