Brief forays offer lasting lessons to US students

History professor Jacqueline Moore had prepared her students as best she could for a month-long course on temples and empires in Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), and Cambodia.

Then, five days before their departure, they stood still with the rest of the world to try to comprehend the tsunami. By the time Ms. Moore sent an e-mail reassuring students and their parents that they could safely go forward, their thoughts were already turning toward helping survivors. The students, from Austin College in Sherman, Texas, set out to gather donations of baby formula, antibiotics, and other supplies. They filled up empty bags they had planned to bring over for shopping, and arranged for their first stop to be an aid group in Bangkok that could distribute the goods.

This short trip had suddenly taken on a dimension none of them had imagined a week before. "We were going to look at these really cool temples, and we were going to ride an elephant," says Ms. Moore. "This adds a lot more meaning to the trip, for us to be able to help out a bit."

In three days, they collected $4,000 cash and $10,000 worth of supplies. Some donations will also be sent to Sri Lanka, including $50,000 from an anonymous donor inspired by their efforts. "We're going to get a crash course in disaster relief," says religion major Seth Finch.

American college students are increasingly squeezing academic and cultural adventures into a few weeks between semesters. Professors plan carefully to get the most out of each day, but the flexibility of short, small-group trips means that sometimes the lessons are spontaneous, too.

Proponents cite other virtues, as well. Such programs tend to be focused and intense, prompting both academic and personal growth. In addition, trips of two to six weeks are available to a wider range of students, especially those who work, play team sports, or have commitments that make a semester or year away seem impossible. And for more timid travelers, they appeal as a safe way to experience the world beyond their borders.

"Given the increasing academic requirements that get pumped into every major ... more and more, we're going to see students study abroad for short [periods] rather than longer," says Allan Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education in New York.

The IIE reports that about 50 percent of students who took courses abroad in 2002-03 did so for less than a semester. That includes 9.4 percent who traveled for fewer than eight weeks, up from 4.2 percent five years earlier.

"The shorter exposure gets their feet wet, opens their mind up to the rest of the world, and I think they're much more likely to go back for a longer stint," Mr. Goodman says.

Still, the United States has a long way to go to incorporate international education, especially at the community-college level, he adds. Of 15 million college students, only 175,000 study abroad in a given year - just over 1 percent.

Professors acknowledge there are limits to how much students can get to know a place on a quick jaunt. But some students who have spent both a semester in Europe and a few weeks in a developing nation, for instance, say the latter shifted their perspectives more profoundly.

Ten days in Ghana recently left a group of seniors from Barnard College both devastated and determined.

All semester they had read poetry, novels, and nonfiction in a new course called "Literature of the Middle Passage," which examined slavery and its modern-day legacies.

Suddenly, instead of the skyscrapers of New York, they were seeing people eke out a living in the shadow of forts where Africans had been forced onto ships bound for the Americas.

"It was really moving, really intense," says Manmeet Bindra, an anthropology and history major. "You walk into these caves where people were held and they still smell horrible; they've been cleaned and cleaned, but these are spaces where people were packed tight."

After she walked around Elmina, one of the villages at the base of an immense white slave castle, she says she broke down and cried for an hour.

"[The trip] was academic, but it was also ... a completely different way of thinking about something - you know, feeling it, and seeing it, and sensing it, and smelling it, and thinking about history and thinking about the place right now."

Ms. Bindra also wrestled with something many Americans experience when they confront poverty. She felt guilty stepping out of a fancy hotel into a marketplace where she saw children sleeping on wooden boards.

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