Study Abroad
Study Abroad Opportunities
Off-campus study is important for many reasons. It deepens your understanding of international and comparative politics, it helps you better understand the relationship between culture and politics, and it expands your cross-cultural communication, foreign language and problem solving skills. And, of course, it’s fun!
There are many ways to incorporate off-campus and study abroad coursework into your Political Science major, including J-term courses and semester- and year-long study. You can also study in virtually any part of the world. Department faculty, for instance, have offered courses in Eastern Europe, New Zealand, Bangladesh, Ireland, and Pakistan. But you can also study Political Science in universities throughout the world and transfer the credits back to UST.
The department also has a long-standing relationship with a number of national and local off-campus programs, including the Washington Semester, a program that brings students from across the nation and the world to study at American University, Washington, D.C. http://www.washingtonsemester.com/
We also have historic ties with the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA), a 17-university member consortium that offers coursework in Ecuador, Ireland, and Scandinavia. Find out more about HECUA at http://www.hecua.org/
You should also talk to the staff at the University Study Abroad Office, located at 44 N. Cleveland Avenue (across from the back of O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library) or go their website at http://www.stthomas.edu/studyabroad/
Study Abroad: J-term 2010
Sustainable New Zealand: Policy, Politics, and Ecology (UMAIE)
Instructor: Dr. Steven Hoffman
Maximum Participants: 16
New Zealand offers a magnificent opportunity to study the difficulty of implementing a national policy of sustainable development. We will visit sites that showcase New Zealand’s natural history and its on-going efforts to maintain endangered ecosystems while also trying achieve a high standard of living for its people. We will talk with experts on a variety of policy issues, including the development of alternative energy sources, the management of a comprehensive resource planning system, the integration of indigenous cultures into sustainable development efforts, and national efforts to preserve threatened and endangered species.
