Instead, they will head to Cape Town, South Africa, with the Burch Fellows program.
"Cape Town is one of the most exciting places to be right now," said program director Ross Lewin. "It really speaks to the interests of undergraduates, especially considering the countries' similar pasts."
Burch Fellows past programs include trips to Beijing, Prague and Washington D.C., where students took classes and performed community service internships related to their majors.
Julius Nyang'Oro, chairman of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, will travel with the students and teach two classes at the University of Cape Town. Student internships this year will be in various fields, including communications, sciences and government.
Lewin said five more students are going to South Africa than originally planned because of the quality of the applications and the level of excitement. Student demand played a large role in the decision to go to Cape Town, he said.
"We ran the program the last time in fall 1999, and the students came back on fire," Lewin said. "They urged us to run the program again."
Students leaving for the country at the end of August each have their own expectations for the trip.
Sophomore Marce Abare, an applied sciences major, said the best way to learn about a different country is to be involved in its day-to-day life. She added that living in the university district and working with South Africans should expose her to the culture in a way other programs could not.
"I originally found the program appealing because of the opportunity to work within the community in internship positions, as opposed to other study abroad options in which you only enroll in a university," Abare said.
