Study Abroad Programs Sponsored by the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM)

Please note: Only students registered in the undergraduate College of the University of Chicago may apply to ACM-sponsored programs through Chicago. Students at other ACM colleges should apply through their home institution. Students at non-ACM colleges should contact the Chicago office of the ACM (Phone: 312-263-5000; e-mail: acm@acm.edu) to inquire about making an application.

Botswana (Gaborone)  Tanzania-Autumn (Dar es Salaam)  

The College of the University of Chicago works with the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM), to sponsor programs in Tanzania and Botswana. These programs, listed above and described below, are available, by application, to Chicago students and are considered officially to be Chicago-sponsored programs in terms of credit transfer, registration, billing and financial aid.

Credits:
Participants in the ACM programs receive full credit for their work abroad. This credit appears as course titles, units of credit and grades on their Chicago transcript.

Registration and Tuition:
Participants remain registered as a full-time University of Chicago student during the period of their participation in an ACM foreign study program. If participants take part in a full-year program they pay regular Chicago tuition. If they take part in a single-term program, the charges are more complicated. Since ACM single-term programs are conceived as semester or half-year programs (most of the schools in this consortium are on a semester calendar), ACM bills its member schools a half-year's tuition for each participating student from that school. Consequently Chicago will bill such a student a half-year's tuition for the quarter of participation. If a student were to participate in the autumn-term Tanzania Program, for example, he or she would be registered for this program in the autumn-quarter only, but would be billed a half-year's tuition during that quarter. (For the winter and spring terms, when students are back on campus, they would, as usual, pay one-third of the year's tuition per term.) Students would also pay a program fee (for room and board and related expenses) plus Chicago's study abroad administrative fee, assessed to all students participating in a Chicago foreign study program. (For precise figures, please see Study Abroad Program
Fees.)

Financial Aid:
Participants retain their financial aid eligibility in an ACM program abroad. However, two expenses, the study abroad administrative fee and the round-trip air fare to the program site, are not underwritten by College Financial Aid. Also financial aid cannot meet the extra tuition required of single-term programs except by an increase in recommended loan. On the other hand, since students cannot be expected to work part-time while abroad, the self-help component of the financial aid package would not include a term-time employment factor.

Eligibility and Application:
Students may apply to an ACM program if they are registered in good standing at Chicago. Apart from the specific eligibility requirements for individual ACM programs, they are asked to present cogent academic reasons for studying abroad, as well as a solid academic record. In general these programs are open to second-, third- and fourth-year students.

Applications are reviewed by a Chicago committee, which decides whether it should be forwarded to ACM. Assuming that it is forwarded, the final admission decision is made by ACM.

Further Information:
To further discuss an ACM program and the possibility of participating in it, contact Lewis Fortner (Harper 213; 702-4858).

Descriptions:
Listed below is a brief description of the two ACM-sponsored study abroad programs available to students in the College. Visit the ACM website for further information: www.acm.edu. Syllabi for ACM courses are available by calling ACM at 312/263-5000.

Botswana (Gaborone)
"Culture and Society in Africa," runs from early January to mid-May. It is successor to ACM's spring-term "Nation Building and Development" program in Tanzania and, like that earlier program, offers students an opportunity to study and observe a relatively new African nation standing on the shoulders of a much older culture. Various academic exercises, such as classroom work, language study (Setswana), field trips and independent study are combined with on-the-ground observations and interactions to create an intense and valuable learning environment. The program is headquartered at the University of Botswana, a modern and well-equipped institution. Students have the opportunity of living with a local family or in a graduate residence hall at the University. Because this is a spring-semester program, bridging both winter and spring quarters, students will not return to Chicago for spring-quarter. Students will be registered for winter-quarter only and pay tuition equivalent to one-half of Chicago’s annual tuition.

Danae Roumis, 2008 Chicago graduate, studied abroad on the Tanzania program. She submitted an essay, On Borders, Bananas and Being Back, to a writing contest held by Transitions Abroad and won third prize. An excerpt of the article is below.

"Chapati Making": Learning to make 'chapati' at a Kiswahili teacher's home in Dar es Salaam Danae Roumis '08

In Swahili, a common greeting is “Habari yako?” – what’s your news?, or how are you?
One of the most common answers is, of course, “Nzuri.” – good.
One morning, a Tanzanian student asked my friend, “Habari yako?”
And she enthusiastically answered, “NDIZI!” …banana!

The unexpected response delighted the Tanzanian student, and amused the rest of us. I know that there are plenty of times I felt uncomfortable or embarrassed or out of place. But the things that stay with me are these simple memories, laden with meaning beyond just jokes-herein lies the fabric of our composition as humans seeking happiness through cross-cultural understanding. Whether bananas or something else, humor is powerful and should be recognized as such, in that the simple greeting and comical mishap could lead to more consequential conversations.

To read the full article, click on On Borders, Bananas and Being Back.

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