Seventeen UW students were awarded $2,500 each from the UW in response to their problematic study abroad trip to the West African country of Ghana last summer. Allegations of mismanagement during the trip are still under review by a third-party investigator.

The students were in rural Ghana to study sustainable development, but their intellectual pursuits were interrupted by complications involving disease, lack of adequate food supplies and a program director who lived in a village several miles away from the students’ sleeping quarters.

The program director, Linda Iltis, and her husband, Ter Ellingson, a professor of ethnomusicology, are still under review.

“Pretty much the whole thing was a disaster,” said sophomore Miranda Maurmann, a student participant on the Ghana trip. “We had a couple lectures, but the lectures were usually on topics that did not relate at all to sustainable development, including one Christianity lecture that was meant to convert us all to Christianity.”

Students understood what to expect on the trip, including a lack of electricity and modern plumbing. The necessity to bike as many as 10 miles per day was outlined beforehand, as were possible health risks.

Nonetheless, problems began in earnest and resulted in the trip’s cancellation one week in advance of the scheduled ending date.

The $2,500 sum will pay for a substantial cost of the trip, although it will not cover all student expenses.

In addition to this sum, each student received up to $3,000 in free medical treatment at Hall Health. Twelve students became sick while in Ghana, and eight were evacuated from the country. Students were also given the opportunity to earn up to 12 credits from the trip.

“It was felt that because the students had not ended up having the experience that they anticipated having and they were entitled to have when they went there, that this sum was to be provided to them as compensation for that,” said Norm Arkans, the UW’s executive director of media relations.

All study abroad programs are examined by several UW offices to assess risk factors and potential safety issues. Professors must seek approval from UW offices like the International Programs and Exchanges (IPE) office in order to take students abroad.

Interviews conducted with students from the trip, faculty members, the Jackson School of International Studies (which administered the program), the IPE office and Ghanaian individuals are ongoing, and the full extent of the review is in its final stages. Results of the investigation may change how the UW reviews and sanctions study abroad programs.

“The IPE office already has been setting in place … other things to enhance our programs, to enhance our review of program proposals to make sure we have the best mechanisms in place we can for training faculty who take students abroad, particularly to challenging remote areas,” Arkans said.

UW students continue to go abroad in large numbers; nearly 2,000 students went abroad during the 2006-2007 academic year, and IPE interim director Cameron Frisch predicts that number will only go up.

About half of those 2,000 attend summer Exploration Seminars or faculty-led programs like the Ghana trip, said Max Savishinsky, the UW Exploration Seminars program director. The level of negative incidents while studying abroad, however, is very low.

“Walking around the city or the country where almost any of our programs go is safer than walking around the U-District right now,” Savishinsky said.

Indeed, Savishinsky was quick to remind students that the potential for a worthwhile learning experience while studying abroad far outweighs the potential risk factors involved.

Some of the students on the Ghana trip indicated they would readily venture off the UW campus to study abroad again.

“I’m definitely still going to go on study abroads in the future, but I’m going to do a lot of research into the professor leading the trip,” Maurmann said.

[Reach reporter Andrew Doughman at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]