Fourteen students traveled Aug. 24th to Thailand and then to India with anthropologiy professors Deborah Akers and Humayun Sidky as part of Miami's first semester-long Tibetan Study Abroad Program. Students in the program take courses in Buddhist philosophy and culture and language courses in Hindi, Tibetan and Mandarin. 

During their semester-long stay, students will live and attend classes at Sarah Campus of The Institute of Buddhist Dialectics and participate in the daily life of the Tibetan community at Dharamsala. As researchers, interns, or volunteer workers, students interact with Tibetan college students, physicians and medical researchers, members of the Tibetan parliament and cabinet ministers, lawyers, religious scholars, linguists, historians, monks, and heads of various NGOs.

Students will also have opportunities to attend religious ceremonies and teachings by the Dalai Lama. They will experience and engage in the challenges and possibilities that confront the Tibetan community, which is striving to preserve traditional cultural values and identity in the context of globalization.

The program is designed to offer students a unique opportunity to live and study in a rich and complex cross-cultural setting for one semester. Students learn to apply ethnographic methods and anthropological knowledge to find solutions to current problems confronting the local Tibetan community.

This year marks the programs first year as a semester-long study abroad program. The program had been offered as a summer workshop since 2006.