About

Our Mission

Through intercultural academic experiences, the Duke Global Education Office challenges students’ perspectives, expands self-awareness, and inspires lifelong global engagement.

Our Statement on Diversity

The Global Education Office believes intercultural academic experiences should be accessible to everyone. GEO’s mission is to challenge students’ perspectives, grow self-awareness, and encourage lifelong global engagement. Such growth cannot develop within a homogeneous environment.

We are committed to nurturing a richly diverse student cohort and a study away community where all members feel empowered, heard, respected, and supported. We have a responsibility to our study away community both at Duke and in the places in which our programs operate and expect the same commitment to inclusion from our partner institutions.

We continue to examine our bias and privilege while improving GEO’s culture of open-mindedness, empathy, and reflection.

Our Approach

Duke University is committed to providing an undergraduate education with a truly global perspective. All of us live in a world of increasingly interdependent nations and cultures, and you must be prepared to live and work in an international environment. While you can prepare in part through academic study and open debate at your home college, nothing can match direct experience.

An extended encounter with a foreign culture's different values and languages can teach us how to communicate across the barriers of custom, geography, and politics. Students who have studied away return with a deeper understanding of other peoples, of their own cultural background, of themselves, and of their place in the world.

Studying away will change your life. This is true not only in terms of personal development, but in terms of your career. Many students have pursued new interests or made contacts overseas that have had unforeseen benefits later on. Whatever your future holds, the time you spend studying away will be an undeniable asset.

Duke's programs provide you with the structure for this personal and intellectual growth. We believe that the best possible study away experience offers students high caliber academics, a strong support system, and the chance to integrate intellectual inquiry into a mosaic of cultural and personal experiences.

We accomplish our mission by:

Encouraging all Duke undergraduates to seek a meaningful educational experience by studying away for a year, semester, or summer.
Providing oversight for all Duke-Administered programs, and for all undergraduate exchanges with foreign universities, as well as consulting and interfacing with all Duke-Approved programs for Duke undergraduates.
Operating a number of Duke-Administered programs, including all the Duke summer study away programs.
Establishing new programs for the academic year and summer in areas (geographic and/or disciplinary) where opportunities are lacking for Duke students.
Promoting study away at Duke by advising students of their opportunities and assisting them in planning and arranging for the experience, as well as actively recruiting students from other universities to participate in Duke-Administered programs.
Recruiting and admitting Visiting International Students for a semester or year of study at Duke as non-degree candidates, and advising and assisting these students.
Establishing contact with overseas institutions via exchanges and new program development.
Seeking new ways to further the global educational experience at Duke.

In order to accomplish these goals, the Global Education Office consults with the Arts and Sciences' Global Education Committee and with involved departments and faculty concerning new program development, budget management, approval of non-Duke programs, transfer of credits, and general study away policies.