Residency Abroad

The Residency Abroad may be completed in one of several ways:

  • The simplest and most common way is to enroll in an accredited semester-long or year-long study abroad program through HSU, the CSU, or a study-abroad consortium such as CIEE, SITT, or USAC. The HSU Study Abroad office can help you locate and select a program that is suited to your interests and financial resources. (See also the Links page of the International Studies website.) In most such programs, you will enroll in courses at a foreign university and transfer the credits back to HSU.

    While a residency of at least one semester is normally required, some summer study abroad programs do manage to condense 12 semester units of work into as few as ten to twelve weeks. Residencies of fewer than ten weeks are not appropriate--although in exceptional cases a combination of two shorter residencies may be approved by the Program Director, in consultation with your concentration area advisor.

  • Students pursuing the concentration in International Business Studies are normally placed in overseas internships arranged with the help of the concentration area advisor. Both the HSU Study Abroad office and the Career Center can point you to resources for discovering international business internships. Students in other concentration areas, however, may also find suitable internships with commercial or governmental concerns or with NGOs or other institutions. In either case, the sponsor of the internship must be reputable, your responsbilities under the internship must be clear, there must be a mechanism for reporting and accountability, and your concentration area advisor must have contact information for your on-site supervisor. Your concentration area advisor may also require some sort of written "contract" to be drawn up in advance of your departure. The Study Abroad office can advise you regarding legal paperwork and other preparatory arrangements.

  • In rare and exceptional instances, students may propose independent activiities or courses of study abroad in lieu of more traditional arrangements. All such proposals should be drawn up under the supervision of your concentration area advisor and submitted to the International Studies Program Director.

The "Meaningful Project"

The Meaningful Project is normally carried out as part of your residency abroad.  It may take many different forms—a research or analytical paper; a documented field project; a supervised internship; a journalistic report; a speech, presentation, or performance; a multi-media work (website, wiki, or blog, film or video, CD-ROM or Power Point); etc.—but it is meant to be a sort of culminating experience, the rough equivalent of a Senior Project, though perhaps not quite so lengthy or elaborate.  Ideally, your project will represent an outgrowth of interests you have developed in the coursework in your Concentration Area, and it will capitalize on the unique opportunities afforded by your place of residency abroad.

Since in many instances there is no course credit attached to this project, there are practical limits to the amount of work that can be expected.  Just the same, the project will be more “meaningful” if it is a significant practical undertaking, creative activity, or work of independent research or analysis that brings to bear the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired throughout the major on some topic within your Concentration Area of particular interest to you. 

As you begin to conceive your project, you may wish to consult your major advisor about the general parameters of its scope and design. You will work out its particulars, however, with your project advisor—who in most cases will not be the same person as your major advisor.  Rather, the project itself should be carried out under the supervision of someone with expertise or authority in your chosen topic.

  • Many study-abroad programs build several units of Directed Study, Field Research, or Service Learning into their curricula, and this provides the most convenient vehicle for satisfying the meaningful project requirement.  The work you do here should of course be relevant to your Concentration Area (e.g., a field research project in irrigation engineering would not be appropriate for a student pursuing the Cultural Studies concentration), but otherwise the Directed Study, Field Research or Service Learning project that you complete would constitute fulfillment of the meaningful project requirement.

  • If it is not possible to conduct your project under faculty supervision abroad, however, then you will need to make alternate arrangements with a faculty member here at HSU who is willing to serve in the role of project advisor. It should go without saying that it is much easier to make such arrangements before you go abroad than after you've returned.

  • It is assumed that students completing internships abroad (see "Residency Abroad," above) will have carried out one or more "meaningful" projects in the normal course of their internship. I.e., for these students, the meaningful project requirement will be satisfied by satisfactorily completing the internship.

Each concentration area may have more detailed or specific guidelines for the Meaningful Project:

  • Chinese Studies
  • Cultural Studies
  • European Studies
  • Globalization Studies
  • International Business Studies
  • Islamic Culture Studies
  • Latin American Studies
  • Pacific Basin Studies
  • Postcolonial African Studies