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The University of New Hampshire offers its students opportunities to study abroad in 12 countries. Programs in Austria, Canada, England, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland and Spain enable UNH undergraduates to spend a year, semester or summer immersed in a different culture.

UNH students can also enroll in programs run by other universities, and about half of those who go abroad take this route, often so they can live in a country where UNH does not have a program. That means that in any given semester, UNH students are studying in 20 to 25 countries. English-speaking countries are the most popular among UNH students; England is number one and Australia is number two. Hungary and Spain alternate honors for number three, while France and Italy round out the top five most popular destinations.

Approximately 400 UNH students go abroad to study each year, and that puts the university well above the national average for the percentage of students who do so. In fact, in 1999, UNH was ninth among all doctoral-granting institutions in the U.S. in terms of the number of undergraduates studying abroad.

Ten years ago, science and engineering students were far less likely than their peers in the liberal arts to study abroad. UNH made a concerted effort to create opportunities for these students. Today, it's possible to study engineering, math and physical sciences at the Technical University of Budapest in Hungary and to study environmental and civil engineering at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Two UNH programs are open to non-UNH students: the Cambridge program at Gonville and Caius College, one of the oldest colleges at Cambridge University, and EcoQuest in New Zealand, which provides an opportunity to conduct field studies in ecology while studying resource management and environmental policy.

"Study abroad makes an individual more culturally adept and flexible for the rest of his or her life," says Cathy Frierson, professor of Russian history and director of the Center for International Education. "Once you confront profound cultural differences and learn how to live in a different culture you become so much more capable of entering any new situation. And living abroad also enriches your consciousness and sensibilities in unanticipated and very permanent ways. To walk the aisles of the Winchester cathedral or sit in the shadow of a sculpture in the garden of Rodin's house in Paris or listen to a Rachmaninoff concerto in the Tchaikovsky conservatory in Moscow makes British or French or Russian culture and history a part of a student's consciousness in a way that no amount of studying in Durham, N.H., ever could."

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