Alison Devries, a senior at Valparaiso University in Indiana, said she was looking for a program that would combine her two majors of French and International Service. That led her to Boston University’s Paris Internship Program.
“Having the opportunity to have that work experience in a foreign country is just invaluable,” Devries said in a phone interview. “Especially in the country I’m working on speaking the language.”
While a number of colleges and universities have seen missteps in their study abroad programs, students and officials said BU maintains strong programs that attract students both at and outside of BU.
Accreditors are warning universities and colleges about the integrity of their abroad programs, according to a Wednesday article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The warning follows a series of missteps reported about a number of colleges, including SUNY Empire State College and its oversight at a college in Albania through which students could graduate with Empire State degrees, as reported by The Chronicle on Feb. 19.
Accreditors warn universities and colleges not only about setting up proper academic standards abroad, but also looking more closely at faculty evaluations.
“Here at BU Study Abroad, the curriculum is aligned with the BU curriculum,” said Amalia Pérez-Juez, acting director of Academic Affairs at BU Study Abroad. “This means that the departments have already approved classes taken abroad.”
Pérez-Juez said BU Study Abroad takes steps to ensure the university does not make the same mistakes as other universities or colleges that receive backlash from poor standards abroad.
“What happens with our courses is that we don’t send you guys to study something with a professor we don’t know,” she said. “It’s a professor that sometimes has an affiliation here.”
Chris Russell, Study Abroad associate director of marketing and recruiting, said in a phone interview BU is unique in the way that it holds a “tight value on these programs” students choose to take in foreign countries.
BU enrolled 635 non-BU students from more than 29 colleges and universities in BU abroad programs during the 2010-2011 academic year, according to the BU Study Abroad factsheet.
College of Communication senior Jillian Martin, who roomed with a Boston College student during her London Internship Program, said in a phone interview internships were a definite selling point for students looking into study abroad programs at other universities.
“A lot of it has to do with either they wanted a location their school didn’t offer or their school didn’t offer internships, just classes,” she said.
Chas Rubino, now a BU Study Abroad official, said when he was an undergraduate student at Lasell College in Newton he looked for a specific location he wanted to go to as well as internship availability.
“I chose BU mainly because of the internship program they offered,” Rubino said. “Also within in the different programs, BU kind of caught my attention because I wanted to go to Ireland. I’m from the South Shore, so everyone is Irish [there].”
Meg Lucas, Study Abroad marketing and communications coordinator, said her family members told her to study abroad as a public relations major in COM.
“One of my siblings went to BU and did the London program, so all I heard growing up was ‘Oh, it’s so great, you have to do it,’” she said.
When looking to apply for colleges in high school, College of Engineering junior Adam Osman said he looked closely at the study abroad programs.
“Study abroad was definitely a big thing for me and I had known that BU had a good study abroad program because my cousin graduated there four years ago,” he said. “So that was definitely a big factor for me.”
Despite the fact that accreditors are alerting universities and colleges about the integrity of their study abroad programs, Pérez-Juez said BU’s has strong academic standards at home and abroad.
“BU abroad is academically challenging,” she said. “You cannot find another program with the same academic standards as BU.”
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