Introduction

For years, Brown's Office of International Programs has offered a wide range of credit-bearing study abroad opportunities to undergraduates. While tremendously valuable, these experiences often truncate – at least temporarily – collaborative partnerships between Brown students and faculty. The University has therefore looked for ways to help students integrate their experiences abroad with the intellectual life of the campus here in Providence.

To this end, Brown has created the Global Independent Study Program, a new dimension in study abroad that extends meaningful student/faculty collaboration well beyond College Hill to all five continents. Students going abroad work in advance with Brown faculty to develop independent study projects that complement and significantly enhance their regular programs of study. In this way, the study abroad experiences becomes not an interlude between semesters at Brown but an integral part of the "Brown experience."