ABSTRACT
As colleges and universities respond to the need to produce students who have better crosscultural skills and who can function in a globalized economy, there is no greater area of need than in the sciences. In fact, the sciences are arguably the most international of all fi elds of intellectual endeavor. The universal languages of mathematics and science allow scientists to share their work even when they cannot speak each other’s language. This same universality, however, has made study abroad in the sciences seem less important, or at least less intuitively logical, than in the humanities or the social sciences, where mastery of place-based knowledge and cultural diff erence has been a compelling motivator of programming. With ever greater numbers of students studying abroad and with the globalization of economic systems plain to see, the need and desire of undergraduates in the sciences to have international exposure and to learn about working in the global context has became more evident.
