USC Dornsife expects that studying abroad for a semester or year will help students in reaching one or more of the following goals:
Pursue academic work that complements one’s major or minor course of study.
Such academic work may include courses that are specific to the culture, country, or region of the study abroad program; access to in situ learning opportunities and research materials, such as Madrid’s Prado Museum, Egyptian Coptic manuscripts, Afro-Brazilian religious ceremonies, etc.; courses that are similar to those offered on campus but with a cultural or academic perspective unique to the host country; or laboratory and field research opportunities not available on campus.
Gain a deeper understanding of a particular culture by spending an extended period of time immersed in that culture.
While the level of immersion is highly dependent on each individual student, the Office of Overseas Studies aims to provide programs that facilitate immersion through housing situations, cultural activities and excursions, and community involvement opportunities. Students live with a host family when possible and practical or in housing with local students. In a few programs students live with other American students but are strongly encouraged to meet and interact with host country locals as much as possible.
Improve foreign language skills.
USC Dornsife offers courses in 12 modern languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Because the USC Dornsife College wants students to be prepared to immerse themselves in the cultures of the countries where those languages are spoken and to be well-positioned to make rapid progress in language acquisition, students are required to have taken (or tested out of) at least two semesters of their host country language before going abroad. All students studying in a country where a foreign language is spoken must continue their formal language study in the host country. In the case of languages that are not offered at USC (i.e. Dutch, modern Greek, and Swahili), students begin study of those languages upon arrival in the host country.